Yesterday I posted this photo, sent to us by ailurophile Richard Dawkins (I don’t know if he took it himself or found it on the internet). Note that there’s a phone number. I asked readers if someone wouldn’t call that number and get the skinny on the fugitive cat who’s been brought to justice.
I love my readers! One “Illinoisjoe” actually called the number and found out the story—and it’s cool, because Walter the Cat was on the lam for fourteen months! Since Illinoisjoe posted his information on the photo page itself, where nobody will see it, I’ll present it here:
I just called the number and got the dirt. Here’s what I managed to jot down:
Walter Oswald the cat was a stray adopted by Jenny. He was loved and trained by her to the point where he was even doing circus tricks. One night, when Jenny’s boyfriend Ian (the owner of the phone number and hence the interviewee) was helping a drunk friend in through the door, Walter decided to bolt despite the love and tutelage he had received there. Ian checked under the porch to no avail. It was not until a year and 2 months later that Walter was spotted hanging out with a black cat by the side of the road. Ian claims he was then going by the alias “McGyver” but I believe the name Walter has been re-instituted since he was captured three months ago. Ian (and Jenny) had no idea this picture was on the internet, but he did point me to a Youtube iphone video entitled “the last we ever saw of walter”, which definitely corroborates the “drunk friend” aspect of the story. I promised to text Ian the link to this page, so he may be posting here soon himself!
I thought Walter was on the ham and his alias was Matthau, not McGiver.
Yay– good going, IllinoisJoe! Thanks for finding out and posting!
Walter is carefully planning for his next pawshank redemption.
LOL!
I like a happy ending.
Ok, I think I’m starting to understand. Since cats are like atheists this makes Walter an analogue for Galileo. But doesn’t that make cat owners the Catholic Church?
Well, the folk etymology that took the term “alcoholic”, and gave us “chocoholic” and other analogues can also be applied to felines. So, what do you call someone addicted to cats? A cat-holic, of course.
Oh dear. That would imply over indulgent and potentially unhealthy behavior, typically.
Ugh… 6 is meant in response to theobromine in 5.
OT but I don’t want to clutter up what I’m hoping will be an interesting thread elswhere. Can anyone tell me what they consider the best way to follow fast moving threads here? Refreshing means I have to scan the entire thread to find new comments and the RSS feeds don’t seem reliable or complete. At least not in IE and Firefox.
Apologies if this has been asked before but I’ve honestly tried to figure it out myself.
Not sure if this helps, but you can get the comment feed for a specific post by adding the text “feed” to the end of that post’s address (after the last forward-slash), like this:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/the-tale-of-the-fugitive-cat/feed
Many feed aggregators, like the ones built in to some browsers, also allow you to subscribe to a comment feed so that you won’t miss anything.
Thank you, Aratina. I’ll check it out.
Email subscription is the only thing that works for me, but then you have clear out your inbox frequently.
I feel sorry for the cat, it seems like he’d clearly prefer to live outdoors.