Calming the senior calico

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Ms. Kali is our senior calico.

She was adopted in September 2020 from a cat colony at the top of Aiea Heights, followed the next year by two others from the same place.

She is very sweet. She can also be difficult if, for example, you try to trim her claws, or do other things that violate her sense of privacy and independence. Which gets us to this story.

The last time we took Kali for a routine checkup by our favorite vet, Dr. Ann Sakamoto, Kali would not open her mouth so her teeth could be examined. She put up a very spirited and successful defense to keep prying hands at bay. She even defeated the dreaded towel burrito, somehow managing to get one or more paws into a position to do damage despite being wrapped in several layers of towel. After several minutes struggling to get her under control and finish the exam, Dr. Sakamoto cut it short and told us to put Kali back in her carrier.

Later, Dr. Sakamoto sent us home with a supply of small gabapentin pills with instructions to use them to experiment with drugging Kali to make her more cooperative. If it worked, we were to dope her up right before her next exam.

Gabapentin is a medication that can be used to help reduce fear, anxiety, and stress in cats, particularly in situations like veterinary visits. It is generally considered safe and effective when prescribed by a veterinarian. When administered before an appointment, gabapentin can help make travel and handling easier for both the cat and the owner. The effects of gabapentin can last for several hours.

Dr. Sakamoto suggested giving Kali 2-3 of the 50mg pills and then seeing if it calmed her down enough so that I could clip her claws, something she usually actively objects to.

This turned out to be more difficult than it sounded. While I could give Kali a pill, giving her a second or third pill proved to be, well, impossible. Once she knew what was coming, she deployed very, very effective defensive maneuvers, twisting different parts of her body in opposite directions while using all four paws to fend off human hands. So those pills have been sitting in the closet waiting for, I don’t really know, but waiting just in case.

Then I saw an advertisement for transdermal gabapentin, and remembered that years ago we rubbed a small bit of gabapentin cream on the inside of an ear of one of our cats for pain relief, much easier than giving him a pill.

So I emailed Dr. Sakamoto, and she sent a prescription to a compounding pharmacy across the island in Kailua that created just what we need.

They mailed the new compounded concoction back and it arrived yesterday, just in time for an afternoon experiment. I can report that the minimumm dose, a dab of about .1 mL, calmed her down but it wasn’t enough. The next experiment will be to apply that same dose in each ear, about the equivalent of two gabapentin pills. That should be sufficient to put her in a pliable mindset, and if it works I’ll get her an appointment for another vet adventure.

Another example of an AI hallucination

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This is an example of Google’s Gemini AI assistant fabricating a totally fictitious transcript of a recorded interview.

The transcript didn’t just make some mistakes. It had no relation to the original recorded interview. It was completely made up.

Here’s the story. I was interviewed via Zoom by Neal Milner for a Civil Beat project he is working on. Milner is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Hawaii after teaching for decades, and is now a regular columnist for Civil Beat.

He was at his new home in Portland, Oregon, while I was here at our house in Honolulu. I set up the Zoom call at his request, and he asked if I would record it and send a transcript so that he didn’t have to take notes. That sounded simple, and I immediately agreed. We ended up talking for about 90 minutes.

When our call was finished, Zoom made it simple to download a zipped copy of the recording. From there, I thought that preparing a transcript would be simple.

I was very, very wrong.
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Disgraced attorney could face trial on fraud, theft charges next month if plea deal not reached

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The trial of disgraced Honolulu attorney Robert Chapman is scheduled to take place the week of March 9, court records show.

Readers may recall that Chapman, the former managing partner in a major downtown law firm, surrendered his license in December 2022 to avoid the likelihood he would be disbarred by the Hawaii Supreme Court stemming from his alleged theft of assets belonging to clients or their estates.

He was then indicted last year on multiple counts of identity theft, forgery, and theft for allegedly plotting to steal an estimated $750,000 from the estate of a deceased Honolulu resident.

Chapman had been licensed to practice law in Hawaii since 1980. He has been free since his arrest last June after posting a $1 million bail bond via A-1 Bail Bonds, court records show.

Active plea negotiations were underway last year, but their current status is unknown.

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Miske’s half-brother awaits court decision on long shot appeal

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John Blaine Stancil, the younger half-brother of the late Michael J. Miske, Jr., is being held at Terminal Island, a low security federal prison in downtown Los Angeles, while awaiting a decision from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on a long shot challenge to his 20-year sentence for racketeering conspiracy.

Stancil was sentenced a year ago, February 11, 2025, to the maximum prison term allowed by law for his role in Miske’s racketeering organization over a period from at last 2012 through mid-2018. He is currently scheduled to be released on June 10, 2037.

Stancil accepted a last minute plea deal with prosecutors in January 2024, on the same day he was scheduled to go on trial with his brother. He was the last of 12 Miske codefendants to plead guilty.

In his plea agreement, Stancil admitted to being part of Miske’s racketeering organization and committing a variety of offenses violent offenses over several years. In exchange for Stancil’s guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to drop 12 additional counts, including murder-for-hire conspiracy, assault and attempted murder in aid of racketeering as well as conspiracy, carrying and using a firearm in a drug crime, conspiracy to use a chemical weapon, use of a chemical weapon, armed robbery, and drug trafficking.

Those offenses could have resulted in a sentence of life in prison, which Stancil avoided by accepting the plea deal.

But Idaho-based attorney, W. Miles Pope, who took over the case after trial and sentencing, filed the appeal on Stancil’s behalf on December 24, 2025, hopes it will lead to resentencing that will prove to be a “get out of jail early” card that gets his client out several years early.

Federal prosecutors responded by filing a motion to dismiss the appeal.
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