Somehow, it's much harder to take an angry kitten seriously when he's standing on his head. This little guy really does seem to think he's got some serious cat-ninja mojo happening, here:
On the other hand, you have to admit, he's making it work for him; the larger cat wisely disengages after observing that kitten-ninja fighting pose, up close and personal.
Often when I tell people my cat is sick, and they ask what is wrong, I get a laugh. The fact of the matter is feline herpes otherwise known as Feline Viral Rhinotracheitis (FVR) is not funny at all. This disease has no cure. I love my little fluffy bundle of joy and hate to see him suffer at all when his virus is acting up. It can very costly and affects the upper respiratory system of the cat.
The most common symptoms are:
When my little guys virus acts up, his eye often will start to bother him, I will see him start pawing at his eye and within minutes it will swell almost to the point of being completely shut. It is horrible to see them throw themselves on the floor and at the point I always end up at the ER where they will dose him with pain meds to settle him. He often times has to wear a cone until we are sure he will not be pawing the eye and causing any damage. If the Dr puts drops in the eye you will be able to see where the ulcer appears. Most commonly my cat gets very sick if he experiences any anxiety. If I am gone for more then a day, if there are guests in the house, or the day we got carpeting. They don't like to be removed from their element. The virus can be caught through saliva, mucus, feces, direct contact, and through contact with food bowls, litter boxes or bedding. The herpes virus can also be transmitted in utero to the unborn kittens. My cat was adopted from our local humane society where I assume he got the virus from a carrier cat.
As far as treatment it usually turns out to be expensive in the end. You can use L-Lysine for prevention though I believe this didn't really help my little guy. When I see the first sign of an outbreak I usually get a warm compress and the dilation drops that were prescribed to us. It seems to cut it off before it gets into full blown ulceration.
The symptoms can be very serious, if you see your cat suffering please get them to a vet instead of assuming it is a common cold.
I have never owned a Cricut product. I am looking at purchasing either the Cricut Imagine or the Cricut Expression. I would like to have a machine so that we can make homemade cards. I thought we would all enjoy making homemae cards instead of spending a fortune on buying them. I am really not sure which one to buy. I do know they will be coming out with the Expression 2 in April. I've researched both machines and know the pros and cons of each. However, I still can't make a decision. I didn't know if any of you had any thoughts that might just help me. Thanks.
Step 1. Assemble your supplies. You will need a full sheet of plywood, four 1 x 1 pieces of lumber, wood screws, and carpet nails. You’ll also need an electrical drill, a skill saw or table saw, and some carpet to cover your cat tower. (We used both scrap wood and carpet.) This will account for enough supplies for one tower with a roof and two cubbies for cats; you can reduce the supplies for a smaller tower and likewise increase them for a larger tower. However, more than three cubbies isn’t recommended, unless you can attach it to the wall for safety (use L-brackets or something similar for this), since the cats could knock it over! Also, this is a square tower (see photo), not a traditional round one.
Step 2. Measure your plywood to the desired length and width of your tower. Mark this with a pencil. Our tower is 3 feet tall and 1.5 feet by 1.5 feet in width, which is just big enough for our largest cat, who is about 11 or 12 pounds. If you have a larger cat, you might want to increase the width.
Step 3. Cut your 1 x 1 boards to your height selected. Using your wood screws, tack the 1 x. 1 boards to the plywood.
Step 4. Measure about halfway down the front and back pieces of plywood. Make marks for these measurements, then cut the 1x1 pieces width-wise to put in a divider.
Step 5. Tack the 1x1 boards in place where you made your marks.
Step 6. Find a cicular disc, such as a paint can, to use as a template for your front entrance holes. Cut these holes out in the center of each section, creating two kitty doors. (You may wish to cut these a bit larger if you have a larger cat.)
Step 7. Assemble the rest of your pieces together.
Step 8. Sand all of the rough edges down so kitty doesn’t get splinters!
Step 9. Tack the carpet on by tacking it with carpet nails. Cut off any excess.
Now you have a complete kitty tower to keep your cats amused! You can also hang dangling toys from the “ceilings” to keep him entertained.
At last report, volunteers were attempting to organize a military helicopter to airlift supplies to the island's elderly population, and hopefully cat food as well.
Cat Island is, in a nutshell, an island which is devoted to cats. Cat Island's actual name is Tashirojima, and it is located just off Japan's western shore.
Although Cat Island used to have more people, its human population has dwindled to less than 100 people, most of whom are elderly. In the island's past, its residents raised silkworms and engaged in fishing by net. Mice are a big problem to silkworm ranchers, and so the island's cat population was encouraged, in order to keep the pests down. At the same time, the fishermen helped feed the cats, by tossing them some of their unwanted catch.
It became a bit of good luck to feed one of the island's cats. Fishermen (ever a superstitious lot, in any culture) began to look to the cats to predict the weather and fishing luck. The cats were allowed into the island's taverns, where they begged for scraps, and were fed by patrons.
As the cats' popularity grew, one fisherman accidentally killed an island cat with the rock weight from a fishing net that he was repairing. Guilt-stricken, the fisherman buried the cat's body and built a little shrine, which has since become a tourist destination of its own. Other shrines were built elsewhere on the island, which now has what Wikipedia drily refers to as "an unusually high number [of shrines to cats] compared to the other prefectures."
No dogs live on Cat Island, and dogs are essentially prohibited from visiting. However, human visitors are encouraged. Travel to Cat Island is via a ferry which is quite popular, especially during the summer months. Tourists come from all over Japan (and the world) to visit with Cat Island's feline inhabitants, take pictures, and distribute snacks. One of the island's most famous residents is Droopy-Eared Jack, who has been featured in several movies about Cat Island. Many of the island's visitors go on package tours devoted to "looking for Jack."
Japan's aging population has created a phenomenon called "terminal villages," towns where there are too few young people to perpetuate the town once the older generation departs. 83% of Cat Island's human residents have been classified as elderly, which means that Cat Island has officially been designated a "terminal village."
Even disregarding the earthquake and tsunami, Cat Island's future remains somewhat uncertain, for who will be left to feed the cats, once the island's elderly have passed away?
Photo credit: Flickr/rahen z
Patty-Cat, Patty-Cat
Bake a man!
Make him into sausage and fry him in a pan!Slap your buddy, smack your buddy
Roll him on the floor!
Put it on YouTube!
Then we'll play some more!
"Whaddaya mean, 'That's not how it goes?' That's definitely how it goes. Who the heck taught you your nursery rhymes, anyways?"
Felis sylvestris catus, the ancestor of all modern domestic cats, became vital in terms of protecting Egypt's grain stores early in Egypt's history. So important were these once wild animals, that they had their own deities to honor them. First, the goddess Mafdet, a lion-headed deity, was also associated with protection from and for the domestic cats; later Mafdet was supplanted by Bast or Bastet, who soon became assoicated not just with Egypt's cats, but with protection, fertility and motherhood. Cats, both in an effort to honor the goddess Bastet and to ensure that they too would join their people in the next life, were mummified with the same level of care as people, and placed in tombs.
Herodotus, the historian who visited Egypt in 450 B.C.E., reports that a city, Bubastis, was dedicated to the feline deity Bast, and that the city center was dominated by a vast temple dedicated to her worship. So sacred were cats, that Herodotus reports it was illegal to kill one. At various points in Egypt's history is has been illegal to export Egypt's cats. Over hundreds of years, the cat became Felis catus, the domestic cat.
The breed of domestic cat most closely associated with Egypt is the Egyptian Mau; a phonetic transcription of the Egyptian word miw, a word whose root means "sight." While these elegant cats with their slender bodies and wide-flared ears are not known to be descended from the ancient cats of Egypt's temples, they are certainly strikingly similar. The are a short-hair species of domestic cat, and the only domestic breed that is naturally spotted. In addition to their spots, and their long, lean muscular build, they have some species-specific traits. These include hind legs that are slightly longer than their front legs, giving the Mau a natural advantage in terms of a ground-covering and very fast stride, enhanced by the extra skin fold under their belly and hind quarters. This flap of skin, a trait which the Mau shares with the Cheetah, allows the Mau's hind legs to stretch even farther. The Mau are temperature-sensitive, and prefer warm climates. They are also exceedingly vocal.
As a known breed, the Egyptian Mau's history begins in 1953, when a Russian living in exile, Princess Natalie Troubetskay, became fascinated by the cat of the Egyptian Ambassador to Italy. She convinced the Ambassador to assist her in obtaining a number of additional cats from Egypt, and she began to breed them. They are now a registered breed, with prices in the $300.00 to $800.00 range.
align="right">Image Credit: Lil Shepherd
The odd spelling of LOLCat is not without standards of its own. There are in addition idioms and specific sub-motifs and themes. For instance, various permutations of "I'm in your base," (derived from the All Your Base meme) in LOLCat emerge as "I'm in ur X, Y-ing ur Zs." Other common motifs include "I can has Y?" and the ever useful "Z: No Want." Even the linguists have gotten involved. It's important to note that LOLCats do not speak leet or TxtSpeak; they have a dialect all its own, with rules. For instance, irregular English verbs form the past tense by the addition of "d" or "ed"; made becomes maded and ate becomes eated. In many circumstances, irregular verbs may form the future tense by adding -ing to the past tense form; eating it becomes eateding it.
I note that even the Bible has been translated into LOLCat, with the role of the divine played by Ceiling Cat (Ceiling Cat's opposite is the dreaded Basement Cat). As is the nature of all things LOLCat, the Bible is written from the perspective of a cat, to wit: there is concern about the availability of can openers, and much use of phrases like "Do not WANT," and references to "moar" and "stuffs."
Simon Tofield has gifted us with another Simon's Cat animation; this one is titled, exceedingly appropriately, "Sticky Tape." One of the things I love about these animations is that Simon understands that much of a feline's dignity is about not being caught behaving in a less than dignified manner. This animation captures that feline concept, perfectly.
Felis catus, also known as the domestic cat or housecat, is the most common variety of domestic cat in North America. This typically shorthaired feline should not be confused with either the American Shorthair or the British Shorthair; both these are registered breeds. The domestic shorthair can be found almost anywhere in the world, though local gene pools in particular geographies mean that over time and many generations, a particular body type and coloration will dominate the local Felis catus population in a particular area. The Domestic Shorthair cat is the typical "house cat," that is, a cat that has no specific breed. Nonetheless, recent research suggests that the genetic inheritance of all house cats descends from a handful of African Wildcats, or Felis silvestris lybica from the Near East, c. 8000 B. C.
Domestic cats, while they may be slightly smaller than their nearest wild relatives, still are excellent hunters, with night vision, amazing hearing, stalking, pouncing, and hiding skills, fabulous balance and agility, they are also amazing companions. They still like to hunt, mark their territories (or furntiture) sharpen their claws, and communicate with a startling variety of yowls, cries, purrs and even growls.
While all those cats you know by sight as specific breeds—the Siamese, the Persian, the Maine Coon . . . . what I'm writing about today is the non-pedigreed or non-purebred domestic cat, the house cat, generally divided into two categories, domestic short hair and domestic long hair. Cat breeding in Europe became popular in the 19th century, and breeders began to isolate specific traits associated with specific breeds. In Australia and parts of the UK these domestic non-purebred cats are sometimes called "moggies" (possibly derived from maggie, a term for a somewhat ancient cow in 18 and early 19th century England, applied to farm cats); the equivalent non-specific breed cats may be referred to as either house cats or alley cats in American, even if the cat is a pet, and not at all feral.
One of the most common coloration patterns of the house cat is the tabby; a typical tabby a striped or brindled coat of a gray or tawny color," often with green eyes. The stripes can be of various sorts; some of them are inclined towards large spots or blotches, others tend towards stripes or a mackerel pattern, and and some have distinct spots. Tabbies tend to have a distinctive striped pattern that resembles an "M" on their forehead, with green eyes being the most common.
Image Credit: Ben Aveling
