Caturday felid trifecta: Deranged cat harmonized; cat steals neighbors’ laundry; a cat shaped hole in a woman’s life;

 

This crazy kitty has accumulated nearly 9 million views since 2011. In the second video, its caterwaulings and screams have been put to music:

****************

 

Matthew sent me this tweet, which of course sent me to The Dodo:

"I had no idea that my angel was also a petty thief" 😹 https://t.co/OKc2w0m7Oy

— The Dodo (@dodo) July 25, 2020

Click on the screenshot to read about The Case of the Purloining Feline:

Here’s the cat, who bears the name of Admiral Galacticat (all photos are by Heather Bardi, the staff). He lives in New Orleans, and was indoors during the beginning of the pandemic:

Bored, the Admiral was eventually let outside, and the trouble soon began. In July, a tank top and a pair of socks showed up on the doorstep. The staff thought it was a joke, but then the clean clothes began to multiply, strewn over the front yard:

Those Nike socks look like mine!

The staff installed a security camera, which caught the Admiral in flagrante delicto:

The owner put up a sign:

It worked; and it turned out that the good Admiral had been raiding a laundry room:

Word of mouth eventually connected Bardi with the owner of the stolen laundry. Through a neighbor, she learned that Admiral had been breaking into a shared laundry room in an apartment, and pilfering laundry from a number of different roommates. “We all laughed about the whole situation and how we were shocked that it had garnered so much attention,” Bardi said. “It was definitely the weirdest way to meet the neighbors.”

Apparently the Admiral hasn’t stopped his kleptocat activities:

While Admiral’s laundry collection has been returned to its rightful owners, Admiral continues to bring his mom “gifts” whenever he goes outside. “Up until now almost two weeks ago, I had no idea that my angel was also a petty thief. But hey, did your parents know everything about you?” Bardi said. “He still to this day has been coming home with more laundry, though I don’t know why I expected it to stop. He seems to either enjoy bringing me presents, or he is just being a rebellious 4-year-old.”

“I guess I should have seen this coming,” she added. “Though I could never have imagined the lengths he went to get all this random laundry.”

I’ve featured a fair number of kleptocats in the Caturday Felids, and I don’t understand their obsession. Some specialize in laundry, others in gloves and paintbrushes, still others in random items like stuffed animals, sponges, and bathing suits. I’m not sure why they do this, unless they’re giving gifts to their staff—a motive of which I’m still not convinced.

****************

The Guardian has a lovely story about adopting a kitten during the pandemic (click on screenshot):

 

Riannon Coslett and her husband were looking for someone to rent their spare room when the pandemic struck. That put paid to the idea of a roommate, so they decided to adopt a kitten instead. They found this lovely calico that they named Mackerel:

There’s nothing really new to this kind of story, but the ending is sweet:

We walked 12 miles to collect and bring her home.About halfway there, the heavens opened and the kitten began to meow in loud protest. We took shelter and ate our sandwiches on a bench under a large, bushy tree, watching the rain while the kitten drifted offto sleep in her carry case. Suddenly, there were three of us. We named her Mackerel, because we thought it was funny to name a cat after a fish. The colours in her fur are like a mackerel sky.

I can’t believe I waited so long under the false assumption that my life wasn’t stable or good enough to give a pet a loving environment (is it possible to have low life esteem? If so, I think I had it). The psychotherapist Esther Perel has spoken about how we can reframe self-isolation, as “cocooning” for safety – to make us feel differently about our experience of lockdown. The pandemic taught me that we had built ourselves a cocoon, a beautiful garden, a marriage and, yes, a life, from scratch. I couldn’t say that I “owned” any of it, but why had I put so much stock in ownership in the first place? Now I live with a cat, and I can’t be said to own her, either. She owns us. And we’re fine with it.

h/t: Matthew, Sara