At Patheos: TF: The President's Plane Is Missing

Fred's new Left Behind post is up at Patheos.

Excerpt:

"[Jenkins] doesn’t take us to the Oval Office or to the famed White House Situation Room, but to a nondescript hotel room in Jerusalem, where the American President Gerald Fitzhugh is staying before the Great-Tribulation-inaugurating treaty-signing, an event at which he will, apparently, be little more than a spectator. 

Sitting there in the hotel, the sidelined and impotent Fitzhugh fumes about his suddenly marginal role in world events. He launches into a monologue expressing his frustration with this newfound powerlessness and irrelevance in the New World Order. We readers are privy to this scene because Fitzhugh decided he needed an audience before whom he could express his most private thoughts and fears, and because the president decided the most appropriate audience for such candid, unguarded statements would be a prominent member of the press."[by Fred Clark, TF: The President's Plane Is Missing, March 28, 2011, posted at Patheos.com]

 

Commentators who would like to share their responses to the new post with all of Fred's fans (old and new) can cross-post to both boards.

Comments

[Asha ( EHHH??)]

You know, wish-fulfillment has it's place in story-telling, but you also need to have some struggle. I know I would have been more interested in a reporter who had to call in favors, act underhanded and generally had to fight for a talk with the president. That person I could have admired. Buck is just SUPA SPESHUL. And Rayford is EXTRA-SPARKLEY SPESHUL. With airplanes because those are special too.

Which has all been said before by people much smarter than me. This is more or less why I had to stop reading Twilight. I need more of a conflict to enjoy a story.

[Ravanan]

It would have even been slightly forgivable if the president had talked about anything other than how mad he was at losing his favorite twuck....I mean plane.

[Skyknight]

I do wonder why the language of anger is supposed to be obscenities. Me, you're more likely to hear me use words like "dishonorable", "disgraceful", "scoundrel", "wretch", "ignoble", "chimera" (as in "abomination", not the original offspring of Typhon and Ekidne), and "ignominious" when I'm in full dudgeon. At the very least, they're more accurate and easier to comprehend immediately (all right, I'm not sure how common "ignominious" and "chimera" are, but the other five...); obscenities' literal meanings tend to be...off the mark, as it were, to the usual situation. But at the same time, I wonder if bringing directly to their face the exact nature of their...well...ignominy will shock them into reflection. (Of course, I can't shake the feeling that obscenity would just wash over them with barely any effect, besides perhaps infuriating THEM...)

Anyway, I wonder if the quasi-valorization of militias has anything to do with LaHaye and Jenkins possibly understanding Underground Believers at Constant Risk of Martyrdom (UBaCRoM...can we mint that, with whatever capitalization scheme you prefer, as a term of consistent use? Including the articles helps the pronunciation.) as something akin to militias. Just that instead of striking against fanatical internationalist soldiers with assault rifle bullets, they're striking against demonic encroachment with prayerful invocations. Spiritual warfare et al. (And looky here, the fanatical internationalist soldiers and demonic encroachment suddenly have the exact same archons behind them...At the very least, we have an Enemy Mine situation here.)

[Firedrake]

Someone of 59 may be a lot of things, but "youthful" really isn't one of them. And while there's obvious Mary-Sue-ing going on here, I don't see people accusing Buck of being a talentless hack - what we mostly see is jealousy of his wonderfulness, not of his success, insofar as these are separable in L&Jworld.

I love the recounting-but-not-recounting of Fitzhugh's salty language. Mind you, even here another author has done it rather better. Consider:

"Did I ever ask you for a drink, you" (unprintable even here, in a modern and realistic novel, for the space of two long breaths).

"The trouble we've got with the militia" is presumably something Buck doesn't already know about (unlike procedural roles for off-the-record statements) and sounds as though it could be a news story. Naturally he does his best not to learn about it.

I wonder whether this emphasis on the plane is because it's one of the few non-prophesied things to be going on here? The destruction and ceding of weapons, per L&J, is an inevitable part of God's plan; the Antichrist is on the same rails as everyone else, and he just has to keep ticking off the prophecy checklist items. But taking the plane... that's personal.

[Elizabby]

“I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural of apocalypse”

According to my (Greek) husband it should be: "apocalypses" or "apocalypseis" depending on how literally you render the Greek spelling.

Singular "apocalypsis" takes "eis" as the plural ending, so "apocalypseis" but when converting to English the dipthong usually drops a vowel and takes the one closest to pronunciation, so "apocalypses" (last syllable sounds like "seas" not "sez").

HTH! So next time you need to talk about multiple revelations, you now know how to spell it in two languages...

@Skyknight: "chimera" (as in "abomination", not the original offspring of Typhon and Ekidne),

I'm not terribly keen on this one - I don't think it creates quite the resonance you might be after. "Chimera" in scientific/medical terms now simply means a cross-breed between two things. I don't think it necessarily means "abomination" unless you happen to think that tomatoes which ripen without going soft are an abomination, or soybeans that aren't killed by pesticides. However, I think using "chimera" as an insult is likely to derail your rant into a discussion of whether chimerism requires crossing species boundaries or not, which I suspect is not the effect you were after...

[Timothy (TRiG)]

For "recounting-but-not-recounting salty language", I rather like Pratchett: I HATE ----ing wizards!' 'You shouldn't ---- them, then,' muttered one of his henchmen, effortlessly pronouncing a row of dashes.

TRiG.

[Coleslaw]

I do wonder why the language of anger is supposed to be obscenities.

Because obscenities are not propositional speech, they are automatic speech, akin to saying "ouch" when you get hurt. One of my former bosses called them "verbal overflow". People with aphasia can usually cuss even though they can't organize simple words or sentences.

[Lampdevil]

So it's okay for these books to have scenes of horrible violence (that poor terrorist that got fire columned to death, Turbo Jesus coming down and slaying everyone), but swearing, that's just too awful and they're not even going to go anywhere near that? It's not unexpected to see that, but I think a little dash-ampersand-hash mark-exclamation point is far more forgivable, in human terms, than ALL THE FRIGGIN' KILLING.

Also: PLANES. When you can't have phones, planes are the next best thing! The author's obvious plane hard-on makes me giggle, and then makes me shake my head.

[Will Wildman]

So it's okay for these books to have scenes of horrible violence (that poor terrorist that got fire columned to death, Turbo Jesus coming down and slaying everyone), but swearing, that's just too awful and they're not even going to go anywhere near that? It's not unexpected to see that, but I think a little dash-ampersand-hash mark-exclamation point is far more forgivable, in human terms, than ALL THE FRIGGIN' KILLING.

Exactly what I just said over on Patheos, when someone remarked that (and I agree!) it's okay to find a workaround when one is trying to keep a 'G or PG rating'. The LB books can make no such claim.

Also! A cross-post of my pedantry:

"Tangentially and technically, 'profanity' refers to religious matters, so the usual sexual or waste-related obscenities wouldn't count. President Fitzykins needs to be shouting about Jesus and pogo sticks, taking the Lord's name in vain, or (for a combo of profanity and obscenity) suggest that Nicky go insert a crucifix into himself."

[Nick]

Lampdevil, there's something like the use/mention distinction going on here. Swearing and violence are both in the book, but they're both just mentioned. The book doesn't actually use violence (readers are not struck forcibly by some hidden mechanism) or swearing (no actual naughty words)

In case it's something you haven't encountered, the use/mention distinction would be the difference between:

Paper consists of five letters and is an English word

and

Paper consists of fibres pressed into a flat sheet and is a common writing material

You can play all sorts of games in this space, and different people may disagree about what's acceptable, is it OK for the dictionary to define words like "garotte" or "lynch" ? Or does that make it a violent book?

[Caravelle]

Elizabby :

"Chimera" in scientific/medical terms now simply means a cross-breed between two things. I don't think it necessarily means "abomination" unless you happen to think that tomatoes which ripen without going soft are an abomination, or soybeans that aren't killed by pesticides. However, I think using "chimera" as an insult is likely to derail your rant into a discussion of whether chimerism requires crossing species boundaries or not, which I suspect is not the effect you were after...

I think you might be confusing "chimera" with "hybrid". A hybrid is a cross-breed and as far as I know (which isn't that far, granted) the tomatoes or soybeans you refer to would be hybrids or GMOs, not chimeras.

A chimera in medical terms is an organism whose cells come from several genetically distinct zygotes. Lots of animals are chimeras (I think calico cats are an example) and you have them in humans too. People with bicolor eyes for example are chimeras. It comes up in the news once in awhile, like there was a woman in Australia who had a paternity test done on her child, and it turned out her husband was indeed the father... but she wasn't the mother. Turned out she was a chimera, and the cells that had been used for the gene test were different from those that had resulted on the child.

So, basically, definitely not abominations :)

Come to think of it your confusion is understandable, as all the "human-mouse hybrid" people are scared scientists might be making would be chimeras, not hybrids.

As far as plant breeding goes, grafting would count as making chimeras. After checking Wikipedia it turns out things like thornless plants are chimeras, so maybe your tomatoes and soybeans would be too after all.

[Jason]

Speaking of well done end of the world/disaster stories, has anyone else been watching AMC's "Walking Dead" series?

FANTASTIC!

It uses the point of view of the every man. Communication and infrastructure has been so destroyed that the full extent of the zombie apocalypse isn't really known.

As someone who has watched numerous zombie related films, nothing has ever conveyed quite so well exactly how much living in a zombie apocalypse would suck.

[Jarred]

@Nick: Lampdevil, there's something like the use/mention distinction going on here. Swearing and violence are both in the book, but they're both just mentioned. The book doesn't actually use violence (readers are not struck forcibly by some hidden mechanism) or swearing (no actual naughty words)

The problem is the distinction between telling and showing them. If L&J told us that Nicky was a violent, bloodthirsty person, but only showed him serving tea to guests and working at the local soup kitchen, there'd be a huge disconnect. There's a similar disconnect between telling us that Fitzhugh is heartily peppering his language with obscenities and yet writing dialogue for him that make him sound like a character on The Andy Griffifth Show. It's quite disconcerting.

My personal opinion is that if you're not willing to write the dialogue the way you originally described it, you should describe it differently in the first place.

[Jason]

Hey now, don't be bashing the Andy Griffith Show. (-;

[Lampdevil]

@Nick, I sorta think I see what you mean? In the most technical sense, there's swearing in the book, in the sense that President Fitzhugh is said to be peeling the wallpaper with his use of foul language. But none of this is actually depicted. I'm pretty sure I've encountered the distinction between use/mention before. I know what's going on.

I just think that it's kinda hypocritical.

I don't have a copy of the book anywhere near me (and ramen to that) but I've done an archive dig of Slactivist TF posts and I've found this:

And as he finished, the other breathed from his mouth a column of fire that incinerated the man's clothes, consumed his flesh and organs, and in seconds left a charred skeleton smoking on the ground. The weapon melted and was fused to the cement, and the man's molten necklace dripped gold through the cavity in his chest.

...now, that's hardly as reverently violent as some things I've read, but considering the average level of descriptiveness in these books? It's pretty significant to get that much detail about something. Flesh and organs consumed! Charred skeleton smoking on the ground!

Maybe I'm grasping at straws. These books are kind of lukewarm, as a whole. Like bad oatmeal, occasionally full of rocks disgused as raisins. But this isn't like proposing that a dictionary is violent because it defines violent terms. This is a novel. When TF depicts violence, it's being done upon someone. The equivalent of all the swearing-dodging would be to replace that above paragraph with "they set him on fire and then he was dead."

@Jarred - You've put it a lot better and briefer than I did.

[BringTheNoise]

Speaking of well done end of the world/disaster stories, has anyone else been watching AMC's "Walking Dead" series?

FANTASTIC!

I've got to disagree with you there, at least from what I've seen (admittedly only the first two or three episodes, but my interest was dead* by that point). To me, it was probably the most by-the-numbers zombie story I'd ever seen or read, with a main character who kept making remarkably stupid decisions and a twist that I had seen coming over a mile away (rot13: gur yrnq punenpgre'f jvsr obvaxvat uvf orfg sevraq).

*Sorry, sorry, terrible pun I know.

[Jason]

@BringTheNoise-

Really, I thought the zna jub vf hanoyr gb fubbg uvf jvsr jub vf abj n mbzovr naq vf gelvat gb fuvryq uvf fba sebz gur ubeebe nf orfg nf ur pna jnf obgu gbhpuvat naq bssrerq n uhznavgl gb gur fvghngvba gung V unq abg frrz orsber va mbzovr svyzf. Nyfb jura Evpx fnlf gb "ovplpyr tvey" (gur rznpvngrq yrtyrff mbzovr penjyvat guebhtu gubhtu gur cnex) "V'z fbeel guvf unccrarq gb lbh" orsber tvivat ure n zrepl xvyy. V nyfb yvxrq gur enpvnyyl punetrq vffhrf, cnegvphyneyl gur fvghngvba va juvpu gurl raq hc yrnivat n ivbyragyl enpvfg punenpgre unaqphssrq ba n ebbs gb rvgure fgneir gb qrngu be trg rngra ol mbzovrf.

Also in the later episodes, guvatf trg zhpu jbefr. Jr frr n ybg bs gur gbvy gung qnl gb qnl yvivat va gung raivebazrag unf ba uhznaf. Ng bar cbvag jung vf zvfgnxra sbe n tebhc bs guhtf vf npghnyyl fbzr crbcyr gelvat gb cebgrpg n fravbe pragre sebz obgu ybbgvat naq mbzovr nggnpxf. Gurer ner dhrfgvbaf bs jura gb fubbg fbzrbar nsgre gurl unir orra ovg naq jurgure yvsr vf rira jbegu yvivat nalzber sbe nalbar.

...but I love zombie stuff so I went into it knowing I'd at least like it.

[Froborr]

Lots of animals are chimeras (I think calico cats are an example)

It's more complicated than that.

The genes for fur color in cats are on the X chromosome, and to be calico you need to have both the gene for orange-and-white and the gene for black-and-white. Thus, to be calico, you need two different X chromosomes. There are three ways to do this:

1) Be female.
2) Be a sterile XXY male. (Very rare)
3) Be a chimera. (Very, very rare)

[Jarred]

@Froborr: Interesting! I'd never heard of option 3 before. As someone who has a nearly obsessive fascination with tri-color cats*, you just made my day.

And I've actually met a XXY male calico cat. My dream is to have one for a pet someday. (Alas, Bob already had a good home when I met him.)

* Besides calico cats, you also have torties and torbies. And of course, you also have dilute versions of each of those.

[Froborr]

Actually, I just learned it's more complicated than that, even, because the genes are for either straight orange, or straight black. The "and white" comes from another set of genes that block the color genes from being expressed.

Interestingly, the interaction between these genes appears to be effectively random: Clones of calico cats have different patterns.

[Froborr]

@Jarred: My reading suggests that "tortoiseshell" is an alternate name for calicoes. Is there a difference? And what's a "torby"?

[Caravelle]

@Froborr : thank you, that makes sense. I had a small doubt after posting that because calico cats are more common that I would've assumed chimeras would be, at least in mammals. It's not like there's a ready mechanism for it to happen...

[Ross]

It wouldn't surprise me if mammals who are typically born in litters had a higher incidence of chimeritism (In humans, I am given to understand, natural chimeritism only occurs when one fraternal twin zygote absorbs the other one. Induced chimeritism can result from bone marrow transplants)

[BringTheNoise]

...but I love zombie stuff so I went into it knowing I'd at least like it.

I do too, normally. I mean, I even enjoyed the last three Romero Dead films (Land, Diary and even Survival of the Dead) but this one just did nothing for me. Some of the stuff in your second Rot-13'ed paragraph does sound interesting, but I just couldn't get into it at all.

[Jarred]

@Froborr: The difference is mainly in the pattern. From a cat fancier standpoint, a calico cat is a cat where the three colors are separated out in patches and a tortoiseshell is a cat where there different colors are thoroughly intermixed. (Often, the white hairs aren't obvious on a tortie, as the black and orange* hairs tend to hide them.) A torbie is a tortoishell cat that also has patches of tabbying ("tiger stripes") mixed in.

For some pictures of a tortie, check out pictures of Precious**. She actually used to be a torbie. The patch of cream colored hair behind her left ear used to have a tabby pattern to it as well. Sadly, that's gone away as she's gotten older. (Yes, the patterns on the same cat can also change.)

*Or blue/gray and cream if they're a dilute tortie.

**And thank you for giving me an excuse to show off my baby. ;)

[Jason]

@BringTheNoise-

Gur fgbelyvar jurer gur orfg sevraq vf fyrrcvat jvgu gur znva punenpgre'f jvsr trgf zber vagrerfgvat bapr ur neevirf onpx ng pnzc. Gur jvsr onfvpnyyl guvaxf fur jnf yvrq gb naq sbbyrq vagb orvat na nqhygrerff. Gur orfg sevraq naq gur uhfonaq (jub qbrfa'g xabj jung unccrarq) unir inevbhf qvfnterrzragf nobhg ubj gb eha gur pnzc. Gur orfg sevraq frrf uvzfrys nf cebgrpgbe bs gur znva punenpgre'f jvsr naq onfvpnyyl gur bayl ynj naq beqre va gur tebhc. Gur jvsr jnagf nofbyhgryl abguvat gb qb jvgu uvz. Ur orpbzrf vapernfvatyl zber hauvatrq naq qnatrebhf nf gur frevrf cebterffrf bajneq. Ol gur frnfba svanyr, ur vf npghnyyl zber sevtugravat guna gur mbzovrf jub unir eryngviryl yvggyr fperragvzr va gur svanyr.

[Lonespark]

Kitty!

[Mmy]

Visually a calico has largely white with the other two colours broken up distinctly. In a tortoiseshell all the colours are blended into one another without any clear patches.

A torbie is a tortoiseshell whose tabby patterns are visible all over the cat.

There is also some really cool genetic stuff about cat colouring that someone with better creds would be able to explain much better than I.'

Generally speaking tricolour cats are female although it is possible for one to be male -- just very unusual.

My vet swears that there are also dispositional difference between calicos and tortoiseshells -- I don't know if there is anything other than anecdotal evidence to back her up. She held that all tortoiseshells were, let us say, emotionally unbalanced to the point that they were known to become suddenly (and physically aggressively) angry for no known reason.

We loved our strange (round shaped) torty but she was like no other cat. Imagine a tasmanian devil crossed with a wolverine and you basically have her personality nailed.

[Ross]

Hey, speaking of Rot13, TBAT: I mailed a link to some javascript to add a rot13 decoder to the site. If you've not seen it yet, I would not be terribly surprised if it were mistaken for spam.

[Jarred]

My vet swears that there are also dispositional difference between calicos and tortoiseshells -- I don't know if there is anything other than anecdotal evidence to back her up. She held that all tortoiseshells were, let us say, emotionally unbalanced to the point that they were known to become suddenly (and physically aggressively) angry for no known reason.

I've heard that too, though I'm not sure I believe it. My own (also anecdotal, I admit) experience suggests that while torties may be prone to getting overstimulated (the most common reason for "sudden aggression with no known reason" according to my training when i volunteered at our local Humane Society), I haven't noticed any sudden fits of rage from the handful of torties I've been around.

[The Board Administration Team]

@Ross: I mailed a link to some javascript to add a rot13 decoder to the site.

Aha, caught it. Have emailed you back. Thank you.

[hapax]

People with bicolor eyes for example are chimeras.

Not necessarily. My son has one brown and one green eye, because he has a large freckle on the iris of his right eye.

[Ross]

I knew someone many years ago who had bicolored eyes. Not in the usual way, though: both eyes were blue at the top and green at the bottom, with a dark line across the middle of the iris separating the two. The line ran at a sligtly oblique angle, and you could see that it would be a continuous line from one eye to the other if you extended it out past the irises

[Lila]

Froborr and Jarred, there is an EXCELLENT book called "Cats Are Not Peas" which is a layman's explanation of genetics (including chimerism) written by a science journalist who set out to find out how on earth her calico cat could be male. I heartily recommend it.

[Brin (not Meir)]

>because he has a large freckle on the iris of his right eye.<

It's possible to have a freckle on your eye?

[Jarred]

@Lila: Thanks! Time to hit the iBook Store and Amazon!

[Jason]

@Jarred-

My cat will go from friendly and peaceful to attacking me in a matter of seconds. I have learned to anticipate when it happens by a particular facial expression and meow that comes just before the lunge. I either have to grab something soft like a pillow to hit him with or shove him away from me or get attacked.

I have no idea what brings those particular episodes on, but they have become less frequent the longer I've had him. I adopted him as an adult.

[Skyknight]

{was probably thinking more in terms of the adjective "chimeric"}

{commits seppuku}

[kittehonmylap]

Well, my tortie is very sweet to us but is not keen on other cats or unknown humans. She's never met a cat who wasn't in her own territory, but when we kept a friend's cat for 3 weeks she was still hissing at him if he came within 6 inches of her at the end of the foster. (It started with massive hissing whenever he was so much as in the room- he's a very friendly easygoing sort so he had absolutely no idea what to do with this extremely unfriendly cat who just kept yowling cat obscenities at him instead of playing with him.) I've never seen her randomly go all BSC, though. But her sister...well, her sister was a couple whiskers short of a full set. Serious separation anxiety, God help you if she ever got shut in a room alone. She'd also randomly stare at the corner and meow pitifully, which would usually result in her sister coming over and basically getting her out of the corner in a "honey, it's ok" sort of manner. As sad as it was when we lost her, I can't imagine what it would have been like if her sister had been the one who died and *she'd* been the one left...

[Jarred]

@Jason: My cat will go from friendly and peaceful to attacking me in a matter of seconds. I have learned to anticipate when it happens by a particular facial expression and meow that comes just before the lunge. I either have to grab something soft like a pillow to hit him with or shove him away from me or get attacked.

Are you petting him at the time it happens? If so, then the most likely explanation is overstimulation.

You could also jut have an agressively playful cat. Precious can be like that at times. It's especially common cats that never had playmates. As my supervisor at the shelter liked to say, some cats just need another cat to beat the crap out of them so they learned not to play so rough.

Another telltale sign you should always look for is a twitching or flopping tail. As for stopping him, something I found that works with Precious is to grab her and hug her tight to me. She'll break free and run off for a few minutes. Then she'll come back, looking to make peace.

Odd bit of trivia: The idea that a purring cat is a happy cat is actually a myth. Some cats will also purr in order to calm themselves down when they're distressed. It's one of the first lessons we learned about cat care when working at the shelter, where 90% of the time, an incident that resulted in anyone getting scratched or bit resulted in the cat being put down.* (100% if it hadn't been verifiably immunized yet.)

* The other 10% required a staff member to actually go to bat for the cat before the shelter administration. Said staffworker had to convince the administration that there were extenuating circumstances. Acceptable extenuating circumstances were generally limited to:
1) A temporary situation in which the cat was distressed beyond anyone's reasonable expectation for the cat to avoid lashing out.
2) The incident being the direct result of someone doing something incredibly stupid and careless.

[Jarred]

She's never met a cat who wasn't in her own territory, but when we kept a friend's cat for 3 weeks she was still hissing at him if he came within 6 inches of her at the end of the foster.

Cats are extremely territorial (moreso than dogs in some ways). There's actually a recommended procedure for introducing new cats to a home that already has feline members. The procedure takes about two weeks to work through, though I've never bothered with it. When I had multiple cats, they worked it out pretty quickly. Precious doesn't like it when she goes to stay with my parents while I travel, as my parents have four cats of their own, but they usually work it out eventually.

[redcrow]

>>>My cat will go from friendly and peaceful to attacking me in a matter of seconds.

Catzilla says hi.
(And he's not even a tortie.)
Guess I'm still your evil twin, Jason. Would you accept this virtual plate of fried potatoes with mushrooms as a sign of my sympaties to you situation?

[Froborr]

I cannot believe nobody has said this yet on either thread...

"The President's plane is missing! Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President's plane?"

[Ross]

@Froborr:
(http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com/images/q/baddudes.jpg)

Or pretend i said that 4 times in rapid succession.

[Jason]

@Jarred-

Are you petting him at the time it happens? If so, then the most likely explanation is overstimulation.

Usually I am either playing with him or petting him. Sometimes he just randomly starts doing it and that's usually when I'm turning all the lights off and getting ready to go to bed. He tore a hole in a pair of my pajama pants doing that one night.

@redcrow-

Guess I'm still your evil twin, Jason. Would you accept this virtual plate of fried potatoes with mushrooms as a sign of my sympaties to you situation?

That sounds delicious!

@Froborr-

"The President's plane is missing! Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President's plane?"

lol, never played the game, but I get the reference due to my love of those online game reviewers like Sean Baby and AVGN

[hapax]

It's possible to have a freckle on your eye?

Apparently. The brown spot covers most of the iris, but also a little bit of the white, and you can see a touch of green around the edge.

(I tell my son that this is extremely handy, since I would be able to identify his body in the morgue even if it had been mutated by radioactive waste or chomped on by an Evil Overlord's pet sharks. For some reason, he doesn't find that to be an endearing expression of maternal affection.)

[Froborr]

Wow, apologies for the multi-posting, folks, I had serious Internet issues.

Edited to add: the multiple-posts were removed at Froborr's request.

[Will Wildman]

I'm obviously fortunate to have a paranoid cat rather than a sporadically-homicidal one; he just make the occasional inexplicable frenzied sprint out of the room, followed by immediately walking back in to see what all the fuss is about.

The explanation I've heard of purring is that it means 'I am not a threat to you', which can situationally mean

'I am really happy and therefore not a threat'

'Sorry, sorry, it's cool, I'm good, I didn't mean to sever your vein'

'Don't eat me don't kill me I'm not a threat I SWEAR TO CEILINGCAT I'M NOT A THREAT'

Although my first cat, a prototypical orange tiger-tabby with a heart of purest coldest hatred for all life, kind of confounded that theory with his tendency to transition directly from purring to flaying and back to purring, and I gather this is not an uncommon cat behaviour in general. I guess maybe that would be an example of type 1 transitioning to type 2?

[Jarred]

@Froborr: I wondered what happened. Is everything better now?

[Froborr]

I'm unconvinced of a strong correlation between behavior and coloration. As long as we're throwing around anecdata, my mothers used to have a male ginger tabby who was built like a bear, purred like an outboard motor, and absolutely the sweetest, most gentle, lovingest cat EVAR.

I have heard, though I can't remember source so it may be bunk, that the reason indoor cats do that "randomly freak out at nothing and run around in terror" thing is basically claustrophobia.