AAAaaarrrggghhh!! You have caused me to rend my garment!! Somehow we are to believe that an account you publish in 2006, of an e-mail you claim to have written to yourself in 2005("Wish cat would go away - it's making me think quake"), is 1) a PREdiction and not a POSTdiction, and 2)specified even so much as one of the accepted prediction parameters?

I assume you meant to write (above) "The _earthquake_ was also covered in newspapers and magazines," rather than "The _hit_ was also covered . . ." Or do those publications have access to your private e-mails?

Even if we accept that you successfully predicted this quake, without access to ALL of the cases where you've noted odd animal behaviors and made some private or public comment on them, along with a list of quakes large enough and near enough in time and space to have any likelihood of being connected to the behavior, this case is meaningless.

I assume you went back and closely checked the seismicity maps for the period when Kerouac's behavior was actually occurring - in order to rule out any microquake having occurred to account for the behavior. I would be rather surprised if there had been none. See the link below to see just how seismically active your area is. If Kerouac was sensing a quake that had already occurred, even if it was below the size threshold detectable to you, then no predictive power has been demonstrated.

As animals are virtually never killed in earthquakes, why would they evolve a behavior that has no survival value?

(occasional disclaimer: I am not a scientist)
Michael F. Williams
Arroyo Grande, CA USA