People and Events

Cats have been given the boot from Cal State Long Beach.

“All unauthorized animals shall be removed to the humane society,” the university said in a recently issued bulletin, excluding research animals and guide dogs.

About two dozen tame felines call the university home, if a cat can truly ever be said to call any place home.

Durwood Mackey, a clerk who’s worked in the Fine Arts Building alongside a black feline named Art Kitty for 11 years, said: “Nearly every building has a cat . . . Sculpture, Ceramics, the one in Print-Making who’s moved over to Jewelry and Metal-Smithing. . . . “

Kathy Billings, a thesis reviewer for the university, feeds another 15 outdoor felines, “all vaccinated and neutered,” she pointed out. She said university officials told her that cats pose a “disease problem.”

Art Kitty and the others have until Nov. 28 to vamoose.

Billings fears that the university will follow through on its threats to trap the animals, unlike the nearby city of Seal Beach, which once passed a law forbidding cats from trespassing but never enforced it.

“The silly thing is they’ll trap only the tame ones,” Mackey said. “The wild cats will get away.”

A local caravan of celebrities attempting to register Democratic voters is set to descend on Westwood this weekend. What sure-fire gathering places have they picked? The long movie lines, of course.

After protests from self-proclaimed witches in Orange, Whittier and Claremont over the alleged symbolic hanging of one of their kind at Knott’s Berry Farm last Halloween, the broomstick-fliers can rest easy this year.

“We don’t have any witches in the program this year,” said Stuart Zanville, director of public relations for the park. But the deletion “had nothing to do with the protest,” he noted. “We change it every year.”

Zanville wondered why his witches were getting picked on anyway.

“What about the evil witch in Snow White?” he asked, referring to a star at a nearby Magic Kingdom. “How come no one says anything about her?”

Free-lance journalist John Wilson of Santa Monica received his May, 1978, issue of Outside magazine in the mail the other day. It has a nice piece on California Gov. Jerry Brown’s environmental philosophy.

The television show “Unsolved Mysteries” is going to try to solve the murder of Mickey Thompson, a race car driver turned promoter who was gunned down along with his wife in front of their Bradbury home last March.

The television episode, scheduled to air later in the year, has prompted the family to extend indefinitely the $260,000 reward being offered for information about the killers. “There has been a great deal of local publicity and attention focused on the case . . . but I’ve always felt that more national attention is needed,” said family spokeswoman Collene Thompson Campbell.

And, now, for the person interested in the really big picture: Warren Dennis of Pasadena is selling “Debtman,” a calendar-clock that can give a readout on the latest national debt figure.

“Right now, it’s $2,596,536,000,000, more or less,” spokeswoman Marilyn Diamond said Tuesday at 2:59 p.m., adding that it increases by about $400,000 a minute.

Purchase of “Debt Man” will increase your personal debt by $39.95.