I forgot to turn off the radio before I left my shack to go to work. My cats, Thoughts and Prayers, were locked in and had to listen all day to scary weather reports on NPR. No wonder they seemed spooked.

“It’s okay, you guys” I assured them. “The weather is getting to all of us.”

Freakish floods in the Hudson Valley and Vermont. Heat domes stretching across the South and Southwest, with highs in Phoenix of at least 110 degrees for 17 straight days and counting. Ocean temperatures that are “beyond extreme.” Endless wildfires in Canada. Here in the Philadelphia swamps, the usual killer humidity plus air quality alerts and constant storm warnings.

Recent online headlines are instructive. “Tuesday was world’s hottest day on record.” “Floods, heat, smoke: Climate change is accelerating.” And “Is it hot enough yet for politicians to take real action?“

The question was posed by environmentalist Bill McKibbon, who noted that most countries “remain dominated by the fossil-fuel industry,” even those that have endorsed caps on oil and gas emissions. He described how anti-pollution measures by Joe Biden in the United States and Justin Trudeau in Canada have been undermined by politicians and lobbyists who back dirty-energy companies.

My neighbor Swamp Rabbit walked in clutching a bottle of Wild Turkey as I was scooping Mariner’s Catch into the cat food bowls. He was in a devil’s advocate mood. I told him about McKibbon’s call for more worldwide rallies to fight polluters.

“I ain’t no world traveler,” my mangy friend said. “Why should I care that the Acropolis is closed on account of the heat?”

“Be serious,” I told him. “We live in a small world. Climate disasters in Southern Europe and Pakistan and Greenland affect us all. We’ve got to elect politicians who are enlightened enough to take action.”

“Blah blah,” he replied. “Most peeps in this country just wanna zone out in air-conditioned la-la land. The only thing gonna wake ’em up now is fire and floods, and even that might not work.”

The cats looked at him funny then bolted out the door and into the swamp. “Way to go,” I said. “You scared them away with your doom talk.”

“I ain’t surprised,” Swamp Rabbit replied. “Cats got more sense than humans.”

Footnote: “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” is from Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On album, released 52 years ago.