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Patrick Ness–The Rest of Us Just Live Here (2015)

Posted in Adventure, Ben Williams and Sound Effect, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cats, Drinking, Marriage Trouble, Patrick Ness, Set at School, Sex, Stevie Wonder, Supernatural, Tiny Desk Concert, Vampires, Violence, YA Books on April 28, 2016| Leave a Comment »

nessSOUNDTRACK: BEN WILLIAMS & SOUND EFFECT-Tiny Desk Concert #170 (October 24, 2011).

ben williasmBen Williams is a jazz upright bass player (I didn’t realize bass players made band leaders, but clearly they do).  In 2009, he won the Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition.  And is an up and coming star.

He plays two original songs from his album State of Art.

It’s not often that the blurb describes a song, but it does a better job than I could have so for the first song, “Home”

the guitar (Gilad Hekselman) and drums (John Davis) lay down an aggressive, snappy foundation. The bass and electric keyboard (Christian Sands) fill out the polyrhythms. That groove, with its snappy hip-hop flavor, feels at home cruising down Georgia Avenue, then turning right on U Street NW, the historic African-American commercial district of Washington [D.C. where Williams is from]. Then the saxophone (Marcus Strickland) enters, and it’s game on.

That saxophone really runs the show on this song.  There’s an interesting keyboard solo (I like the sound he chose, very Stevie Wonder-ish, but it’s a little quiet).

The sax switches to a smaller sax for the second song, “Dawn of a New Day.”  The song is much slower and is more than twice as long as “Home.”

There’s a pretty lengthy bass solo (which sounds very old-school to me).  It’s followed by an electric guitar solo that has an interesting effect on it which made me think at first that it was a horn.  The horn comes next with a lengthy sax solo.  The final solo comes from the keyboard (which now sounds like a piano).  And then the song returns to that interesting main riff.

[READ: April 20, 2016] The Rest of Us Just Live Here

Sarah brought this book home and told me the premise–imagine what the stories of the other kids in the Buffy Universe would be like–wondering about all of those weird kids fighting vampires or whatnot.

At first I thought she meant that the other kids didn’t know what was going on, which would have been funny.  But in this story, the kids know that there are vampires and other mystical things, they just aren’t any part of the action–they are not the Chosen Ones.

It’s a very funny premise for a book, and I looked forward to how Ness would create a story around people who aren’t “doing” anything.

But that’s not the only thing that the story is about.  Ness makes the lives of the other kids so compelling and so, human (even if one of them is a quarter god). (more…)

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Popovich Comedy Pet Theatre (RVCC Arts, Branchburg, NJ, April 18, 2015)

Posted in Acrobats, Animals, Branchburg, NJ, C., Cats, Dogs, Funny (ha ha), Popovich Comedy Pet Theatre, RVCC Arts, Set in New Jersey!, T. on April 21, 2015| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: April 18, 2015] Popovich Comedy Pet Theatre

popvichThis show was playing at McCarter Theater and at RVCC. It was at least $10/ticket cheaper at RVCC, so good for us!  The RVCC show was a general admission seating situation, so we got there much earlier than we normally do for shows.  Of course, so did everyone else and we wound up sitting pretty far back (I was glad that people were actually coming to an RVCC show!).

But that was okay, because we could still see all of the action and all of the pets perfectly.

Some fascinating things to note about Popovich before I even get to the show.  Despite the name, the show is not only pets.  In fact there are a lot of human clowns and acrobats and performers on stage as well.  Evidently Popovich is quite well-known and has appeared on many TV shows.  And the whole show is told as a vague kind of story.

pop tvWhen we arrived, one of the troupe was standing in the aisle with a cat on his shoulder.  T. got to pet the cat, which was sweet.  Then a man in a cool green outfit (a big flared jumpsuit) with some white face on came down the aisle eating popcorn.  He played some jokes on people in the audience and then climbed on stage.  He was a kind of warm up, doing cheesy jokes (the fingers transferring from one hand to the other joke), and then doing a bit with a balloon that he could not move.  He was a really convincing mime and that bit was great, especially when the other guy came out and tried to pull the balloon away and couldn’t.  It was all simple but when it’s done well, it’s really magical. (more…)

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Five Dials Number 34: Jokes/Not Joking At All (18 December 2014)

Posted in Alternative Medicine, Arcade Fire, Art, Astor Piazzolla, Benjamin Rachlin, Caribou, Cats, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Christopher O'Riley, Cocteau Twins, Colin Barrett, Death, Dogs, Don Bartlett, Eliza Granville, Emily Berry, Essays, Five Dials, Gillian Mears, Jody Barton, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Karl Ove Knausgård, Kit Buchan, Leoš Janáček, Ludwig van Beethoven, Margaux Williamson, Matt Haimovitz, Nick Hornby, Noir, Parenting, Philip Glass, Short Story, Sigmund Freud, Stuart Evers, Sunita Solair, The Believer, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tiny Desk Concert, Tom Basden on April 18, 2015| Leave a Comment »

5dials34SOUNDTRACK: MATT HAIMOVITZ & CHRISTOPHER O’RILEY-Tiny Desk Concert #426 (March 14, 2015).

matthThere’s no introduction or fanfare for cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Christopher O’Riley’s Tiny Desk set.  They just start right in with a romping Beethoven piece.   I don’t know these two, but the notes say the duo has a new album out called Shuffle.Play.Listen., in which music by Stravinsky and Astor Piazzolla mingles with Cocteau Twins and Arcade Fire.  There’s no contemporary music in this set, but it’s very cool nonetheless.

The Beethoven piece sounds alive and wild and very modern.  The Glass piece is slow and beautiful  The final piece is lively and playful (with hints of darkness).  It introduced as reminding O’Riley of a scene in The Unbearable Lightness of Being when Daniel Day-Lewis gets a quickie.

It’s especially fun to watch how animated Haimovitz is.  The set list:

  • Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 4 in C – IV. Allegro vivace
  • Philip Glass/Foday Musa Suso: The Orchard
  • Leoš Janáček: Pohádka – II. Con moto

[READ: April 6, 2015] Five Dials 33 Part II

After several themed issues of Five Dials we get back to the ones that I really like–random things thrown together under a tenuous idea.  It’s got some great authors and a surprising amount of large scale doodles–full page scribbles and some drawings that go from one page to the next (which works better online than in print).  Some of the giant illustrations also are fun–they are of jokey images like a memory stick that states I have only memories.  The art was done by JODY BARTON.

As with a previous issue there is a page of contributors and “The Unable to Contribute Page.”  These are journalists unfairly imprisoned (see more at cpr.org).  The Table of Contents is back, along with the FAQ: (more…)

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Michael DeForge–First Year Healthy (2015)

Posted in Cats, Drawn & Quarterly, Funny (strange), Graphic Novel, Michael Deforge, T-Pain, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence on March 6, 2015| Leave a Comment »

first yearSOUNDTRACK: T-PAIN-Tiny Desk Concert #400 (October 29, 2014).

tpainA while back I was writing about all the Tiny Desk Concerts.  Then they started airing new ones several times a week and I realized the goal was futile.  Of course, since I like to complete projects, I may go back to it again, but not for a while.  Nevertheless, while I was looking up the Tiny Desk Contest winners I came across a list of superlatives from 2014 Tiny Desk Concerts.  And the one that struck me was that the T-Pain Tiny Desk Concert had been viewed over 6 million times (3 times more than the previous high water mark).  It was over 7 million when I watched it). So I decided to check it out.

I don’t know anything about T-Pain other than that he is associated with auto tune and even has an auto tune microphone for sale (which I would totally buy if I saw it for cheaper than retail). I don’t think I’ve ever even heard a T-Pain song.  So I assumed he couldn’t sing.  Which is a pretty common reaction: “People felt like I was using it to sound good,” says T-Pain.  “But I was just using it to sound different.”

And indeed. T-Pain has a beautiful voice.  The Tiny Desk Concert is just him and a keyboardist (named Toro). They play 3 songs
“Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin’),” “Up Down (Do This All Day),” “Drankin’ Patna.”

I don’t know what the originals sound like (given the spelling, I assume they are not as sweet and tender as these versions were). But these are very simple, stripped down songs.  The music is just keyboard notes, no rhythm tracks or any effects.  And then T-Pain singing.

He is charming because the setting is so weird to him (as I imagine it is) and he even “censors” a line in a very funny way. I’m not going to be buying a T-Pain CD or anything, but I was delighted by this Tiny Desk.

[READ: March 2, 2015] First Year Healthy

I saw the cover of this book at work and decided I had to see what it was all about.

The artwork in this book is so bizarre–delightful and creepy at the same time.  For instance, the cover image up there is a baby and a cat (I love that the cat’s eyes are “sideways”).  Even more interesting is the way the main character looks.

That image below is the main character.  That is all her hair.  So weird and yet so interesting at the same time.

firstThe story is a bit less sweet than the drawings.  But it is no less unusual than the drawings.

(more…)

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Gideon Lewis-Kraus–“Story A” (Harper’s, June 2014)

Posted in Cats, Culture Shock, Cute, Essays, Funky Web Sites, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Harper's, MitchiriNeko on November 23, 2014| Leave a Comment »

harpjuneSOUNDTRACK: みっちりねこマーチ – MitchiriNeko March (2013).

mitchiBecause Lewis-Kraus mentions “the most important internet cat band of our day” in this article, I did a search for such a thing and came across this.  This is an adorable cartoon of cats marching (and playing along to the music).

I didn’t look into this too hard, and I don’t really know MitchiriNeko, although the video says that “MitchiriNeko” is a cat-like cartoon character who is always in a group to hang out so closely with each other wherever they go.

I’ve listed below more stuff about MitchiriNeko, but really I just enjoyed watching the video.

Evidently there is a web comic for this fella:
Manga Box! English editions are coming soon.
https://www.mangabox.me/
https://www.mangabox.me/reader/247/

There are apps for this character:
iPhone
https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/mitch…
Android
https://play.google.com/store/apps/de…

And this song “MitchiriNeko March” is now on sale.
https://itunes.apple.com/jp/album/mit…

[READ: November 17, 2014] “Story A”

I enjoyed Gideon Lewis-Kraus’ previous Harper’s essay about Japan: “Sleeping Together.”  I thought it would be fun to tie it to this one which is also about Japan.

He says that for a time, he was drawn to “particular breeds of the Japanese trivial” like “the “most important internet cat band of our day” and the cafe that he describes in “Sleeping Around.”  Thus he was immediately drawn to the Japanese hole-digging contest.  He decided to go see it, which would also allow him to visit his brother Micah in Japan.

The title of the article, “Story A” refers to a journalistic practice in which “essays purport to be about one thing but reveal themselves to be about some other, profounder thing.  Story A might be about the game of Monopoly but its real role is to give cover to Story B which is about the decline of the American city.”  He imagined that the nonsense of hole digging could lead to something incredibly profound. (more…)

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Eliza Robertson–“Who Will Water the Wallflowers?” (The Walrus, June 2014)

Posted in Battles, Blonde Redhead, Boredoms, Canadian Content, Cats, Don Caballero, Drinking, Eliza Robertson, Gary Numan, Helmet, Huh?, Natural Disasters, Short Story, The Walrus on October 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »

june2014SOUNDTRACK: BATTLES-Glass Drop (2011).

220px-BattlesGlossDropI didn’t know anything about Battles before I heard the single, “Ice Cream.”  Battles are an experimental band comprised of the guitarist from Don Caballero (one of my favorite post-rock bands) and the drummer from Helmet.   And they write music that is very angular, with lots of stops and starts and direction changes.  There’s some story about their first album (which I have not heard) having a singer who left just before the recording of this album.  And the remaining trio’s solution was to have outside singers sing on certain songs.  And it all works very well.

The majority of the album is instrumental though.  And the songs feature a very distinctive sound that I feel is close to a steel drum, but which I know is actually a keyboard–but that echoing sound is so drumlike, that when the drummer’s pounding is added, the whole album feels like a percussive explosion.

“Africastle” opens the disc with ringing guitars and a melody that uses those steel drum sounds.  After about 2 minutes of slow intro, when the ferocious drums kick in, the song rockets to life in a frenzy of activity and counterpoints.  It’s really quite something.

“Ice Cream” is the song that introduced me to this album.  The guitars are modified to once again a steel drum sound, but the melody and rhythm are so fast staccato that it removes any sense of steel drum especially when the notes are clearly electronic. This song features vocals (no idea what they are saying) by Matias Aguayo.  They compliment the sound of the music.  Despite all the overlapping disparate elements the song winds up being strangely catchy. The way the chaos ends with a simple Dum duh duh dum dum… is very cool.

“Futura” continues in that staccato style but it features an aggressively catchy melody.  “Inchworm” has a fun almost reggae feel amid the staccato noises.  “Wall Street” brings the drums to the fore again as it propels the jumpy melody along.  “My Machines” has a guest vocal from Gary Numan. I have never liked Gary Numan (I need to never hear “Cars” again) but his voice (he actually sings…sort of) works well with this cacophony.

“Dominican Fade” adds some heavier bass and wild percussion notes to this 2 minute track. It even has hand claps and cowbells at the end.  “Sweetie and Shag,” has vocals from  Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino.  She adds a whole new element to the album with her high pitched yet breathy vocals.  A definite highlight.

“Toddler” is a 1 minute sng that feels like a transition into the manic and bouncy “Rolls Bayce” (which Dave Konopka describes as almost wholly an experiment).

“White Electric” start slow with some echoed notes. Then a martial beat keeps time as the notes seems to swirl around. The song builds and builds with more layers until it crashes apart at around 5 minutes.  At which point the song slowly rebuilds itself into a pretty coda.

The final song sounds like a reggae singer but it is actually Yamataka Eye from The Boredoms.  Konopka says that Eye sent vocals and told them to do whatever they wanted with the track.  The band thought “he was speaking Japanese, but he’s just making up his own stuff and he’s repeating stuff that he’s making up.”  The backing noises sound like a whale song.

Despite the weirdness of the album, there’s a lot of poppiness to it, and I think it is a great release.  It also is a great headphones release, if you like that sort of thing.  I need to check out their debut as well.

[READ: October 15, 2014] “Who Will Water the Wallflowers?”

I don’t quite know what to make of this story.  It seemed to me to be full of individual incidents that were all wiped away by the flood that is mentioned in the very first line.

I enjoyed the details of the story quite a lot.  In it, the girl (unnamed) looks after her neighbor’s cat Cha-Cha while Ms Feliz is away.  Cha-Cha is a a Turkish angora, a delicate breed.  And there is an interesting description of the cat after he has gotten wet in the rain.  Sometime the girl sleeps at Ms Feliz’ house (her mom doesn’t mind since they live across the street).

The girl finds sanctuary in Ms Feliz’s house.  Except for Mr Bradley.  Mr Bradley is an enigmatic neighbor–he seems to be home all the time, dressed in work clothes and slippers. It is clear that the girl is uncomfortable around him, but he seems to always be around.  He seems pleasant enough.  He sees her almost every day and always asks “learning something?” to which she doesn’t know what to say.  She tries to avoid him by looking for Cha-Cha, but he doesn’t leave (and Cha-Cha doesn’t show up).  She tells him that she watched a film about geysers .

He replies, “I know a joke about geysers….it probably wouldn’t be appropriate.” (more…)

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Rebecca Curtis–“The Christmas Miracle” (New Yorker, December 23 & 30, 2013)

Posted in Cats, Christmas, Death, Funny (strange), K'naan, Mali Music, New Yorker, Parenting, Rebecca Curtis, Short Story, Surreal, Yuck! on July 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_12_23_13Blitt.inddSOUNDTRACK: MALI MUSIC-Tiny Desk Concert #366 (June 21, 2014).

maliMali Music is one man, born in Savannah, GA, but with a somewhat Jamaican vibe.  He plays three songs in this Tiny Desk Concert and each one is quite different.

In the first track, “Fight for You,” he raps over a beat and sample mix played by his DJ (DJ Slow Motion, who is behind the desk with him).  It’s interesting in that he raps with himself (his voice is played by the DJ as well, not looped).  His singing voice in this song tends towards the whiny which I don’t care for, especially since his main voice is so powerful.

The second track, “Make It In” he plays on an acoustic guitar.  The song is clever with lots of amusing asides and slight laughs in the lyrics too.  he more or less raps the verses but sings the chorus.

For the final song, he switches to keyboard (he says he learned piano at a very young age) and he plays a simple, uplifting ballad called “Beautiful.”  There’s a funny moment when he asks the crowd to sing along and then the DJ plays a sample of a crowd singing a long, which makes Mali laugh.

Mali is a pretty positive guy–he talks about things getting better and about himself really making a difference through his music.  It sounds like prideful boasting (and it will be interesting to see if he really does take off), but he also seems sincere in his desire for happiness.  The set reminds me a little of K’naan, at least in spirit.

[READ: June 19, 2014] “The Christmas Miracle”

After really enjoying “The Toast” a few months ago, I was delighted to get another story from Rebecca Curtis and her bristly narrator.

The story opens with the comment that cats were dying, “This happens, of course.”  But in this case they were dying in gory ways not to mention the cats belonged to her nieces.  The girls had seen the dead cats.  The narrator also points out that it is now Christmas, “The most magical, horrible, spiritual, dark, and stressful time of the year.”

Like with another Curtis story, this one is being told to someone, in this case, someone named K, a Russian Communist and “Jewish person who doesn’t believe Jesus was the son of God.”

The narrator explains her situation–she was teaching creative writing but hadn’t written anything herself in years  She had contracted Lyme disease (does this all sound familiar from her other stories?). The disease causes inflammations and bouts of madness and “frank or rude speech, usually set off by eating carbohydrates.”

I love the way that Curtis writes although I’m unclear what Curtis herself believes because her narrator is just so contrary.  Like this awesome sentence:

“If cake was nearby I wasn’t always able to prevent myself from having one bite, then the sugar fed the Bartonella bacteria, which commanded me to eat more, and I would, and then I’d go insane.”  So she asked her sister not to have any sugar filled treats at Christmas.  Which her sister ignored, of course. (more…)

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Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm–Happy Birthday, Babymouse [#18] (2014)

Posted in Cats, Children's Books, Cupcakes, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Jennifer L. Holm, Matthew Holm, Mice, Set at School, Short Books, The Shins, Yo Gabba Gabba on May 24, 2014| Leave a Comment »

18SOUNDTRACK: THE SHINS-“It’s Okay, Try Again” (2009).

mia“Sometime you win, sometimes you lose.  But it’s okay, you try it again.”

A simple idea that no kid will ever believe in no matter how many times he or she hears this song.  Nevertheless, the song is poppy and fun, it’s pure Shins and it is infectious.

The song also feels a lot longer than 2 minutes.  They have really packed a lot into their choruses and verses (and middle third).

Yo Gabba Gabba has been excellent at getting great bands to play simple quickie songs for their records (and shows).

[READ: May 16, 2014] Happy Birthday, Babymouse

It’s hard for me to believe that it took 18 books before Babymouse had a birthday!  I got a chuckle out of the fact that in the book it acknowledges that we don’t even know how old she is [and that they break the fourth wall, too].

As the book opens, Babymouse imagines a full-on Times Square countdown for her birthday.  But that only makes sense because every other birthday that she has had in recent years was a disaster (no idea what season it’s supposed to be in since the disasters span just about everything you can imagine).

But this year she is planning something epic–she sends out a mailbox-filling pile of invitations (including to people in the Squish series–nice cross platform mixing there).  Everyone gets invited except for the gnomes–“they’re too troublesome.”  Of course then comes the dreadful information–Felicia Furrypaws is having her party on the same exact day.  And it promises to be everything Babymouse dreamed her party would be. (more…)

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Adam Rex–The True Meaning of Smekday (2007)

Posted in Adam Rex, Aliens, Big Books, Cats, Children's Books, Funny (ha ha), Happy Smekday!, Home, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Super XX Man, Technology, Threats, Tiny Desk Concert, Travel on January 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »

smekdaySOUNDTRACK: SUPER XX MAN-Tiny Desk Concert #12 (January 27, 2009, recorded Oct. 22, 2008).

superxxI included the recording date because this is the first one that actually mentions the recording date.  I had always known that the shows were recorded before they were posted, but i had no idea they were so far apart.

Super XX Man is another “band” that I only know about because of NPR.  Scott Garred is Super XX Man (pronounced Super Double X Man), and he has recorded most of his albums at home.  Interestingly, he is also a music therapist in the maximum-security wing of the Oregon State Hospital—the location where they filmed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  His job is helping psychiatric patients cope with drug addiction, severe mental illness and other assorted disorders.

I’m not sure exactly what his recorded output is like (he has been recording for 15 years and had recently recorded with a band for Volume XII: There’ll Be Diamonds), but this solo venture is just him with a guitar.  He has a very nice voice and his melodies are simple and catchy.

“There’ll Be Diamonds” is a very nice catchy song—very positive.  The second song, “Big Balloon,” is for the newly admitted patients at the hospital.  It is a very tender look at people who are dealing with something quite traumatic.

“Collecting Rocks” comes from Volume VI, and is based on a story his grandfather told him a while ago.  It’s an incredibly sweet song about two people in love.  But it’s also fun how he gets the room to sing along at the end.  I imagine that NPR employees are more docile than his usual audience.

[READ: January 5, 2014] The True Meaning of Smekday

I have known Adam Rex first as an illustrator.  Then I knew him as a children’s picture book author.  And now, the other day, I saw that he also wrote larger children’s books.  In the library I saw Unlucky Charms. I was going to grab it but then I saw that he was “the author of” other books.  So, being the kind of person I am, I decided to read his first novel first, which was this one.

This novel combines art (photographs—which are drawn by Rex), comics (as drawn by an alien) and a school story written for a time capsule (as such, the font is in a weird sans-serif that I found bothersome to read (man I am really getting old)).

Anyhow, I thought this book was very very funny on so many level.  There were pop culture jokes, there was great dialogue and there were fun internal jokes.  There were some sophisticated jokes and some really juvenile jokes.  And they all combined to make for a very good read.

The only problem with the book was that it was so damned long.  No one needs to write a 422 page book about an alien invasion.  The story could easily have lost 100 pages and not been harmed at all.  And I say that because I loved the beginning and I devoured the end, but I felt rather adrift in the middle. (more…)

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Margaret Atwood—“Cat’s Robo-Cradle” (New Yorker, May 20, 2013)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Birds, Black Sabbath, Cats, Environmentalism, Inventions, Margaret Atwood, New Yorker, The Black Angels on May 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »

5.20SOUNDTRACK: BLACK ANGELS-Evil Things (2013).

blackangelsThis song has a 70s era metal sound (with a heavy early Black Sabbath feel).  It opens with a big riff and surprisingly quiet vocals (the vocals are not really sung loudly, they’re almost whispered, and they are very clean–it’s a nice contrast to the big buzzy guitars).  But for al the buzzy guitars (and the wonderfully dated to 1967 keyboard sound), there are passages that are quiet and almost gentle.  Indeed, there’s a lot going on in this song.  It’s a nice marriage of heavy metal and psychedelia.

I love the way the end seems like it’s uncontained–like they couldn’t control the feedback.  It’s interesting that Bob and Robin on NPR relate this more to psychedelic bands of the late 60s and yet I hear more Black Sabbath–of course, Sabbath was a lot more psychedelia than we let on.

I’d like to hear more from these guys

[READ: May 16, 2013] “Cats Robo-Cradle”

The five brief pieces in this week’s New Yorker are labeled as “Imagined Inventions.”  And in each one, the author is tasked with inventing something.

Since Atwood wrote Cat’s Cradle, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this piece—the title of which was just kind of odd.  As with many magazine titles, I feel like perhaps she didn’t come up with the title because that’s not what she calls her invention–someone just tried to tie it into her famous novel.

Anyhow, she begins her piece by talking about the fascinating-sounding Museum of Failed Products in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  She says that there are so many interesting things there, some of which she feels must be better than her own invention, and must be better than Pop-Tarts.  She says she predicted the failure of Pop-Tarts because when her family first tried it, the jam exploded all over the toaster.  So she knows from good and bad ideas.

Her idea has to do with the death of so many birds and rodents from feral cats.  Recall that birds are predators of insects so their dwindling number is affecting forests and garden.  When cats kill the birds (and the rodents that larger birds eat), they are permanently impacting the climate.  Her idea is for a safe (to the cats) trap which she calls the Robo-Coyote. (more…)

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