Hero saves drowning cat and GRRM on the Red Wedding

Again, no medieval anniversaries that I want to commemorate. So I am ranging further afield. There was an awful story on the news this week about a sociopath who injected two horses with gasoline; one of them died as a result, and the other one became very ill, but is expected to recover. So I decided my fellow animal lovers needed an antidote to that sort of sick, toxic cruelty. Here is a link to a story about a jogger who saw a cat carrier deliberately tossed into a creek, weighted down, with the cat still inside. This dear man did not even hesitate, at once plunged into the water and rescued the drowning cat. His heroics really resonated with me because I’d had Justin de Quincy do something similar in my first mystery, The Queen’s Man, where he was able to rescue a dog that had been thrown into the River Fleet.
http://www.care2.com/causes/jogger-ru...
And here is a very interesting interview from last year with George RR Martin about how and why he wrote his infamous Red Wedding scene, which contains some revealing insights about how he approaches his craft. He mentions an actual massacre in Scotland as one of his sources of inspiration, but a similar incident occurred in 12th century Wales, too, orchestrated by the notorious William de Braose, John’s boon companion until they had their fatal falling-out, and the grandfather of Joanna’s lover in Here Be Dragons.
http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/06/02/gam...