Jing-reed's Musings from Thailand

Dramatic Cat

 

I am sure that we have all been exposed to countless strange animal clips on YouTube, but for me the expression on this cat's face is priceless.  Of course I might react the same if someone blasted Richard Strauss at me from behind.

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Choir Boys Sing The Meow Song

Somehow a delighful mixture of: lovely, annoying, and sublime . . . two choir boys singing an odd composition by Rossini.

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Oscar, the Cat Burglar

 

Cat burglar takes shine to washing-line underwear

"A spate of thefts from gardens and washing lines in a southern English town had been puzzling police. Socks, gloves, ladies underwear -- almost anything left unattended was fair game for the thief, especially the knickers, and the rate of offending was getting worse. But now the culprit has been unmasked as a kleptomaniac cat with a generous nature.

Eager to please his new owners, Peter and Birgitt Weismantel, 13-year-old Oscar had been bringing home presents to the family home in Portswood, a suburb of the southern coastal town of Southampton.  "He started bringing socks home a few months ago and then gardening gloves which we tracked to our neighbor," his owner Peter Weismantel told the Southern Daily Echo newspaper. "Then we had a situation in which he brought back young women's underwear," said Peter, 72. "It began to escalate and I telephoned the police as people must have been missing clothes -- especially with women's underwear being taken."

The couple have been fostering Oscar from Southampton's Cats Protection charity since Christmas. Since then he had also pinched builder's gloves, a knee-pad, a paint roller, rubber gloves, and 10 pairs of children's underpants. On average he commits 10 robberies a day.

"He brings them back as presents," Birgitt told the Echo. "We can't give him back now as he makes such an effort with all these gifts. He's got a lovely personality and is a very loving cat. "I think we fell in love with him before he started taking all these things," she added. "It was just so touching to see him come home every day with something for us."

Now the couple will adopt Oscar full time but they still have yet to devise a way to curb his criminal instincts."

German Man Marries His Dying Cat

 

"A German man has unofficially married his cat after the animal fell ill and vets told him it might not live much longer, Bild newspaper reports. It says Uwe Mitzscherlich, 39, paid an actress 300 euros (£260,$395) to officiate at the ceremony, as marrying an animal is illegal in Germany.

Mr Mitzscherlich said he had wanted to tie the knot before his asthmatic cat Cecilia died. The cat and groom have lived together for 10 years. "Cecilia is such a trusting creature. We cuddle all the time and she has always slept in my bed," Mr Mitzscherlich, a postman from the eastern town of Possendorf, told Bild.  Actress Christin-Maria Lohri, who officiated the ceremony, was quoted as saying: "At first I thought it was a joke. But for Mr Mitzscherlich it's a dream come true".

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CATS, CATS, CATS II

"An Engineer's Guide to Cats"

A YouTube video which has had 2,759,384 hits in the last few months.  

About this video:

Two professional engineers illustrate the proper care and practical benefits of cats. None of the cats, humans, or engineers were mistreated in the making of this film. They were however, slightly annoyed.

Note:  The cat yodeling section is especially instructive.  If you don't have a cat you might consider borrowing a neighbor's cat to practice on. 

CATS, CATS, CATS I

An interesting article in the New York Times, "Sorry, Fido, It’s Just a Guy Thing".

IF you ask Adam Fulrath who is the love of his life, he will barely blink an eye before responding: Parappa. 

Mr. Fulrath, a 37-year-old design director at Time Out New York, keeps five photographs of Parappa, a shorthaired, bicolored, mixed-breed cat, on his desktop. He knows that it might be considered a little weird that a grown man would be so enamored with his kitty, but Mr. Fulrath, who is into video games and comic books and calls himself a “straight, geeky guy,” doesn’t care.

“She’s my primary relationship,” he said.

Mr. Fulrath is one of a growing number of single — and yes, heterosexual — men who seem to be coming out of the cat closet and unabashedly embracing their feline side. To that end, they are posting photographs and videos of their little buddies on YouTube and on Web sites like menandcats.com, and Twittering about them to anyone who will listen. . . . 

TODAY'S MOMENT OF ZEN

Wavy Gravy once asked a Zen Roshi, "What happens after death?"

The Roshi replied, "I don't know."

Wavy protested, "But you're a Zen Master!"

"Yes," the Roshi admitted, "but I'm not a dead Zen Master."

Shamelessly / or / Shamefully lifted from Grow-a-brain.

Cats keeping humans as pets

Miss Wan [‘Sweets’] atop my ‘motosai’

The famous zoologist Konrad Lorenz said that, "The cat is a wild animal that inhabits the homes of humans." Biologically speaking, that's basically true.

Domesticated cats' immediate ancestors (and closest wild cousins) — the African and European wildcats — are so closely related to each other and to domesticated cats that most experts now treat them all as members of the same species, Felis silvestris. The cat in your house is Felis silvestris catus, a subspecies of wildcat. So, why are these wildcats sleeping on our beds?

While no one knows all the details, the story of Felis silvestris catus's domestication goes something like this. Some 10,000 years ago, human beings invented agriculture. Almost immediately, they faced a problem: how to store all the grain they were growing. Stockpiles of food, while a very good thing, attracted all sorts of animals, including mice and other pesky rodents, who were more than happy to find an abundant source of supper.

Just as grain stores attracted rodents, however, so rodents attracted cats. Since the cats ate the mice that ate the farmers' food, the farmers came to like the cats. (Of course, cats are also warm and fuzzy, and they purr when you pet them — none of which hurts in the "appeal to humans" department.)

So, to make sure the cats kept coming around, farmers started spicing up their diets with a fish head here and a chicken wing there--perhaps served with a refreshing gulp of goat's milk, followed by a friendly scratch behind the ears. Independent instincts aside, cats are smart enough to know a good thing when they experience it, and they kept coming back for more. Over time, felines with less solitary dispositions simply cut to the indoor mouse chase, moving right into people's homes.

It wasn't long before cat crazes took hold. The ancient Egyptians developed cat cults and worshipped a cat-headed goddess named Bast or Bastet. Not only did they mummify thousands of cats, they even mummified mice, presumably to feed their mummified cats in the afterlife.

From Egypt, cats made their way to Greece and Rome. They also cropped up in ancient India and China. Eventually, domesticated felines made their way around the world — often by serving as mousers on ships, whose food stores needed extra protection.

Of course, wherever they went, they made perfect pets for at least some of the people they found. But they never entirely lost their ancient, independent edge. As Henry David Thoreau noted, "the most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants." Makes you wonder who keeps whom.

I have always been partial to Siamese cats. Very different in many ways from the regular ‘domestic’ cat. Seemingly more intelligent, and definitely more independent. Information is sketchy about their original appearance here in the ‘Kingdom of Siam’, although they have been a part of the Thai Royal household for centuries.

Miss Wan, in the photo, has been so kind as to let me share her living quarters for two years now. I had originally thought it was the other way around, but soon after her arrival I realized my mistake. Plays ‘catch and fetch’ better than any dog, and in fact at times seems to think she IS a dog. Absolutely fascinated by colorful and noisy fireworks, things that would send most pets scurrying under the bed. She can hardly wait until she gets her own driver’s license . . .