Guard Cat

Radar, the kitten, is proving herself to be quite the guardian around my apartment.

For her size, she's surprisingly ferocious -- thus far, she has fought and defeated:

• the Shoelace Snake
• the Foot of Death
• the Box Monster
• entire swarms of Kibbles
• the Blinky Ball of Doom
• the Plastic Bag from Hell
• the dreaded Purple Stuffed Mouse
• numerous Bed Mice (the 'mice' that run around under the covers), and
• the Poisonous Plastic Bug

Elf has gotten used to having Radar around, and is pretty tolerant of the little fuzzball -- except when Radar gets too rambunctious, and starts trying to include Elf in playtime.

Charity telemarketing

In the last few days, I've received several calls from assorted charitable organizations seeking donations.

The thing is, each and every one of them has started out with the person on the other end asking for someone other than me ("Marsha", "John", etc).

I'm wondering: is this simply a case of several telemarketers individually trying to recover from an error (mis-dialed or erroneous number), or an example of a new technique in telemarketing -- an attempt to somehow get past most people's initial negative reaction to being solicited for money?

Inquiring minds want to know...