Fernando Alonso won the Grand Prix of Italy in a Ferrari last weekend and I am – sort of – happy about it. A couple of years ago, when he was driving for Renault, was the underdog, and was young and innocent; I would have been much happier. But Fernando has been caught cheating several times and he now seems to have feet of clay.

Yea, he is a superb driver, but as a human being…meh. And – maybe – that is what makes him such a successful driver. Certainly other athletes fall into the category, Berry Bonds come to mind.

I have always had heroes. People who I have admired for what they have done and – then – that admiration got carried over to who they were. When I was a teenager, I had a picture of Sterling Moss on my wall. My mother was afraid I was gay but it still makes sense to me.

But it does make me wonder about hero worship and role models and how much we are willing to forgive and overlook in those distant demigods. It seems to me that, once our admiration of their talents crosses over to devotion, we are willing to overlook alot. Right now, I have a commemorative medal of Ulysses Simpson Grant  1832-1885 on my desk – his real name was Hiram Ulysses Grant, by the way.

Grant is a man I greatly admire and he did some very stupid and mean spirited things I am willing to overlook. I have friends who hate Sarah Palin and justify that hate with the fact that she is a lier but are perfectly willing to overlook lying in Bill Clinton. 

I have no point to make here except that we hold on to our believes fiercely. We think those beliefs are products of our logic and reason but they aren't, they come from some deep and hidden recesses of our being.

Michele happened to be at a pet shop before our Mono trip where she saw a cat. What she was doing at the pet shop, I don't know – she says she was there to buy fish food – but, while there, she saw a cat that was up for adoption. Not being in the market for a cat, she just talked to it for a few minutes and left.

When we got back from our trip, the cat was still there. Maybe Michele had gone back for more fish food. The next week, she was still there and Michele started to get concerned that she would not be adopted. It turns out that the cat is a is only nine months old and is a mother. When she had her kittens, her owners – who must have been new owners, after all – dropped her off at a Feral Cat Feeding Center.

I am not sure that I even know what a Feral Cat Feeding Center is and I certainly don't know where one is. But it doesn't sound good. The cat had a micro chip so it was easy to track down the soon- to-be-ex owners who confirmed that they had named her Athena and now didn't want her. So, when Michele ran into her – at nine months – she had been adopted once, had kittens, had been abandoned, and now – then, really – lived in a cage.

You know where this is going. 

We are now the proud owners of Athena. Proud may not be the right word, and owners definitely isn't. When Michele first started talking about Athena – back when she was still a cat, before she was even the cat – I kept saying, Yea, but a cat would be a real pain in the ass. Now she is living in our home and Athena is pretty painless. Mostly because she is very shy and almost out of sight.

She spends most of her time under our bed coming out to look at us from across the room. When we call her name and make eye contact, she will come running across the room only to stop when realizes there is no cage wall between us. Today, I did manage to get her on top of the bed so I could take her picture. But, she was hyper-vigilant.

It will be an interesting journey.

I have never been a Princess Diana fetishist so I find the whole thing a little strange, OK, a lot strange. But – if you are a fetishist – here is some underwear you might want. The caption – in Chinese – says  Feel The Romance Of British Royalty and nothing, of course, says romance like the cello.