Jurassic Park, but cat
Okay, this is fun. But the shot-by-shot making of is even funner.
This guy’s whole channel is green-screening his cat, Lizzie, into movies. For the love of it, I guess. I can’t find any evidence he’s found a sponsor.
She’s a remarkably tolerant cat, particularly for tummy rubs (hint: it’s all about the Dreamies).
All the OwlKitty behind the scenes videos.
November 16, 2021 — 7:32 pm
Comments: 5
Miaou
Happy National Black Cat Day! Tempted to call it International Black Cat Day, because it also is in the US. Well, that makes two of us.
Charities in both places have told me that they have a hard time adopting out black cats, presumably because of superstition. I doubt that because I’ve repeatedly gone looking for a black cat to adopt with no luck.
The Cat Goddess is fickle and cruel, because of course she is.
Cats Protection (the first link) say it takes on average seven days longer to rehome a black or black-and-white cat. Well. I think the black-and-whites are because there are so gosh darn many of them. I don’t remember so many around when I was a kid. Also, they usually have messy paint jobs.
I wanted a jet black cat because they’re just, like, a cat silhouette with eyes, like this guy. Not specifically because of this guy, though the illustrator (Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen) was a famous drawer of cats and a favorite.
Dover (who else?) published a two volume set of Steinlen Cats that I loved growing up. I can’t find my copies since I moved.
Oh, but hey – look at that. I can buy a Kindle edition.
Weird choice for an art book.
October 27, 2021 — 6:08 pm
Comments: 9
Abandon hope all ye who enter here
That’s a still from a mildly amusing Youtube of cats interrupting meetings. You’ve probably seen it; it was making the rounds.
I post it because I don’t have any pictures of my moggies making absolute nuisances of themselves just now. I had to host a Zoom meeting of the managing board, and there’s me trying to look all professional and together, and there’s my cats waving their assholes in the camera.
They’re not usually so clingy. I know what was up. They were *pissed* that I was jabbering away at an inanimate object and ignoring them, the dual centers of the universe.
That’s nothing. You should’ve heard when I was late for Chicken Bedtime.
September 7, 2021 — 8:00 pm
Comments: 3
Of course he’s a ginger
That’s Beano the cat. His owner thought about taking him to the pet service, but decided against since he hates being in a box. So Beano decided to turn up on his own and stroll around the place absorbing blessings.
He’s been to church before. Also, the local pubs. And he’s got himself shut into an empty house, twice.
Yes, the pet service is a Church of England thing. I almost turned up with my favorite chicken one year, but I thought the other animals would probably stress her out too much.
Also, do you know how early morning service is?
August 5, 2021 — 6:35 pm
Comments: 7
Playing tree
When the cats want to come in, they jump up on the windowsill outside the livingroom and importune. When it’s the big cat, there’s an extra step: you open the door and go out and he runs up this elder tree here and puts on a little show. When he’s ready, he steps off this fence post into your arms.
We call this ‘playing tree’.
I’m convinced he’s reliving that awful 18 hours he was stuck high up in a tree as a kitten. I sat under the tree most of the night with him. If I stepped away for a moment, the horrible local brute of a farm cat came and circled the tree trying to get up to him.
It wasn’t the only time that cat came after my boy. He clearly had some kind of grudge. We think maybe they both came out of the same feral cat colony.
Anyway, early the next morning, a plumber turned up at the neighbors and, in the face of great personal danger, managed to crawl up high enough to grab kitty by the scruff and hand him down to me. And I think that’s the origin of playing tree.
Sorry for blurry. This is the only known image of a game of tree.
Good weekend, everyone!
July 16, 2021 — 7:25 pm
Comments: 6
Hot cross bun
It’s Summertime, the season when we wake to find bunny bits strewn across the livingroom floor. It’s 50 shades of disgusting.
We think we can tell which one did for ’em. The old boy, former feral, eats his buns and leaves only fragments. Welly, a young and pampered beast, completely loses interest when prey stops moving. Worst is when one or t’other brings them in alive and drops them on the floor to scamper about in panic.
This little peep was lucky. Uncle B managed to throw a box over him until the boys lost interest. We later released him to wriggle away in the undergrowth looking largely unhurt. Which isn’t to say they won’t find him again.
Interesting. They were definitely hunting together this time.
June 14, 2021 — 8:17 pm
Comments: 8
Important survey
Laser pointers: fun toy or cat torture device?
I got this with loyalty points because I buy so gosh darned much catfood from an online place. It’s much cheaper and so convenient, but I’m getting really tired of the mountains of corrugated cardboard I have to dispose of. Allll the junk we order.
Training tool. Training cats to do what, exactly? Run psychotically around the house screaming in frustration and slamming into things? Mission accomplished.
That’s the image the laser projects, by the way. That little fish with “Training Toy” for a body. In blue.
It’s Friday! w00t!
April 30, 2021 — 7:32 pm
Comments: 10
Happy Good Friday!
I got nothing today, so have a snapshot of the boys. This was Tuesday, though. Today it was horrible and gray.
Good weekend, everyone!
April 2, 2021 — 7:36 pm
Comments: 9
The shame
Larry the Number 10 cat has been put on a diet. Visitors have been slipping him too many treats. He is fourteen, an age when gentlemen cats may incline to podge, and has been in office for a decade.
His official title is Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, which started as a joke title used by journalists but was made official for Larry in 2011. He is a civil servant. He once had a scrap with Palmerston, the Chief Mouser of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, during which Larry lost his collar and Palmerston got a ripped ear. The latter has since retired to the country.
You’d probably need an FOIA to find out how many British government departments have an official cat.
Larry’s predecessor was Freya (whose tenure overlapped Larry’s) and before her Sybil (named after Sybil Fawlty).
Then ensued a ten year gap when Downing Street was catless on account of that evil hag Cherie Blair doing away with Humphrey.
Before Humphrey came Wilberforce (for whom Margaret Thatcher once bought “a tin of sardines in a Moscow supermarket”), Peta (a Manx cat whose real name was Manninagh KateDhu), Peter III and Peter II.
Nelson has no Wikipedia page, but he was the Chief Mouser of WWII and Churchill’s own cat whose tenure overlapped his predecessor Munich Mouser, whose tenure overlapped Peter I (they were deadly rivals). Churchill nicknamed the Munich Mouser after the Munich Agreement between Chamberlain and Hitler. What Chamberlain called him is not recorded.
And finally, Rufus of England (AKA “Treasury Bill”) who also doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry, but is the earliest Downing Street Cat on record (served 1924 to 1930). He had an allowance of a penny a day.
Budgetary records, anyway. There are reports of cats in government back to Henry VIII, when Lord Chancellor Cardinal Wolsey brought his cat to work with him.
The Downing Street Cat gets lots of press here because journalists are stuck outside #10 for long, boring stretches of time and hey look, a cat.
You can follow Larry on Twitter.
March 10, 2021 — 7:40 pm
Comments: 8
And speaking of calico…
Been meaning to look up why calico cats are always female. Here’s the skinny: calicos are usually white, orange and black (or tabby or gray or…whatevs). About 70% white on average – that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I thought it was interesting.
The X chromosome carries the gene for either ginger or black (or a variety of non-white colors). One color per X chromosome. So only XX (that is, female) beasts can have both ginger and black.
Except those poor little bastards with Klinefelter syndrome. They have XXY, XXXY or even XXXXY chromosomes. I don’t think it creates much of a problem in cats, but it can produce the occasional a male calico.
The gene for white isn’t on a sex chromosome, but elsewhere in the genome, so any old cat can carry it.
“But wait, Stoaty, you magnificent beast!” I hear you say, “most gingers are male. How that be?”
Male gingers carry the ginger gene on their one X chromosome. Female gingers have to have the ginger gene on both X chromosomes. That makes the ratio is about 3 to 1 male to female, and I believe ginger girls must have ginger daddies.
I think ginger and black without the white is how you get a tortie, but I’ve about come to the end of my genetic education.
If you ever yearn to feel stupid and slow, try looking into the genetics of chicken colors. Here’s a look at the basics.
January 27, 2021 — 7:38 pm
Comments: 10