VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, March 18, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 5A
Hoopla, hoopla, kitty, kitty
D
uring one of my many attempts
to stop smoking I decided that the
cessation of tobacco use increases
one’s body odor, until I realized that it
actually enhanced my sense of smell. So
it is with the keepers of house cats. No
quantity of chlorophyll pellets or diligent
maintenance is able to mask the fact that
indoor cats crap in open-air latrines. Cat
owners’ noses adjust to the environment and
they don’t notice the smell.
So, imagine the stink of
a 100-year-old farmhouse
where nine cats have been
left to define personal
hygiene. I decided to
create a cat-free zone in
the ranch house, if for no
other reason than to keep
them off the table while
my daughter Delta and I
were trying to eat supper.
We erected kitty condos
— nine wooden boxes attached at various
heights to the wall of the enclosed back
porch, then sewed nine denim-covered foam
cushions and included a thimbleful of catnip
in the stuffing of each. I installed a cat door
to the outside, sliced open a 15-pound sack
of high ticket cat food, then booted nine little
spoiled brats out into the cruel, cruel world.
The relocation project was an almost
overnight success. Employing a sorting
scheme based on seniority, senility and
agility, the cats assigned themselves berths in
the room.
Myra, the grand dame, rented a lower.
Murray the Dolt roomed right above her.
Orange the Magnificent, by far the toughest
of the bunch, chose a nest high in the
corner. Luna the Reticent went mid-level,
with a view out the window. Plain Ol’ Kyle
adjoined Luna. Vagrants filled in the spaces.
We allowed entry into the house once per
day, with supervision, to keep a count and
prevent an unlikely return to the wild.
Rich folks use smoked turkey breasts as
holiday currency. When in need of a quick
gift, they whip out a Williams-Sonoma
catalog. The ranch freezer was an El Dorado
of smoked turkey breasts and the boss had
told us to help ourselves, so one Sunday
afternoon we thawed a couple and toasted
them in a restaurant-quality
Wolf range.
A general clamor arose
on the back porch when
the meat came out of the
oven, a chorus of mewing
and shuffling and yowling,
with a parade ofmtail
tips passing by the door’s
leaded window.
When Delta opened
the door to investigate the
noise, nine cats flooded the room and rushed
to the counter that held Williams-Sonoma’s
finest. They sat in a semicircle and stared at
the roasting pan as though their collective
oomph could demagnetize the turkey flesh
and cause it to fall on the floor.
That moment marked the birth of Gunter
Grabbenbutt, small cat trainer. As I stood
watching the transfixed cats, I recalled a
frosty morning when I was milking my
uncle’s cows accompanied by a barn cat who
knew I would eventually tip a teat sideways
and shoot a stream her way.
During one of these milk fountains, a
barn swallow dipped too closely to the floor,
the cat abandoned the milk, leapt sideways,
nabbed the bird, picked it up by the neck,
and strolled away. That was when I realized
that birds and fish were more closely
The act went
so smoothly
I considered
taking it on the
rodeo circuit.
connected to the traditional feline menu than
milk. Few cats of any size have ever milked
a cow.
It is not too difficult to teach nine cats
to sit up if you possess a king’s ransom in
turkey breasts. Grab a pinch of juicy meat
between thumb and forefinger, bend over,
present it to the cat you wish to train, push
it toward the cats nose, say “Sit,” and the
cat will automatically flop down on its
haunches. With a flourish of both hands, pass
the morsel about six inches above the cat’s
face.
The cat will sit up, unsheathe its claws,
and bat at the piece of flesh. If you are not a
fence builder, wear gloves. When the cat is
sitting up in a stable manner, feed the tidbit.
After twenty reps in a week’s time, the cat
will sit down when asked and up when you
wave your hands, even if occasionally you
don’t feed the bait. They will, however,
quit the show if you don’t come up with the
goods twice in a row.
The act went so smoothly I considered
taking it on the rodeo circuit. It required two
months and the entire stash of turkey breasts
to perfect it. Myra, the oldest, was hardest
to train. By the time the boss returned from
Paris, I could open the kitty condo door,
stand in the kitchen, yell “Hoopla, Hoopla,
Kitty, Kitty” in my best Bavarian accent,
and nine cats would rush into the kitchen
and arrange themselves on nine little painted
stools. With a grand swoosh of both my
hands, all nine would sit up at once about
three out of four times.
My efforts backfired. The boss was so
taken by the act that she fixed me up with a
tiger striped tee-shirt, complete with stuffed
tail, and it became another of my new
age buckaroo duties to morph into Gunter
Grabenbutt for visitors to her weekend art
J.D. S mith
FROM THE HEADWATERS
OF DRY CREEK
salons. Eventually both the cats and I tired
of performing and I went back to tending
hamburger-on-the-hoof in Idaho.
Six years later, I visited Marin County.
Cats were back in the house. Standing in the
kitchen. I yelled “Hoopla, Hoopla, Kitty,
Kitty,” and the only remaining veteran of
my original cast, Murray the Dolt, yawned,
rolled off the couch, ambled over to my feet,
sat on his haunches, and performed a perfect
sit-up at the wave of my hand.
■
J.D. Smith lives in Athena.
Quick takes
Legal pot sales in Pendleton
See what you’re missing out on Herm-
iston? Tax money and other things this city
needs.
— Tessie Hill
So sad that there are so many drug users
in the county.
— Chris Bodewig
Shutting down Umatilla
County drug court
Cutting the program returns us to a reac-
tive method to deal with the ever-growing
drug problem, and historically, that’s never
worked.
— Warrine Terpening
That was a program that was setting
people up for failure anyways!
— Justin Hartinger
This program can save lives. I’m alive
today thanks to this program. I have 7 years
clean thanks to this program.
— Connie Parker
One of the great lessons of the Twitter age is
that much can be summed up in just a few words.
Here are some of this week’s takes. Tweet yours
@Tim_Trainor or email editor@eastoregonian.
com, and keep them to 140 characters.
Let’s celebrate
our victories
D
uring my 28 years in the
•Our access to high-speed
Marine Corps, I lived
fiber is unrivaled in Oregon
all over the U.S. and in
More good things are on the
Europe and Asia. When
way:
I moved to Pendleton
•The UAV test range
has the airport finances
in the summer of
in the black, with new
2003, I immediately
revenues coming.
recognized that
•The Pendleton
there was something
Downtown Association
different, something
is working with the
special about this
Pendleton Development
town that I had not
Commission to make
experienced in the
John
our downtown core
other places I had lived.
Turner
more attractive and
Part of this can
Mayor
prosperous.
be explained by our
•We are investing
quality of life: You
more money in street and
can drive across town in just
infrastructure repair.
a few minutes without traffic
•The Eighth Street Bridge
jams; graffiti is rare; parks are
will be replaced.
well-kept; the streets are free
•Westgate will be repaved
of trash, and the violent crime
from the Convention Center to
rate is lower. I met a lot of
young couples who had moved the freeway.
•Tourism is growing, largely
back to Pendleton to raise their
due to new events.
children.
Much work remains to be
The other day, I was
reflecting on how many great
done:
things had happened in our
•We need more housing.
town just since I arrived here. A
•We need to invest even
partial list includes:
more in street repairs.
•A new hospital
•Aging water and sewer
•Expansion of the Round-Up lines need replacing.
grandstands
•Our airport infrastructure
•New roof and mezzanine
needs improvements for our
for Happy Canyon
burgeoning UAV test range.
•A skateboard park
Your city council and our
•Renovated and expanded
professional staff are working
Convention Center
hard to make sound decisions
•New facades and building
that will serve us well into the
renovations downtown
future. There is tremendous
•The overpass leading from
promise for the city of
Court Street to Westgate
Pendleton, and we also have
•The Pendleton Bronze Trail significant challenges to meet.
•Major renovations and new
In the meantime, let’s
buildings at both BMCC and
celebrate our victories.
the PSD
■
•We are the most solarized
John Turner is the mayor of
city per capita in Oregon
the city of Pendleton.
Standing Rock and lessons from the past
By GUNDARS RUDZITIS
Writers on the Range
D
emocracies usually prefer
not to wage war on their own
citizens, and in particular, on
peaceful demonstrators. Yet what
images were evoked when you saw
those photos in the news of police
attacking the “water protectors”
at Standing Rock with dogs, tear
gas, Mace, rubber bullets, water
cannons? The marches for civil
rights in the American South in the
1960s — and the attacks on those
peaceful demonstrators.
During nearly a year of peaceful
protests, Native Americans
and their supporters were met
continually by armed police
and raw power. Protesters were
under constant surveillance and
floodlights at night, with aircraft
flying overhead. Open land became
a militarized landscape, patrolled by
police outfitted in full riot gear.
And once again, the oppression
was directed at the very poorest
members of our society. The
Standing Rock Reservation has an
unemployment rate of about 60
percent; 40 percent of the people
live in poverty, and the reservation
has among the nation’s highest
death and suicide rates. This is a
place of despair by any statistical
measurements, and yet there’s still
a sense of home and attachment for
the people who live there.
What was the dispute about?
A pipeline that, given proper
consultation with the tribe, could
have been located elsewhere while
respecting and honoring the wishes
and concerns of the Standing
Rock Sioux. When the citizens of
Bismarck objected to putting the
pipeline 10 miles from their city,
fearing the possible contamination
of their water supply, the route
was simply moved to within one
half-mile of the Standing Rock
Reservation.
The tensions increased to the
extent that, before leaving office,
the Obama administration pressured
the Army Corps of Engineers to
halt construction and require a full
environmental impact statement
on the pipeline. In ordering a full
EIS, the Obama administration was
belatedly rectifying what should
have been done in the first place.
A full EIS is required under the
National Environmental Policy
Act whenever the government
undertakes a “major federal
action.” Yet the new Donald
Trump administration wasted no
time in canceling the required
environmental impact statement
and giving the easement that is
required by law in order to finish
the pipeline.
Represented by the nonprofit
environmental law firm
Earthjustice, the Standing Rock
Sioux Tribe of North Dakota has
asked the Washington, D.C., federal
district court to set aside Trump’s
pipeline reversal, charging that the
Army Corps of Engineers’ actions
“are arbitrary, capricious, an abuse
of discretion” and otherwise not in
accordance with the law. A decision
is expected in April.
What the Trump administration
is doing is shameful, an act whose
roots extend back to an American
holocaust. Trump almost seems to
be channeling President Andrew
Jackson, whose portrait he has
displayed in the Oval Office.
President Jackson orchestrated
what we would now call an ethnic
cleansing — the removal of
Indian tribes from their lands in
the East to the newly established
Indian Territory of Oklahoma.
Jackson’s removal order meant that
thousands of Indians were sent to
their death on a forced march to
Oklahoma, now known to history
as the Trail of Tears. It is estimated
that one-quarter of the 16,000
Indians who were uprooted died on
the way.
This past history informs our
present: Standing Rock was, in
part, spawned by the various
forms of genocide perpetrated on
Indian tribes, a truth that Western
historians are now recounting.
Indian hopes for the future,
whatever they were in the 1800s,
were destroyed and foreclosed
upon. We will never know in what
ways the many individual tribal
societies would have emerged and
grown, had we let them do so.
Will we once again, as in the
past, destroy the ability of tribal
people to live as they wish, to create
their own future? Recently, Indians
arrived in Washington, D.C., to
gather on the mall and protest the
pipeline. Meanwhile, at least one
U.S. senator has asked the FBI
why “anti-terrorism” specialists
visited some of the Standing Rock
activists. Will we now classify
some nonviolent water protectors as
terrorists?
We need to come to terms with
our past treatment of Indians. While
we cannot erase what happened
or wipe out the crimes already
committed, we are responsible for
the kind of society we now live in
and create. We can work to honor
Indian treaties, respect Indian land
rights, respect their sacred sites,
and not arrest and imprison people
who are fighting for their sovereign
rights and freedom. Is this really
too much to ask in the land of the
“free?”
■
Gundars Rudzitis is a
contributor to Writers on the Range,
the opinion service of High Country
News. He writes in Port Townsend,
Washington, where he is a professor
emeritus in the geography
department of the University of
Idaho.