Reader David (or was it Malcolm? I’ve lost my notes), sent an existential French cat, apparently made before Henri became famous:
The notes:
I thought you might like this: “A Still Life”.The maker made it before he was aware of Henri, he even thought he had made it before the Henri series started, though looking at the dates of the videos this isn’t the case.However, Know Your Meme shows that Henri didn’t go viral until 2012, and the video that took Henri to Internet stardom was Part Deux, published one month after “A Still Life”. So while I believed the guy, I think that there’s evidence that his idea was original, and not Henri inspired.
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Several readers sent me these pictures from Imgur of a kitty enjoying a birthday cake. Since cats can’t taste sweetness (you knew that, right?), its attraction to the frosting must involve either cream or butter. Here’s one advantage of cats over d*gs: the latter can’t clean themselves:
Do you do anything for your cat on its birthday?
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Well cut off my legs and call me Shorty! Here, apparently is a baby squirrel adopted by a cat, and it’s also learned to purr. I wonder if a. cat milk is okay for squirrels, and b. why don’t the teeth (when they come in) damage the cat?
And, extra lagniappe: a paralyzed kitten gets some help. However, they need to work in the design of its chair, as when it stops it’s stymied. Perhaps they’ll get some help from an expert:
Look at him go! Paralysed kitten gets wheelchair made from lego https://t.co/KNktI8YAvfhttps://t.co/HdhXgqlwlb
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) May 9, 2016
h/t: David, Lauren, Vera, Malcolm
The family of a college friend of mine got a collie puppy shortly after their cat had a miscarriage and lost a litter. With her maternal instincts in full gear, she mothered the puppy. The first time I encountered the d*g, he was fully adult and overly friendly in that annoying way so many dogs are. He came up to me and I gave him an obligatory pat on the head and he started growling. When I shied away, I was told not to worry – he’d been raised by the cat, and h wasn’t growling, he was purring.
That’s a wonderful story. I’d love to see how that squirrel behaves when it grows up. Will it try to catch birds?
Will it have the tail-twitch reaction that so many cats have when stalking?
Re: PCC’s qustions – cat milk is almost certainly better than no milk. Remember that for centuries cows milk has substituted directly for human milk, with at most minor ill effects. Note also, the sqrl wasn’t a neonate, so probably had a good load of sqrly gut microflora, antibodies, etc from it’s mother. And about the teeth question … mother sqrls manage, so it’s probably not a big deal. Or, it’s a determinant of weaning time.
These are all delightful. Will the squirrel learn to hiss, too? Here are a couple of videos of kitties being raised by macaques, one captive, the other in the wild https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuoIE8MyATA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzi7IzhwkM4. This is some fierce mother-love. Also an hilarious video of macaques (?) breaking up a cat fight after the caterwauling became too much for them to stomach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqq2rqQA3FQ.
The video of the monkeys breaking up the cat fight admirably illustrates the origins of spectator sports in primates. Before it becomes too much (no referee), they’re having a great time just sitting around watching and scratching their bellies like some dudes in the bleachers at a stadium. Just give ’em some beer and peanuts.
The baby squirrel nursing is sweet.