We have five cat features today! First, a guy gives his girlfriend the kitten she’s always wanted. This is adorable:
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Like many of us, reader Ken Phelps (whom I met in Vancouver) likes to photograph the local cats when he’s traveling. Here are a few selected shots:
This guy (?) was sitting on a porch in Reykjavik. Just at the start of May, sunny but with a very cold wind right around freezing. Any cat with outdoor privileges in this climate needs to be tough, and this cat certainly looked the part. Accepted a reasonable amount of head and neck scratching then just gave me a good dismissive swat. He got up and walked approximately 12 inches, sat back down and gave me a look that just said “We’re done, right? ‘Cause I’m staying right here.”There were a lot of cats that looked related, very tough and very attractive. Presumably a bit of a restricted gene pool.
“Neighborhood Cat” in Certaldo, Italy. Tip of ear removed to allow easy visual confirmation that cat has been neutered. Looking a bit matted as we had just been through a pelting thunder shower.
Example of pelting Tuscan rain, San Gimignano.
There were a a lot of pretty sad looking strays there, but this one seems to be doing well. He was wary and not approachable – at least not without a treat – but not too skittish either. His general look of well-being suggests some people skills.
The current twenty-two hours-a-day resident of our bed, Winter.
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I had heard that “there’s a reddit devoted to everything,” but I didn’t believe that until someone pointed to reddit: Jelly Bean toes, devoted entirely to pictures of cats’ toes. Three examples out of gazillions:
“Sitting on glass, tongue out“:
“The beans are coming in nicely this year”:
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A Soviet Spacecat sent by Matthew Cobb, produced by Chris Kawagiwa. The cat looks apprehensive. I’m posting this in honor of AstroSam’s return to Earth:
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And a tw**t from our own Matthew Cobb, showing his new kitten (a teenager by now), Harry:
h/t: Amy
The kitteh walking around with a big bow like that is really cute!
I love the look on the ginger stray cat’s face. Seems to say, “patting time is over, got it?” It makes me want to give angry cat a big kiss (which would result in being scratched bloody of course).
The cat foot in the garden is really funny too and that picture of the hail is really nice.
I have a yard cat I’ve been feeding for well over a year now. He’ll occasionally let me pet him, but he also has a bad habit of swatting or biting the hand that feeds him! Last weekend I was sitting by him on my doorstep, petting him, then he suddenly snapped and put a good bite on my forearm just above my wrist. Ouch! My indoor cat, Miles, a stray I found on my doorstep about a year and a half ago, was much friendlier — which is why he’s now indoors.
The first stray cat is indeed a striking beauty. Its the little things about proportions and angles that just seem to add up. But I was wondering if it had a tattoo in one of its ears.
Just to clarify, the Reykjavik cat wasn’t a stray. He was on his own porch, accepting (reluctantly) homage from passers-by.
The grey and white face was at Mercado Bazurto in Cartagena, home to many less well fed strays.
Whatever that first cat’s name is, it should be Face. Great pictures.
Or Steve because when you wrote “Steve” on early phones with autocorrect, they often “corrected” “Steve” to “Face”. 🙂
Here, the clipped ear on a stray or feral means both spayed/neutered and rabies vaccinated. The latter can be life-saving for any moggie who, like frednotfaith2’s outdoor cat, finds bites or scratches a human and then finds itself in a trap.
There is something exquisitely beautiful about that short-haired gray and white kitteh.
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Re: the Reykjavik cat. In communities such as this, humans can also suffer from consanguinity, and I understand that an app is available to determine whether a potential partner is closely related.
Moderately surprised by the number of feral moggies on the streets of Istanbul. Including the crew investing the General Aviation terminal of the airport where we wasted 3 days of our lives waiting for the sky to go VFR.
All over the place, to a far greater extent than I’ve seen anywhere, you’ll see little bowl or piles of dry cat food, put out for the quadrupedal sultans (and sultanas) to subsist on. Plainly the average Turk on the Yesilyurt Omnibus thinks feeding the feral cats is a Good Thing to do.
By comparison, I hardly saw a cat on the prowl in Israel, though with less time to make comparisons.
Israel and Turkey used to be on very friendly terms, with Israelis visiting Turkey a fair amount. I wonder if the two general cat populations might be related. (“Things that make you go ‘hmmm.'”
since the ancestral origins of the domestic cat is probably in the Levant (possibly stretching a bit to include north Africa) , then “yeah”.
Yes indeed, Turkish and Israeli cats are related and historically, and genetically. Research team, led by Prof. L. A. Lyons, classified both cat groups as Eastern Mediterranean- Anatolian “race”. Despite of popular opinion that these cats are “stray” moggies” or “mixed with breeds”, none of this is actually true.
Wow. That’s interesting! Would love to learn more. Maybe that could turn into a new post?
Reading this while watching “My Cat From Hell” — aren’t they all from Hell?
(No – because jelly beans would melt!)
Great photos, thanks!
that glass-top table kitteh has the weirdest pattern on its lower belly, or is it a reflection of something?