The perfect calendar for cat lovers and peace activists

A friend just sent me a 2012 calendar titled "Cat Lovers Against the Bomb." It was originally produced in 1984, when the anti-nuclear movement was prominent. It is designed and published by a group called Nebraskans for Peace.

If you like cats (which I do: I have three) and favor serious efforts for peace in the world, you will love this calendar. Not only do you find the dates of significant wars and peace treaties, you learn when various peace advocates were born or when they won the Nobel Peace Prize. You can commemorate the birth or death of various human rights activists or leaders of the women's rights movement. (Carrie Chapman Catt is included, for obvious reasons!)

You learn that March 17 is not only St. Patrick's Day, but also the feast of St. Gertrude of Nivelles, patroness of cat lovers. Who knew?

But interspersed with these commemorations are notations on certain days that tell you that a cat in Scotland lived to be 43; another cat awakened and saved a family when the house caught fire; even when "Krazy Kat" debuted as a comic strip.

My favorite line, which is intended for the entire month of July, is this: "If there were to be a universal sound depicting peace, I would surely vote for the purr." That's from Barbara L. Diamond, and it would get my vote, too.

Now, if I could just convince my cats that they should live up to the message of this calendar!