<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : Forget ID Tags: Now You Can Get Your Cat Scanned

In Marin County, the powers that be in Novato have come up with a novel idea to easily identify cats that get lost or injured: Inject microchips into the city’s estimated 20,000 felines.

The City Council adopted an ordinance that would require the licensing and sterilization of all outdoor cats. The preferred method of tagging the cats is the injection of a microchip under the skin at the ruff of the neck. But cat owners who dislike the high-tech approach can pay twice as much ($15 instead of $7) and get an old-fashioned collar and tags.

The rice-size, glass-encased microchip bears a 10-digit code and is good for thousands of years. It can be quickly read with a scanning device, much like the scanner used at grocery stores.

But some humans think it’s a risky idea. “If it’s OK to microchip cats, when are humans going to be microchipped?” protested cat lover Garth Page, a resident of nearby Mill Valley.

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The black bird returns: The Maltese Falcon--well, one of the two movie props used in the famous flick that went for $398,500 in an auction last December--is back in San Francisco for charity events this weekend.

The New York jeweler who won the falcon in the auction readily agreed to allow the prize to return to the town where the fat Kasper Guttman and the perfumed Joel Cairo battled Sam Spade for the falcon.

The return is such a big deal that the last surviving star of the 1941 movie, 93-year-old Elisa Cook Jr., is showing up too. Cook played the hapless tough guy Wilmer who never got the best of Humphrey Bogart’s Spade.

Among the events to benefit the San Francisco Police Activities League and the Fire Fighters Toy Program is an invitation-only gala tonight at John’s Grill, the downtown restaurant where Dashiell Hammett lunched while writing the book in 1929. On Saturday, folks can pay $5 to have their picture taken with the falcon.

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We want the beans! That’s what the customers want at a Sacramento-area restaurant, where the owners say business is up more than 40% since President Clinton ate a bowl of chili there in January while touring the floods. “People come from all over--Placerville, Citrus Heights, Auburn,” said Rich Kerns, manager of Archway Frostie, an unassuming takeout joint in Rio Linda.

One man drove 50 minutes from Auburn and arrived when the chili wasn’t ready, Kerns said. “He waited a whole hour until it was done,” he said.

After initially cashing in on the President’s visit--and promoting “Billy’s chili”--Kerns is ready for things to go back to normal. “I guess it was good for business,” he said of the presidential promotion. “But in a way it’s kind of cheesy, too.”

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Carnage on the Road

Carnage on the Road Californians logged more than 270 billion driving miles in 1994, a slight increase over the previous year. Although 4,212 people were killed in traffic accidents, also slightly up, the number of deaths per mile driven remained at an all-time low.

FATALITIES 1994 1993 Pct. Change Drivers/passengers 2,863 2,781 +2.9 Pedestrians 853 862 -1.0 Motorcyclists 291 303 -4.0 Bicyclists 121 133 -9.0 Commercial vehicle occupants 84 84 0.0 TOTAL 4,212 4,163 1.2 Fatalities involving alcohol 1,488 1,569 -5.2

Source: California Highway Patrol

Researched by NONA YATES / Los Angeles Times

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Kids say the darndest things: Pete Wilson’s budding presidential campaign may excite a lot of voters, but Laura Whiting’s fifth-grade class at Mountain View Elementary School in Claremont doesn’t think so. The kids want Wilson to reconsider, contending that he lied to California voters when he said he would serve out his four-year term if reelected last November.

Outraged, the kids wrote letters to Wilson. Almost all agreed with Danny McCormack, who wrote, “I think you would be a pretty bad President if you can’t even keep a simple promise of being a governor for your whole term. You might even lie in your campaign for President.”

Shogi Castel de Oro said, “I mean, sure, (being) President is a lot better than (being) governor, but you promised the voters that you would run your full term.” John Wells sternly added, “I am a future voter so you better watch what you do.”

But one classmate dissented. “You are a nice governor,” Michael Brage wrote. “I think you should be a President because you would make a good one. If you become a President, you should lower taxes or not have taxes. Also, give homeless people a lift. We need your help. Everyone needs your help.”

Sean Walsh, the governor’s press secretary, had this to say to Michael and his classmates: “Right on, Michael! We’re with you! To the rest of the kids, there are times when you’re playing a team sport, like baseball, when all of a sudden a position becomes open on the team. Other team members ask you to play. The fans ask you to play. Your family asks you to play. And you feel you can make a real contribution. So yes, he is running.”

EXIT LINE

“I had a lot of trouble figuring out what was going on the Legislature. From Eureka or Torrance, Sacramento might as well be Mars.”

--Assemblywoman and computer whiz Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey), reflecting on the bad old days before the Computer Age dawned in the state Capitol.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.