weather – Pain In The Bud

A big chunk of ‘Merica has been sweltering this week, and New York has been no exception.

Tuesday was supposed to be the most brutal of the brief heat wave, but Wednesday felt the most oppressive to me, like walking through a hot soup and having no choice but to “drink” it until you can escape to the air conditioned indoors again.

The temperature was in the high 90s with a heat index of 104 thanks to the humidity. That’s the real killer: while I don’t envy parts of the southwest that see temperatures of 100+ more frequently, summers here are marked by disgustingly sweaty weather. Humidity reached 99 percent on June 2, and this week we’ve had spikes of 80 percent and higher.

As bad as it is for us, it’s worse for our furry little pals. For them it’s like wearing a jacket you can’t take off.

Poor Buddy! Is it too much to ask to have a human who can control the weather?

The Budster has been shedding like crazy the past few weeks, and I’ve been brushing him to help him get rid of that excess fur — and prevent it from “decorating” the place.

On Tuesday I decided to open the door to the balcony, mostly to see how he’d react. He loves the balcony, which offers cat TV, the opportunity to soak up the sun and take in new scents and sounds.

But with the sweltering temperature, Buddy approached the door to his beloved balcony with caution. He stepped outside, paused for a second or two, gave me a disgusted look, then turned right back around and padded inside, where he recovered from his ordeal by lounging.

Life’s tough for a cat.

Buddy in his heroic Mega-Buddy (Megaru Badi) form, in the style of Bikkuriman.

The little dude may be following Marjorie Taylor Greene on Twitter, because the look he gave me strongly suggests he thinks I can control the weather.

“It’s unacceptably brutal out there!” I imagine he’s thinking. “Fix it, human! Do I have to verbalize everything, or can you be a proper servant and anticipate my needs ahead of time?”

Of course we’re talking about a cat who refuses to set paw outside unless it’s a balmy 65 degree minimum, preferably between 73.5 and 76 degrees. No rain, no cold, definitely no snow, and no excessive heat!

Thankfully the heat broke, and today we’re forecast for a balmy 75. Cue the Sir David Attenborough voice: “But there’s a problem! A tomato plant has appeared on the balcony, and even though Buddy’s a meowscular tiger who shows no fear*, tomatoes and their vines are poisonous to him.

On the off chance that we’ve got some readers who don’t have cats, would anyone like a tomato plant?

* Buddy exhibits no fear except when it comes to rustling paper bags,vacuums, Swiffers, brooms, music intended for cats, sudden movements, floppy fish toys, loud vehicles including but not limited to trucks, outdoor animals who make scary noises, and certain kinds of cheese. But other than that, he’s totally fearless.

A family in Mission Viejo, Calif., heard a series of loud crashes at their back door, then reviewed their doorbell camera footage to find a determined coyote had been trying to attack their cat.

The footage shows the coyote repeatedly throwing itself at the screen door, which might have buckled if there hadn’t been a baby gate reinforcing it.

“We ended up putting a baby gate up to keep the cats inside,” homeowner Cindy Stalnaker told KABC. “That ended up being what prevented the coyote from getting inside the house because that’s what he was banging into repeatedly.”

Coyotes weigh about 30 to 35 pounds and will attack potential prey smaller than they are, which includes pets as well as young children.

The canids aren’t usually keen on approaching human homes, but in many places they’ve run out of room to roam as towns and cities clear more wild land for new developments. Less habitat means less prey, which can also lead the animals to scavenge and hunt on the fringes of residential and urban neighborhoods.

Stalnaker said she was grateful the baby gate held, but she’s looking into a more stable and permanent solution to keep her cats safe from coyotes.

What if air conditioning isn’t enough?

Human activity isn’t just driving wild animals to extinction, it’s killing them off with temperature extremes, and a Tuesday story from The Guardian provides a bleak look at how our present situation threatens human life as well: Buildings in most US cities aren’t built to mitigate excess heat, air conditioners weren’t designed to keep on chugging indefinitely with temperatures around 100 degrees, and power grids can’t keep up with the demand when millions of AC units are drawing power simultaneously.

At the same time, summers keep getting hotter and there’s no reprieve in sight.

Kids playing in water from a fire hydrant — Legal or not, New Yorkers turn to fire hydrants to get relief during heat waves. Credit: NYC Office of Emergency Management

While the heat has major ramifications for animals and sea life, it’s also directly endangering human life now:

“Some experts have begun to warn of the looming threat of a “Heat Katrina” – a mass-casualty heat event. A study published last year that modeled heatwave-related blackouts in different cities showed that a two-day blackout in Phoenix could lead to the deaths of more than 12,000 people.”

An architectural engineer tells the newspaper that temperatures have spiked so much in recent summers that cooling “systems that we sold 10 years ago are not able to keep up with the weather we have.”

The result for people in America’s hottest cities is that even AC doesn’t provide relief.

In the meantime we’re likely to see more headlines about rolling blackouts, punishing energy bills and people dying in their homes, scientists say. Fusion power and significant leaps in battery technology can’t come soon enough.