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2001-06-06 | 12:57 p.m.

Phone call with Frank. I tell him my Jane Goodall story. He tells me I should've asked her, and I say no, because everybody always talks about how cool NEW YORK is because the people there ignore celebrities. I like San Francisco better than New York, so I don't want to bother Jane Goodall and thereby lower San Francisco's (no doubt exemplary, and perhaps surpassing New York's, if only the media would sit up and take notice) celebrity non-harassment rating. Also, my most memorable impression of Jane Goodall comes from an eviscerating review Ruth wrote of Reason for Hope, Goodall's spiritual autobiography. With that coloring my opinion, I felt I couldn't speak to her. Not because I think I'm better than she is, but because I feel guilty about talking to her when I suspect she wouldn't talk to me if she could read my mind. Does that make sense? It's the same reason I don't like to set foot in churches. I try to save people the time and trouble of figuring out that they don't want me around.

Anyway, Frank. Frank launches into this spiel about how all the Leakey women were this and that and the other thing, and I try feebly to defend Dian Fosse, but the brunt of his disdain is reserved for Birute Galdikas, about whom I know precisely nothing. By judicious listening I gather that she is the orangutan one, who got thrown out of Indonesia by "good people" because she thought all the baby orangutans belonged to her. Then I mentioned that "cat hoarding" is a recognized mental disorder, and turns out he had read that, too, because of the woman in San Francisco, a realtor, who bought a big house up in Petaluma or Santa Rosa just for her cats. She started with two cats and let them inter-breed until the animal control people removed something like 400 cats from the house. Not counting the dead ones underfoot. Why would anybody want 400 incestuous mutant feral cats? Because she has the cat-hoarding disease. She told the newspaper, "I'm really a very rational person." What I find just as shocking is that she drove from San Francisco to Petaluma every day to feed the damn things. Not that she shouldn't have fed them; what I mean is, it's a mighty long drive.

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