Professor Ceiling Cat is a bit under the weather today, so posting will be light. Feel free to discuss the pressing issues of the day among yourselves. But I’ve never yet missed a Caturday felid, so here are a few, all featuring boxes.
First on deck is a fairly recent Maru—in many boxes, of course.
And here is the famous Kagonekoshiro (“white basket cat”) and his mates in an instructional photograph:
Big cats like boxes, too!
I know this is contrary to experience, but cats can be hearded.
Cowboys hearding cats
My recently departed cat Kveldulf was almost as box-obsessed as Maru. Not a box could enter the house and be left uninvestigated, and woe for me if I got rid of one before it was thoroughly checked out. One of my favorite pictures of him I titled “All Packed & Ready To Go”. He created a nest for himself in a box full of styrofoam peanuts and he burrowed into it with only his face (and sometimes only his eyes and ears) showing. It was six months before he tired of it, and to this day I still find the occasional peanut in a corner or under a chair. He also once succeeded in crawling into a box only two inches high, and on another occasion hot his head stuck in one of my shoes.
I’d send in a photo of Kveldulf nesting, but I don’t have an email address for ceiling cat.
Look in the “Research Interests” link [top right]
Thanks for the advice. Professor Ceiling Cat wrote to me and gave me an address to send him the picture. I attached two photos of Kveldulf in his nest and one of him with Isa, who is my current cat (I’m in the market for a second, as I prefer cats in pairs. It makes things much easier when you lose one). Perhaps the pictures will be posted here one day.
Back in 2002, while I was away, my landlady* illegally entered my apartment and let both my cats out. One hid in the attic; Kveldulf got outside in a Milwaukee January and was gone for a couple days. When he returned, he’d been touched with a mild case of frostbite in his hind legs. It wasn’t too severe, but as he got older, he walked more and more like a drunken sailor. He carried on quite well despite his infirmity, but at the age of seventeen he finally reached a point where I had to carry him to his food and litterbox. It was then I decided to take him to the vet on the trip that only humans return from. He fell asleep peacefully in my arms. I had him cremated, and his remains rest with my late wife in her urn (he was really her cat, anyway).
*I moved out the following month.
I haven’t gotten the photos!
I shall try to resend. I’ve been having some connectivity problems recently.
<3
The more you get in to the details, the sadder this tale gets.
I hope so much that your world finally right-sided itself.
One thing I would like to have and don’t get about our community is who you people are, and why do I feel this affection for otherwise nameless, faceless people?
Compassion is human, and sympathy with people you do not know or know only marginally is not something surprising. I remember hearing about a plane crash in Africa in which the survivors had been massacred by militants of one kind or another. Without knowing any of those victims, I felt a definite chill in what Christians would call their soul even though I had no connection to the people who had been shot. How unfair to have them survive one disaster to have them fall victim to politics.
I became part of the online community very early – in the mid-1980’s, well before there was an internet and we communicated via bulletin boards and sometimes were able to type faster than out modems could transmit. This is nothing new. I have friendships with people I have never physically met that I value as much as those with people I see everyday.
Marta, your affection does you credit. In a world where so many people are so self-absorbed, knowing that you care is something we can all rejoice in, not because we hope we will be rewarded or punished but because it is the right thing to do.
typo apology:
“faster than out modems”
should have been
“faster than our modems”
Excellent. Include me in.
An aspect of grief due to death – if the grief is focussed on one or a few people/entities, then it is far more profound than in the case of the death-massacre of ‘faceless’ multitudes. Living and working in africa for many years, and now in Burundi, central africa, where we’ve a history of both ‘faceless multitudes’ and individual killings, I can attest to this observation (product of a study on the subject but now do not have the reference). I grieve for those whom I knew and who were killed, and am profoundly sorry for mass-killings but for which I do not share the same kind of grief.
In it’s way, this is a back-handed compliment on Kveldulf’s survival skills and equipment (i.e. coat). I don’t have personal knowledge of Milwaukee Januaries, but I suspect that the words “clement” and “balmy” do not figure highly in the write ups. So Kveldulf managed to find somewhere near to the apartment which was sheltered enough and (at least) dry enough got his coat to be effective … and came out of the experience with only mild frostbite.
Look around your neighbourhood and ask “how many of you lot could walk away from such an experience?” I’d bet that very few could.
Given 30 seconds to grab stuff and scoot out of the house, I’d spend several pretty uncomfortable days in (comparatively) balmy Scotland, and I’ve spent enough time at -30 ° C in the mountains and Siberia to severely doubt my survival at all under those conditions. And I know that I’m a lot better equipped mentally than most people for such things.
Ah. That sounds like a hell of a cat. A terrible loss for you. I’m so sorry.
Thanks for the chuckle, Dr. C. Get well soon.
My father cannot put a box anywhere in his home, without that his cat expropriates that box.
The only box Max the Magnificent won’t enter is the one I use to take him to the Vet.
Yes, and it is just as difficult to remove them from the box at the vet as it was to get them into the box at home.
Boxing a cat is simple. 1) Upend box. 2) Pour in cat. 3) Slam doors or flaps closed. To unbox cat, 1) Open flaps or doors. 2) Get the hell out of the way.
NB: only applies to pre-vet boxing. Otherwise, cat boxes self.
There’s an open field west of us, John, just after Atascadero creek crosses Bodega and just before Watertrough. It must’ve been winter as the trees were bare and I could see cattle in the field and a small van of the type that could carry cattle to auction or slaughter. Two of the cows were kicking the carrier, circling and kicking out the dreaded carrier. Like Max, they knew.
Poor prof 🙁 it comes from giving your socks to squirrels – you have to wrap up warm!
‘Pressing’ issues…
1/ I note the Richard Dawkins memoir will be out on 24th September – looking forward to that – particularly interested in what he says about Tinbergen, Gould, Hamilton & Maynard Smith. I am 100 pages into the Hamilton biog from Segerstrale – very interesting.
2/ Sadly found several dead puffins on the beach at Cromer, North Norfolk – the BBC has reported on this in Scotland but it is pretty unusual that they would be this far south I think. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-21953898
3./ Also sadly found two dead common porpoises this week – Phocoena phocoena & have just discovered that they are supposed to be reported to the reciever of wrecks as ‘fishes royal’! http://www.felixstowestar.co.uk/news/news_2_6908/felixstowe_two_more_dead_porpoises_washed_up_at_resort_1_1978059
It certainly seems curious that there were some dead only 60 miles away in Felixstowe (further south from Norfolk about 60 miles from London) so I have cut a couple of bits of the one inch thick blubber & on Monday will e-mail a guy at the Natural History Museum in casde they are of interest, though most of the bodies have been eaten now.
Heh Professor, Cat got your tongue?
Package contained leopard.
A special LOL for that last one!
Now I want to run an experiment where the boxes become slightly less box-like until they reach a point that cats are no longer interested in them.