As usual, we have three cat-related items today. First, here’s a video of Boomer, a Bengal who’s the recently-acquired companion of Didga, the famous Australian skateboarding cat. For some reason the staff of Didga and Boomer has a remarkable ability to get his moggies to behave in unusual ways: in this case Boomer insouciantly encounters a bunch of dogs.
You can see more videos of Didga and Boomer at the “Katmantoo” YouTube site.
As the staff says, do NOT try this at home, or without cat-training experience:
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From the Torygraph we have the story of Liz Clark, a woman who’s sailing around the world with her cat Amelia. It’s a lovely thought, but I’m quite worried that the unleashed moggie will fall overboard.
Apparently they’ve been on the road (or sea) for ten years.
Parts taken from the Torygraph story are indented:
Clark told BuzzFeed she adopted Amelia when she was only six months old and is now giving her the adventure of her nine lives.
She said: “She has adapted to living surrounded by water. She’s learned to trust that she will be safe with me.”
Liz Clark, originally from San Diego, and now from The Ocean, told the website she had been dreaming of sailing around the world since she was a child.
Setting sail in 2006 from California, Amelia has now traveled along the western coast of Mexico and Central America, as well as to the South Pacific.
Captain Clark has now logged an impressive 18,000 nautical miles.
Clark said Amelia especially enjoys fishing from the boat.“On calm nights, she fishes off of a soft top surfboard attached to the side of Swell with a small light that attracts fish,” the captain explained.
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The title of this cat’s story came from reader Diane G., who found the link to the ASPCA story. Diane notes, “A scary event but with a happy ending and some cute comments about the relationship of a man and his cat. (Plus the moggie is adorable.)”
It’s about Tommy, a cat in Queens, New York, who swallowed a wishbone. Things looked bad, but now he’s all right:
One Sunday evening, Tommy’s pet parent David D. enjoyed a take-out meal of rotisserie chicken in his Queens, New York, apartment. The next morning, David found Tommy crouched in the kitchen corner, bleeding from the neck.
“At first I thought he had fallen,” says David. He then realized that his 10-lb. tomcat had likely torn open the trash and swallowed the leftover chicken—wishbone and all.
The X-ray; arrow shows the ingested wishbone:
David and his mother, Darlene, rushed Tommy to the ASPCA Animal Hospital, where Veterinarian Dr. Yvonne Kline conducted an oral exam and noticed a bone deep inside Tommy’s throat. After sedating Tommy, Dr. Kline plucked out the bone, then cleaned and sutured his wound with 12 stitches. Tommy was also neutered, and the next day, he went home with antibiotics.
Tommy: post surgery. Poor moggie!
“I was glad to have my soul mate back,” says David, who first found Tommy when he was working as shop supervisor for an auto mechanic. “A driver came in complaining that cat noises were coming from the car’s motor bay,” he recalls. “Tommy was behind the gas and brake pedals.”
David adopted Tommy on the spot. “I never even thought of giving him to someone else,” he says. “We relate to each other, and he trusts me. He even has a sense of humor, like me.”
David’s brother Daniel, along with Darlene, brought Tommy back to the ASPCA two weeks later to have his sutures removed. After the re-check exam, veterinarians gave Tommy a clean bill of health.
At home, David reports Tommy is better than ever. “He means so much to me. We were destined to be together.”
Tommy and his staff:
h/t: dd, Barry, Ginger K.
Love the photos, especially of the cobalt-blue water + kitty + sailboats and above all the reflections from “Ganga White” wondering what if our religion were each other, the Earth our temple, the forests our church, love the center of our being?
Sign me up.
Carl Kruse
I’m worried the boat cat will fall into the drink!
May not be a huge problem, https://youtu.be/DePFiF-nNoE?t=114
That’s Didja in the water!
I’ve been watching Robert’s videos for some time, he does seem to understand the animals much better than most people do.
This Didja?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRbakPKgU5Y
That’s her.
That’s rough. The one moment, you’re enjoying a nice rôtisserie chicken. The next moment, you wake up with an empty stomach and your jewels gone.
🙂
Literally, laughed aloud 🙂
One of my all-time favourite books is Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World. In my geography “O” level exam (at 16), one of the questions provided a choice of two epic voyages, of which you had to pick one, and answer questions about what the voyager would have encountered. Slocum’s journey was one of the choices.
Cat-aboat-ocean (sorry!) stories are fairly common. REaching over to the bookshelf, I obtain “Ships Cats (in War and Peace)”, (details at bottom of post) and get some examples …
P.45 “The cat that caught a seagull” Rastus served on HMS Gorleston of the Royal Navy from May 1941. [One time] when the ship was doked in Liverpool, [the crew saw] a seagull land in what the cat felt was his exclusive domain. Rastus went into a frenzy and sank his teeth into the gull’s leg. The startled gull took off with Rastus hanging on determinedly. Crew members wathed in astonishment as the bird flew higher with the cat still attached to his leg. [Rastus had] the sense to unclench his jaws, dropped into the water from a great height, surfaced ans swam calmly back to the Gorleston, nonchalantly boarding the ship as if nothing had happened.
P. 173 “The Fat Cat That Cruises The Mediterranean”
Bubbles is a majestic-looking black and white cat who enjoys the good life sailing the mediterranean on a 36ft motor cruiser with her staff. A large fat cat weighing 9 pounds she has spent her entire life afloat on the French canals and the Mediterranean, covering some 5000 miles in her six years (at time-of writing, about 2000). […] Bubbles is not very steady on her paws as a result of [dog injuries]. She regularly falls into the sea, and because of her stiff leg finds it difficulat to climb out without help, but manages to keep afloat until her loud frantic mewing for assistance attracts attention.
“She probably falls into the water a dozen or more times a year. You can hear her mewing all over the Mediterranean,” says her staff. “She’s probably used up her nine lives already, and another nine on top of that.”
Great fun book for the cat-o-phil in your life. Book details : title as given ; author Val Lewis ; publisher Nauticalia, UK ph 01932 244396, publihed 2001, reprinted 2002, ISBN 0953045811.
Re the first quote, ‘caught’ does not seem quite the appropriate word. Must have been a monstrous huge seagull!
cr
This sounds like a great summer read! Thanks for posting the details.
I suspected that some here would like it.
Great cat stories.
Re Didga, Let Cats be Cats. I think its cruel to anthropomorphise cats like that from teaching them skateboarding @! anticatsense I would have thought – to dressing them up in pearls and forcing them (presumably from long past interaction) to interact at a dog show.
Does formatted text work here on WEIT??
how ’bout italic
Adventurous Tommy now has, at best, 7 lives!
” then cleaned and sutured his wound with 12 stitches. Tommy was also neutered, and the next day, he went home ”
And was he ever surprised when he woke up!