Caturday felid trifecta: Handsome men and their even handsomer cats; three cats hold a blender hostage for weeks; wandering moggies; and lagniappe

From I Heart Cats we have a passel of pictures of well-known men or simply good-looking men, all with their their cats, proving that hot guys can still be tender toward moggies. Click to read, and I’ll put some specimens below:

Robert Downey, Jr.: “Robert Downey Jr. says his “cat lover cred goes way back” …

James Franco:

Not only is Franco a book lover, but he’s a cat lover as well. His two cats, Sammy and Zelda, reportedly earned their names from literary sources. Smart is sexy, so is a soft spot for felines…

Cat Rapper Moshow:

Speaking of a soft spot for cats, The Cat Rapper Moshow is all kinds of handsome with his love of cats and his respect for women. He’s raising Black $avage, Sushi, Lil Parmesan, Mega Mam, and DJ Ravioli to be fine cats who give back…

Crikey: this one has gold chains and a hoodie:

Surprise! Snoop Dogg is a cat lover!

Some years ago, it was reported the Dogg Father was actually a cat lover. Snoop spoils his two Siamese cats, Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra. Here, we see the handsome Dogg and his tuxedo friend…

Chris Hemsworth:

Just when we thought Chris Hemsworth couldn’t be any cuter, he goes and poses with cats…

If you like these, see a lot more on the Hot Dudes With Cats Instagram page.

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From NPR(!). Click on headline to read:

An excerpt:

Jessica Gerson-Neeves and her wife, Nikii, are really looking forward to using their new Vitamix blender to whip up smoothies and soups. In fact, the highly anticipated Black Friday purchase has recently become the focal point of their kitchen at home in British Columbia, Canada.

There’s just one problem: They can’t actually unpack it.

“It arrived in the mail on Dec. 16, and I brought it inside and set the box down on the kitchen floor for just a quick second,” Gerson-Neeves says. “And that was a month ago.”

The cardboard box has become the site of a weekslong turf war between the couple and their three cats, in a saga that has garnered thousands of invested followers on social media.

Gerson-Neeves has posted near-daily updates on the cats’ Facebook page (warning: language), documenting their hilariously formal changing of the guard, ever-shifting alliances and misadventures involving decoy boxes.

The posts read like dispatches from the front lines of a high-stakes battle, documenting the trio’s every move and their humans’ unsuccessful attempts to disrupt them.

The youngest troublemaker is Max, a tuxedo cat with the alias “sentient soccer ball.” Then there’s George, Destroyer of Worlds (“that’s what’s on his tag,” Gerson-Neeves says), also known as “sentient potato.” Rounding out the group is Lando Calrissian, who moonlights in the posts as “questionably sentient dust bunny” because, according to Gerson-Neeves, “he has a lot of fluff and very few thoughts.”

The cats’ page has grown from 64 followers to some 25,000, as people around the world learn about the story.

Gerson-Neeves stressed in a phone interview that the cats aren’t literally holding the Vitamix hostage. They could, of course, be hoisted off the box at any point. But she says she and her wife aren’t in a rush to end the stalemate since it’s providing some much-needed levity.

It all began, Gerson-Neeves says, when Max hopped on the Vitamix box as soon as she put it down that fateful December day. Like any besotted cat owner, she thought it was adorable and snapped a picture, which she posted to a cat-lovers Facebook group.

“I posted it with a tongue-in-cheek caption about how this was breaking news, which clearly this was not, and by the next day I think about 10,000 people had interacted with the post,” she explains.

She wrote jokingly in the original post that she would provide updates if the standoff continued, and members of the group held her to that promise, even as days turned into weeks.

Here’s a snippet from Jan. 4, or “WEEK 2, DAY 7“:

There’s a lot more at the NPR site, including a report that the blender company, when informed of this hostage situation, sent Geerson-Neves family THREE empty blender boxes so they could reclaim their appliance.  Here’s Jessica’s report to Vitamix that elicited the sending of boxes.

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From the BBC. It doesn’t really explain “why some cats just go where they want,” but gives three classes of wandering moggies, “supermarket cats,” “hospital cats,” and “cat burglars,” with several examples of each. Click to read; I’ll give one cat from each genre:

Henry the Hospital Cat:

Although he has a comfortable home nearby, the seven-year-old has made the hospital site his second home – despite being put outside whenever he’s spotted patrolling the corridors.

• Read more about how Henry captured the hospital’s hearts

Bosses at Addenbrooke’s continue to embrace Henry as one of their own and acknowledge the cat “does seem to have found a place in the hearts of many of our staff and patients” – but they are keen that he is not encouraged inside.

“In any hospital, the administrators will be thinking about allergies, but on the other hand there’s the consideration about how popular Henry is and at times of stress, cats genuinely are stress relievers,” Mr Tabor says.

Garfield the Supermarket Cat:

Ginger cat Garfield. . . found fame at Sainsbury’s in Ely.  Garfield – “Mr Sainsbury’s” – amassed thousands of followers on social media before his death in 2019

Cat expert Roger Tabor, from Brightlingsea in Essex, says the reason they chose supermarkets is because “both these cats are very social animals, which doesn’t happen unless they’re socialised with people very early on”.

He is a cat burglar – a kleptomaniac kitty who apparently cannot be reformed.

Theo has been known to break into neighbours’ homes through open windows or cat flaps and bring home any treasures he can find, from soft toys to cash and Christmas decorations.

• Read more about Theo’s thefts

“Cat burglars like Theo are rare – but they make headline news,” Mr Tabor says.

“With cats like this, the normal developmental pattern in the very early weeks didn’t happen and while he wants to hunt and retrieve things, he’s become fixated on toys which he thinks of as prey.

“At the moment he likes to visit my neighbour and steal his cats’ Kevin the Carrot soft toys,” Ms Drouet says.

“We’ve talked to Theo about his thieving, but I don’t think even he knows why he does it.

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Lagniappe:  Here are some beautiful medieval lynx earrings from The History Blog.  Aren’t they lovely?

A pair of medieval gold earrings shaped like lynxes with minutely intricate decoration are going on display for the first time since they were discovered near the medieval Armenian city of Ani in eastern Turkey.

The gold lynx earrings were discovered in the village of Subatan, less than 10 miles away from Ani on the Silk Road route that traverses the ruins of the citadel. They weigh 22 grams and are decorated with star, teardrop and crescent shapes applied in granulation technique. They are exquisite examples of medieval Armenian art. The museum acquired the earrings in 1994, but they have been kept in protective storage.

h/t: Ginger K., Reese, Malcolm, Barry