My apologies for the non-substantive posts this morning. Just as I started to put things together for today, Furry Murray decided it was time for a rousing game of fetch with his favorite twist-tie. He’s catching his breath right now, so I’m going to try to squeeze in a couple more.
Furry Murray has been living with us for just about five weeks now and has ensconced himself firmly into all of our hearts. He’s a complete snugglebunny and absolutely loves to cuddle up with me when he is not kicking Harry’s ass or playing fetch with twist-ties. I’ve never had a cat who was so willing to let people pick him up and hold him; he goes absolutely boneless, but not in that passive-aggressive “I don’t want you to touch me” way that some cats have. Charlotte manhandles (kidhandles?) him like he was Nappy the Teddy Bear, and he just lets her do it, although he won’t seek her out for a cuddle on his own. He’s so good about being handled and has such a laid-back temperament that I’ve half-seriously given thought to making him a show cat. Most cat shows have a division for housecats, and that demeanor is exactly the sort that a cat needs to put up with being handled by unfamiliar judges, plus he’s a very pretty cat. He’s almost old enough to show as a kitten (that link says 4.5-5 months). I just don’t know if *I’m* up to the commitment.
Every once in a while, through no fault of his own, Murray will do something that reminds me of Maynard. Though Murray’s very fluffy, he’s about the same shade of gray as Maynard, and it’s easy to see him quickly and think it’s Maynard. Last night, as I was sitting in the rocking chair in Charlotte’s bedroom to read to her, he got up in my lap for some attention. Maynard, who wasn’t a lap cat by any stretch of the imagination, nevertheless always got up in my lap every night when it was story time. He never sat; he would stand on my legs while I petted him until he’d had his fill. Murray, as usual, snuggled right into the crook of my arm and purred with his big motor until he was distracted by something shiny.
By the same token, nobody misses the barf. The video at the top is thus lovingly but relievedly dedicated to Bumble and the sincerest hope that his successor will not develop the same habit.
So I noticed a bunch of hits from Reddit.com this morning and followed the referrer back to a thread that has this heartbreaking picture. Most of the thread is the usual Reddit nonsense, but the discussion somehow eventually turned around to the subject of the Siege of Leningrad, and somebody Googled up my post about the cats of Leningrad who were hailed as heroes for keeping the rodent population in check during the siege.
I have no idea what the actual provenance of that photo is, and the Reddit thread had nothing of substance to offer, but it’s too easy to imagine something terrible, particularly given the numbers of cats and kittens who needlessly suffer from human neglect. We’ve been having such a wonderful time with our new kitten, Furry Murray, so this picture was a small reminder to me that for many cats, including shelter animals, the realities are pretty bleak.
The shelter where we got Murray still has lots of kittens and cats available. In fact, they’ve had to put intakes on hold because they can’t place out animals fast enough. Many of their cats and kittens are abandoned animals who would likely end up like the kitty in this picture without the shelter’s aid. If you yourself aren’t looking to adopt a cat, maybe you’d consider making a donation to a shelter in your area. Or do I have to make you look at another sad picture?
To counteract those last couple of heavy posts, let me offer you this picture of Furry Murray snuggling in the crook of my arm while I was writing this morning:
There, all better now.
Seems that the flying fish video I posted this morning got yanked from YouTube, so here are some kitties jumping around like popcorn. You can never have too many kitties!
Ran out of good post material just before we left for vacation last week, and haven’t found anything worth posting since we got back. So until I have something better, here’s a gratuitously cute kitty video:
The Eastern coral snake is considered to have the most lethal venom of any snake in North America. It’s a neurotoxin that paralyses its victim, causing death by asphyxiation or cardiac arrest. However, due to the snake’s small and curved fangs, the snake can only inflict its poison by a chewing motion. Since the snakes are not very aggressive, that means that fatal coral snake bites are almost completely unheard of. So unheard of, in fact, that the only company in the U.S. that makes coral snake antivenom has ceased production of it, and any remaining stock is fast reaching its expiry date. There hasn’t been a human death in the United States caused by a coral snake since 1967, so it’s probably a pretty safe bet, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be the first guy in forty-odd years to get bitten and need it.
I spent some time over the weekend reformatting old posts from before I converted this blog to WordPress, and one of the posts I recovered was this one from just about three years ago that linked to a guy who had rigged up a little digital camera that he put on a collar around his cat’s neck. The camera took pictures at regular intervals, and then, when the cat came home, the guy could retrieve the camera and download the images. Sadly, that website is long gone, but this morning I ran across this new product called “Eyenimal”, which is basically the same concept, except now it’s a video camera that will take POV video of whatever your cat or dog is doing. And sure enough, here’s a sample:
They want €99 plus shipping (from France, apparently), so I don’t think I’ll run right out and buy one, but I *still* think it would be interesting to see where Harry goes on his outdoor travels, especially with video.
Via MetaFilter comes this link to a vast website from the British Film Institute dedicated to a century of wildlife and nature filmmaking called WildFilmHistory.org. The site has dozens of nature films available to watch, going all the way back to what is considered to be the “first” nature film, footage of crashing surf against a seawall in Dover, England filmed in 1895 right up to this award-winning film from 2003 about the African ecosystem called “The Elephant, The Emperor, and The Butterfly Tree”. Americans might be a little disappointed not to see more familiar material from American nature documentaries, but the breadth and depth of nature films from the BBC is awe-inspiring. Lots and lots of great stuff to explore on this site.
The British newspaper The Independent reports that stocks of North Sea cod are beginning to make a comeback due to strict conservation and fishing rules. While the amount of reproductive stock is still only about a third of what marine biologists believe to be necessary to consider the fishery “recovered”, it is encouraging that the population is on the uptick, although the newspaper’s exhortation to go out and eat more cod is probably counterproductive to the whole process. Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, things continue to look bad for the Atlantic cod fisheries in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank.
If you ever wondered why mountain goats have such immense horns, wonder no more:
The BBC reports that the British department store Selfridge’s will officially roll out its Christmas shopping season this year on AUGUST 2. But American retail chain Toys R Us has them beat with a “Christmas In July” sale that runs this week. (although, as far as I can tell, that’s just a sale and not [...]
On Friday, I decided to stop having Facebook scrape and post my blog feed. I just don’t feel like blog posts fit the very ephemeral vibe of FB, and, frankly, it irritates the living crap out of me when people post comments about the blog posts on FB instead of posting them here. I am [...]
In my copious spare time, usually whilst sitting in the waiting area at Charlotte’s karate studio, I have been making slow but steady progress toward adding tags to all the posts on this site. As of right now, I have completed tagging all the way back to April 1, 2008. The current archive of this [...]
Just the other day I posted about a young man from Nepal who was trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest man in the world. He’s only 22 inches tall, compared to the 29-inch tall He Pingping of China, who is the current record holder. Well, WAS the current [...]
boobcheese tickle fights child actor suicides Betty White Zombie Farrah Fawcett Canadian pissing habits that milkaholic Lindsay ChatRoulette whatever half-assed thing Google did this week out-of-control Toyotas
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
I recently posted about the use of menhaden in making fish oil dietary supplements and the potential risk that poses to the entire Atlantic Ocean ecosystem. One of the alternatives to using menhaden for omega-3 supplements is algae oil, because algae is the primary diet of the menhaden and is actually the source of all [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
This week Barack Obama committed the United States to at least two more years of war, 30,000 troops in harm’s way for no other reason than saving face, and umpteen billions of dollars wasted FOR NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER and we are inundated with: Tiger Woods proving he knows how to put it in the [...]
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