Perfection: our younger son, a philosophy major, insists there is no such thing. I disagree, because nature provided kittens.     True, kittens don’t stay kittens for as long as I’d like. Our house is too small to continually add more. So until we can retire to a cat ranch, my husband and I enjoy perpetual kittens as part of a five-county foster-home network. The payoff is twofold: along with contributing to an orphan’s bright future, we get the playtime fun a pet naturally inspires.

To combat shelter overpopulation and reduce the number of homeless animals euthanized, the Maryland General Assembly has passed the Animal Welfare-Spay/Neuter Fund-Establishment bill. Annual taxpayers savings of $8 to $9 million are projected.

You see him every time you drive to pick up Chinese. He’s lined up in the grocery store parking lot. You stare at him during rush hour. And now, you get to name him. He — or is it she? — is the blue heron on Maryland’s Treasure the Chesapeake licenses plates.     Who would have thought such a popular bird was nameless?     After 27 years, the bird is in identity as well as gender crisis.

Inspired this time of year by the earliest signs of spring to carry on their ancient species, shad don’t know they’re failing the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s survival test.          They’re just doing what comes naturally.    

Editor’s note     Three report cards come to us in the early months of the year, each asking us to consider the health of the Chesapeake Bay and where — if anywhere — all our work is getting us.     Each arrives at a different time, uses different criteria and grading systems and supports a different agenda. How to make sense of any — let alone all — of them? Here staff writer Ashley Brotherton offers a cheat-sheet on the basics.

Local cheering for a third nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs has seemed misplaced.     The economics of nuclear power are next to impossible these days with the federal government no longer able to provide loan guarantees and cheap natural gas the happening new energy source.     Then there’s Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster two years ago that rekindled safety concerns.

Stormwater doesn’t stop running, especially in a Chesapeake season Noah could appreciate.     Neither does money stop flowing. Thus Maryland’s Board of Public Works — governor Martin O’Malley, comptroller Peter Franchot and treasurer Nancy K. Kopp — still have money to spend. Last week, they spent $16 million of several continually refilling pools, including the Bay Restoration Fund and the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays Nonpoint Source Fund.

I can’t resist a kitten. For six years I’ve mothered orphan kittens for Patuxent Animal Welfare Society.     But it was the numbers I couldn’t help that made me an activist. Every year in Maryland, 45,000 dogs and cats are destroyed. Maryland ranks 39th on the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s state report card on animal-protection issues.

Attention lead-foot drivers: Annapolis is watching you.     The capital city is setting up speed cameras in 10 school zones. Drivers clocked going 12 mph over the speed limit from 8am to 6pm will be mailed a $40 fine. Tickets from the cameras don’t come with points and won’t be sent to insurance companies.

Charlie Stek wanted his son to experience nature, fishing and paddling rivers. With Maryland’s 10,000 miles of rivers and streams — crossed by 5,176 bridges — that ought to be easy.     Yet there was no safe way to get to the water.     To fish the Patuxent, Stek and his son Alex had to park on blind curves, jump guardrails and scamper down banks.