I’m off to the Big Island today, but can’t neglect a Caturday felid, as neither snow nor sleet nor rain nor hurricanes will keep the Felidmeister from his duly appointed rounds. The first item is an article from The New York Times (click on the screenshot) which asks this:
But is it a good idea to put a feline on a leash and harness when they are accustomed to moving around according to their own agenda? Can imposing our desires for a cat to take on a role similar to that of a dog possibly be harmful to the animal?
The answer, as you might expect, is “it depends”: some cats take to the leash readily, and others don’t. It’s easiest if you begin socializing the cats when they’re between 2 and 9 weeks old. You also need to be aware of how to detect stress in a cat, and be sure to use a harness, starting slowly according to the site’s instructions. And, after that, it may still not work. Cats will be cats.
The article does mention one “adventure cat” named Copurrnicus, who takes his walkies (and climbies) around Philadelphia. Here’s an Instagram shot of the lad doing rock-climbing, but largely lugged on his owner’s back:
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Two twin sisters run a museum that has Civil War dioramas, with all the soldiers—thouands of them— being cats! Their aim is to make the civil war more “approachable.” Each of the several hand-constructed battle dioramas takes several years to build.
Here’s a video about the Museum, and the YouTube notes say this:
Rebecca and Ruth Brown are twin sisters who run a museum about the Civil War in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The twist? Their scale model dioramas are filled with thousands of miniature cats depicting key moments from the war. That’s right: tiny cat soldiers. You have to see it to believe it.
Well, see it below:
Go here to get “Civil War Tails” mugs, tee-shirts, and other cool stuff like this:
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Given the way that the Pakistani government has treated me, repeatedly censoring my posts (via WordPress) because they’re blasphemous, I find great Schadenfreude in this Guardian article.
From the Guardian:
As a veteran journalist Shaukat Yousafzai was used to press conferences. He had also served as regional health minister, representative of the ruling Tehreek-e-Insaf party, and adviser to Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan.
Last week, however, Yousafzai found himself cast in an unlikely new role: cat person, with big pink ears. And whiskers.
Yousafzai was giving a a briefing to reporters in Peshawar when a member of his social media team inadvertently switched on the cat filter. The event was streamed live on Facebook.
It was several minutes before organisers realised that the minister had acquired pointy ears. When one of his moustached party colleagues began to speak, looking earnest and holding a pen, he too was transformed into a cat.
There were more officials transformed into cats, but a tweet will suffice. Fortunately, nobody was jailed or executed.
According to KP government’s social media team we now have a cat in the cabinet #Filter pic.twitter.com/LNl7zwOfLU
— Mansoor Ali Khan (@_Mansoor_Ali) June 14, 2019
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Lagniappe: Here’s a cat named Woodsy who’s a neighbor of cat-deprived reader Peter. Do you notice anything odd about him?
Well, as Peter wrote:
Woodsy sort of has two noses! His nose has a definite cleft down the middle and he has three nostrils (I don’t know if he moves air through all three – we don’t know him that well!). Did he start out as an incompletely divided embryo, perhaps? He’s a very nice cat and considers our yard to be part of his hunting grounds.
h/t: Ginger K., Michael, Matthew
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I would agree that attempting to get your cat into the harness and on a leash is generally not going to work. Starting out with a very young cat would probably be the only way to “train” a cat for this. I must say that training in general is likely to be successful if started very early. If you want the cat to leave the furniture along this should be done very early as well. The person who brings home a new kitty and does nothing but watch while the kitty goes after some furniture is in for much trouble. Get some scratching boards and posts and make them use the boards. Life will be much better.
I didn’t see any black cats in the dioramas. Are slaves and Colored Troops mice?
Shades of the classical “graphic novel”, “Maus”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus
It seems a very peculiar project, and I have a pretty high “peculiar” threshold.
It’s at moments like this that one hopes Ben Gorman pops by with his Boss, Baidu (am I getting the speelungs rote rite?). Ben and Baidu would fairly often go for walks around his low-density neighbourhood in Arizona somewhere.
I’ve known other people who’d take their cats for a walk, and one who’s Boss liked being taken for a ride on the motorbike, inside the leather jacket, head as a cravat.
Some cats like it ; some don’t.
I take it as read that everyone here has to plan their perambulations around respective towns to avoid second-hand bookshops? A pretty safe bet (listens to creaking ceiling joists in attic).
I once had a coffee-table book on “failures of fusion of the human head and thorax” – I forget the exact title. In human terms, the intermediate levels of failure to “zip up” the face are often described as a “cleft palate” or “hair lip”. The book went into pre-, mid- and post- operative photos as a surgical “cut here and here ; fold tab A into slot B” instruction book. The more severe levels were normally stillbirths. branchial arches that didn’t fuse, crania that exposed the CNS. Quite interesting as a study in how embryos go from a blastocyst to Shakesperean mewling and puking.
Anyway, in that context, I’d read Woodsy’s third nostril as a minor failure of fusion. That Woodsy is clearly untroubled by it answers the question of surgery – not necessary.
A question – does he (?) “Meow” unusually? Or cough or splutter when eating or drinking? There may well be incomplete fusion of the hard or soft palates further back in the mouth.
Of course it is. And you’re his back-up staff.
We know this.
Woodsy knows this.
It is the order of things.
The Pakistani video would be hilarious if I didn’t fear someone was going to get their head chopped off over it