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OPINIONOPINION

Mountain View News Saturday, April 19, 2025

RICH JOHNSON

CATS (FELIS CATUS) AND 

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

SALES

Patricia Colonello

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CONTRIBUTORS

Lori A. Harris

Michele Kidd

Stuart Tolchin 

Harvey Hyde

Audrey Swanson

Meghan Malooley

Mary Lou Caldwell

Kevin McGuire

Chris Leclerc

Dinah Chong Watkins

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

Lori Ann Harris

Rev. James Snyder

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Jeff Brown

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta Shamblee

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STUART TOLCHIN

PUT THE LIGHTS ON


HOW ONE SPECIES APPEARS 

TO THE OTHER

I have a confession to make. In a household consisting of two humans, 
my daughter and I jockey for 3rd and 4th in order of power, 
influence and importance. Olivia, my daughter, in addition to being 
50% of the human population of this Johnson nuclear family, has a 
solid lock on 3rd place in the pecking order. I have a solid lock on 4th 
place aka last place.

First and second place are occupied by our two cats, Mabel and Gizmo. Gizmo is a boy 
cat and Mabel is a girl cat. So, the pecking order of the Johnson clan is as follows:

1. Mabel 2. Gizmo 3. Olivia 4. Rich

Mabel is most definitely in charge. Gizmo, on the other hand, is actually what one 
might describe as living “on the spectrum”. He is not all there. No less loveable. Maybe 
more loveable. And Gizmo truly carries the Johnson gene as he has never met a meal 
he didn’t love. His favorite meal? More! He’s not overweight but he is what we might 
call “sturdy”. Mabel, on the other hand, could be a runway model. She’s sleek, slick, 
snazzy and sassy…and definitely in charge.

I can say, definitively, cats are smarter than dogs. If you question my assertion try getting 
eight cats to pull a sled through snow.

So, what do you call a group of cats? Depends. If it’s a group of adult cats you refer 
to them as a “pounce”. Kittens would be called a “kindle”. A group of cats is called a 
“clowder”. 

Have you ever wondered whether cats are right or left handed…errr pawed? Female 
cats are typically right-pawed and male cats are left pawed. Cats have 24 more bones 
in their body than we do. We have 206 and cats have 230. (I wouldn’t try to count as it 
angers the cats.)

Did you know cats can move their ears in all directions? Twice as much mobility as 
dogs. If a cat is happy and relaxed, they often expose their bellies to show trust. It’s 
known as the “belly flop” behavior.

Cat rubbing up against you? Not just showing affection. They’re marking their territory 
as well. You belong to them. If a cat headbutts you it’s a good thing. It’s called 
bunting and is them showing you affection. Now some quotes to help make your 
shared existence with cats easier.

“They say nature abhors a vacuum, but not as much as a cat does.”

Mark Twain once said, “If you hold a cat by the tail, you learn things you cannot learn 
any other way”.

Comedian Jeff Foxworthy:, “Watching a baby being born is like watching a wet Saint 
Bernard squeeze through a cat door. 

If you’ve never had a cat and you are considering inviting one into your family, you 
should know one unassailable truth: Nobody owns a cat. It’s the other way around.

Literary proof that cats are brilliant and arrogant? Stop by the local bookstore, Fables 
& Fancies in downtown Sierra Madre and pick up the little gift book entitled. “I Could 
Pee On This”. The title alone adequately describes the definitive cat attitude. Or as I 
describe it, the “cattitude”. I have already purchased 4 or 5 from Fables & Fancies. An 
excellent gift.

I also want to remind you our wonderful Mediterranean cuisine restaurant is in its 
last 2 weeks of being open for dining. There is a bit of a silver lining to this shift in 
our universe. Corfu owner Vic Satamian is going to continue in the business focusing 
on catering. Mediterranean cuisine is great for your business or family catered events 
as not only is the food very flavorful and appetizing, it also is perfect whether you 
serve it buffet style or family style. Contact Vic at (626) 372-2681. His email address is 
tasev@sbcglobal.net.

Finally, Happy Easter! He is risen. As many of you may know, I am a man of faith…
more and less. The “more and less” refers to the reality that all of our lives are lived 
being often “good”, sometimes “bad”, often “dumb”. We can’t avoid it. A typical day in 
the life is 3 steps forward, 2 steps back, 4 steps forward, 3 steps back, stumble, get back 
up and do it all over again. We work hard to make sure the forward steps outpace that 
backward steps…eventually.

By the way, the Jesus I believe in is very well represented in the television series “The 
Chosen”. You can watch it for free on several platforms. Check it out. I gotta go now, I 
feel a stumbling coming on. Gotta brace myself

Did you ever stop to think how inept and crazy we humans 
must seem when looked at from above? Think 
about the birds. Birds manage to get around by themselves. 
They find food, build their own homes (we call 
them nests), find mates and raise and feed and teach 
important skills to their newly hatched progeny. A few 
years ago, I was fortunate to observe a nest being built right against the 
wall beneath a ledge right outside my bedroom window.

The builders were doves and what I noticed at first was this very strict 
division of labor. One of the doves, I assume it was the male, would go 
off and about and bring in nest material which he found somewhere and 
constructed to what seemed to me a completely adequate-looking nest. 
It may have looked that way to me, but it certainly did not look that way 
to the other dove. The non-building bird that I have labelled the female, 
before my very eyes, flew to the newly constructed nest, took one look, 
and proceeded to tear it apart with her beak. I imagined her saying to 
her mate “you call this a nest” as she ripped it apart. Soon a new nest 
was constructed with both birds gathering materials and, I believe, participating 
in the construction. Thereafter, one of the birds sat in the nest 
for quite a while and soon, believe it or not, little hatchlings or whatever 
one calls them were visible in the nest.

I now observed both birds flying back and forth bringing food and placing 
it into the mouths of their young. From my window within the nest, 
I observed the adult bird doing more than feeding. I imagined she was 
involved in teaching her little ones what was necessary to fly so that they 
could when the time came venture out of the nest.

I saw no little birds leave the nest until one morning when a neighbor’s 
cat climbed along the balcony and jumped into the nest. An extraordinary 
moment occurred—all three of the little birds emerged from the 
nest and shakily flew off. How they knew where they were going, I don’t 
know but can only hope they could figure it out on their own. I like to 
think that the Mom and Pop birds would show up and act as guides and 
instructors.

I tell this story of my bird watching to contrast what we humans must 
look like to birds. First the birds must notice that humans have the incredible 
advantage to nourish their young with food from their own 
bodies. Amazing isn’t it. Furthermore, human mothers do not have 
to stay stationed in their nest keeping their eggs warm until hatching 
Humans and mammal mothers can walk around freely with the infants 
growing inside their bodies until it just about time to give birth. Maybe 
these advantages turn out to be disadvantages. The birds need only be 
concerned with finding food, building nests, initially caring for their 
young. They must be aware of climate conditions and food sources and 
potential predators, and they must live peaceably among themselves. 
{Remember they are Doves) Humans have all sorts of time to do other 
thing, but most human beings today spend little time learning to care for 
themselves. We have created a strange system where most of us rely on 
others to meet our basic needs. Only a very small percentage of us grow 
our own food, build our own houses, even teach our own children. We 
distract ourselves with diversions and addictions that prevent us from 
even taking care of our kids and we spend a lot of time fighting or even 
killing one another. We do this not in competition for food, it seems to 
me, but just for the strange pleasure of competition with no other goal 
than to win and not be a Loser. {Are you thinking about Mr. Trump}

 

Many educated persons believe we humans are currently making the 
planet uninhabitable for beings such as us leading to eventual, but not 
all that distant, extinction. That’s probably also how things look to the 
doves who remain fully occupied just taking care of themselves, building 
their nests, and nurturingf their kids. Too bad we have not done the 
same!! 


HOWARD Hays As I See It


“there is not discretion, even in 
immigration law, for the government 
to violate the Constitution.” 
– Jessie Rossman, attorney for 
Rumeysa Ozturk

Last count, 189 court cases have 
been filed against the Trump administration - all 
but four still in litigation. That’s two for every 
day Donald Trump has been in office. Maybe we 
haven’t gotten to that “constitutional crisis” stage 
yet, but it’s like when we talk about a “recession” – 
though it hasn’t been declared, that doesn’t mean 
we’re not already in one.

There’s withholding grants from colleges that don’t 
curtail freedom of speech as Trump demands 
(cheers to Harvard for resisting); attacks on media, 
Trump calling for “maximum fines and punishment” 
for those not toeing the line; assertion of 
control over congressionally-mandated programs, 
agencies, funding, tariffs and trade; and the Justice 
Department targeting lawyers Trump doesn’t like. 
But now the words “constitutional crisis” have 
come from a federal judge at hearing.

Rumeysa Ozturk was pursuing her doctorate at 
Tufts University. Walking near campus, she was 
swarmed by a half-dozen masked, plainclothes 
officers and taken away - from Massachusetts to 
New Hampshire to Vermont, then to an ICE detention 
facility in Louisiana. She’d co-authored an 
op-ed in the school’s newspaper a year before, protesting 
Israel’s war on Gaza. 

At hearing in Vermont, Ozturk’s lawyer asked that 
his client be returned to be present at hearing. The 
U.S. Attorney argued the matter belonged with 
an immigration judge, instead – an appointee of 
Trump’s attorney general rather than a member 
of the federal judiciary. Judge William Sessions 
made an observation: That if he were to rule in 
favor of Ozturk but the government said they’d do 
what they wanted anyway, “then we’re in a constitutional 
crisis”.

Judge Sessions is also handling the case of Mohsen 
Mahdawi, a Palestinian who grew up in a West 
Bank refugee camp who’s been a lawful permanent 
resident for ten years. At an immigration office 
to begin final steps towards citizenship, he was led 
away in handcuffs and is now in detention. 

Mahmoud Khalil, married to a U.S. citizen, is another 
lawful resident who was arrested and detained. 
He’s since been transferred to Louisiana, 
where an immigration judge has approved his deportation. 
That ruling is being appealed.

Both Khalil and Mahdawi are Columbia University 
students who, in speaking 
out against the war 
on Gaza, have been accused 
of supporting terrorists, 
Hamas and fueling 
antisemitism - while 
the State Department 
admits it has no evidence 
to support any of those 
accusations. As Mahdawi 
told CBS, “The fight 
for freedom of Palestine 
and the fight against antisemitism 
go hand in 
hand because injustice 
anywhere is a threat to 
justice everywhere.”

For Rumeysa Ozturk, 
she’s gotten support from 
a pro-Israel group at Tufts 
along with 27 American 
Jewish groups who filed a 
brief on her behalf, arguing 
that the government 
“appears to be exploiting 
Jewish Americans’ legitimate 
concerns about antisemitism 
as pretext for undermining core pillars 
of American democracy, the rule of law, and the 
fundamental rights of free speech and academic 
debate on which this nation was built.”

In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, it’s not a matter 
of First Amendment free speech rights but total 
denial of Fifth Amendment “due process” and 
Eighth Amendment “cruel and unusual punishments” 
protections.

Abrego Garcia escaped El Salvador at sixteen, he 
and his family the target of gangs. Having been 
granted “protective status”, he got married, raising 
three disabled kids, working as a sheet metal 
apprentice and checking in regularly with immigration. 
He was arrested visiting an Ikea outside 
Baltimore with his son. 

The Administration admits it sent Abrego Garcia 
to El Salvador’s CECOT prison (sunlight, visitors 
and release dates all nonexistent) by mistake. District 
Judge Paula Xinis ordered he be returned - 
"As Defendants acknowledge, they had no legal 
authority to arrest him, no justification to detain 
him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador - 
let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous 
prisons in the Western Hemisphere." 

The Supreme Court affirmed that order 9-0, 
though rejecting the deadline set for Abrego Garcia’s 
return and striking the word “effectuate”, leaving 
it just that the government must “facilitate” 
that return.

The White House called this a “victory” – suggesting 
“facilitate” meant that if El Salvador dropped 
Abrego Garcia off at our border, we’d pick him up. 
But they insisted that as a matter of foreign relations, 
the Court had no jurisdiction, anyway. 

When Trump met with El Salvador’s President 
Bukele in the Oval Office, they treated it as a joke 
– they’d gotten away with something and nobody, 
even the Supreme Court, could do anything about 
it. Asked whether he’d release Abrego Garcia, 
Bukele called the question “preposterous”. Trump 
wouldn’t answer when asked if he’d requested 
Bukele release Abrego Garcia – but insulted the 
reporter asking the question. President Trump 
then mused about sending American citizens to 
prisons in El Salvador. Our nation’s top leaders in 
the room, sworn to uphold our Constitution, got 
all giggly over that.

Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Mahmoud 
Khalil, Kilmar Abrego Garcia and, according to 
Bloomberg, 90% of those we sent to prison in El 
Salvador have no criminal records.

As to whether we’re now in a recession, I think it 
began once Trump made clear that he’s clueless 
about coherent economic policy. As for a constitutional 
crisis, we’ve been in one since last January 
20.

Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com