The Kittehlympics

Like most of the rest of the world, John and I have been watching a lot of the Olympic Games on television this past week. Spurred on by the noise and rapid movements coming from the TV, our cats decided to hold their own Kittehlympics one night.

Events consisted of full contact martial arts, the down-the-hall sprint, the around-the-kitchen-and-den race, the high dive (getting up on the back of the sofa and leaping upward before landing on the opponent cat), hurdles (jumping over every piece of furniture in the room), and cat toy soccer. I’m not sure who won, but it wasn’t the furniture.

During the 2010 Winter Olympics, Truffle was a mere spectator.

Watching the Olympics this year, I notice that the USA is not the only melting pot nation, if it ever was. There is a Dutch gymnast named Marcel Nguyen. Emili Sandé, the singer who sang Abide with Me during a choreographed memorial segment of the opening ceremonies, is Zambian-British. There are others, those are the two whose names I remember off-hand. 

This morning I read an article on Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee who is running for South Africa in the Olympics. There are still people arguing that his artificial legs give him an advantage in competition. I suspect if you could analyze the genetics and body mechanics of all the athletes participating in the games, you’d find they all had some kind of advantage over us mere mortals. (Michael Phelps, the swimmer, for example has long arms.) After all, isn’t that the reason you have a competition to begin with, to find out who can do the best with what they’ve got?  Whatever bio-mechanical advantage Pistorius might have over people who were merely born with naturally long legs and short torsos, he still needs to train and practice. He still needs to learn race strategy. He still needs to show up.