Caturday felid trifecta: Cats playing music; couple travels the world to photograph every wild cat species; new book on cats as muses; and lagniappe

We have the usual three items today plus a bit of lagniappe.

Reader Peter found the mother lode of cat videos: MelodyMeowsic, which is a bunch of AI videos featuring jazz-playing cats and, I think, AI-composed music. But it’s worth a look anyway, and since the videos are often an hour long, you can use them as background music (with an occasional glance at the moggies) or as music to fall asleep to.  Here’s their description:

Welcome to a world where modern jazz meets feline elegance. ✨

Melody Meowsic is an elegant modern jazz cat band bringing smooth, sophisticated sounds to every moment. Our music blends the warm tones of acoustic guitar, soulful saxophone, expressive piano, gentle soft drums, and deep upright bass into a beautifully relaxing experience. 🎹🎸🎷 🎶

From calm mornings and productive work sessions to cozy cafés, late nights, reading, studying, relaxing, or simply enjoying life — there’s always a place for our smooth jazz. 🎧

Premium sound. Cinematic visuals. Timeless melodies.
Every video is crafted with our highest commitment to audio and visual quality, creating an immersive lounge experience you can return to anytime.

You can go to the site by clicking on the link below. I’ll add two videos.

Yes, they’re not perfect (the music is sometimes out of synch with the cats’ playing, and the cats have human thumbs!), but imagine the work that went into videos like these.

Autumn jazz. Be sure to notice the cats in the audience:

Lakeside jazz:

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If you click on the link below, you’ll go to a Nice News article about a California couple with a wonderful dream, one that’s nearly fulfilled. They want to photograph every one of the forty species of wild felids on Earth,

An excerpt:

A married California couple has made it their mission to photograph all 40 wild cat species on Earth — and they only have one more to go. The stunning images serve to raise awareness about the animals, many of which are vulnerable or endangered.

So far, Sebastian Kennerknecht and Rachel Tobias have traveled to 33 countries across five continents and photographed 39 species in the Felidae family, often using camera traps in forests, deserts, and grasslands where the elusive cats roam.

The San Francisco-based duo has captured images of a cheetah in Tanzania, a tiger in India, and an ocelot in Panama. The only species they have yet to cross off the list is the northern oncilla, found in Central America. It’s a rarely seen animal, and one of smallest wild cats in the Americas.

Kennerknecht, 41, has been photographing cats since college: He studied ecology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to understand animals and became particularly interested in bobcats. Tobias, 37, grew up loving wildlife and was always drawn to the ocean and photography. The two met online, and they instantly connected over their love of nature. Fittingly, their first date was searching for bobcats.

This is a couple after my own heart.

In 2024, Kennerknecht realized he had photos of 30 of the world’s wild cats, so he and Tobias decided to go for the full 40. In addition to photography, the couple run cat expeditions together, taking out small groups to observe the felines in their natural habitat and learn how to photograph them.

They’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars through their work. One photo of a Borneo Bay cat brought in $120,000 for conservation efforts, and they collected around $70,000 per year for five years to protect lion species in Zambia’s Kafue National Park. They are partnered with Panthera, the world’s leading wild cat conservation organization.

. . .Kennerknecht told Talk to the Press that the couple’s work is “99% frustration and 1% joy,” noting that they’ve seen elephants crush their expensive camera traps, insects get into them, and humidity fog up lenses, rendering images unusable.

“We set up a studio in the forest,” Tobias explained, adding: “In Malaysia, we set up six traps; we had to sleep in the jungle full of bugs and carry 60 pounds of gear.”

Despite the project’s challenges, the couple is dedicated to ethical photography. They don’t use any bait or lures to attract the cats towards the cameras, so they can observe their natural behavior. “It’s much more successful for telling a story about the species,” said Tobias. “Telling a story between the viewer and the animal is really powerful for conservation.”

Here’s they are on the “pumapix” Instagram site, which documents their travels and pictures. The big cat conservation group Panthera is well worth supporting (I have done so).

Here’s a short video showing their travels and some photos and videos:

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There’s a new cat-related book that you might want to see, espcially if you have a literary bent: it’s called Great Writers and the Cats Who Owned Them by Susannah Fullerton (Amazon link here, where you can read a pretty long sample).

The Wall Street Journal has given it a positive review that you can see by clicking on the screenshot (if you have a subscription).

An excerpt:

Popular authors are often found lurking in the pages of newspapers—they publish excerpts of their books, write reviews and provide quotations. Sometimes they even place advertisements for their missing cats. When Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, lost track of a feline friend named Bambino in 1905, he wrote in to the New York American, urging readers to keep an eye out for “a distinguished looking cat” with “intensely black” and “velvety” fur. In the following days, hundreds of cats were delivered to Twain’s Manhattan residence by owners hoping to meet the novelist. The real Bambino, meanwhile, didn’t require chauffeuring; he eventually returned home of his own accord, unaware of the lengths to which humans had gone to retrieve him.

Bambino’s story is one of many amusing anecdotes recounted by Susannah Fullerton in “Great Writers and the Cats Who Owned Them,” a charming catalog of felines who have helped shape Western literature. Ms. Fullerton, a lecturer and literary historian, applies an impressive degree of scholarly precision to her subject matter, using the antics of cats such as Bambino to shed light on the private lives of authors ranging from Samuel Johnson and Robert Southey to Dorothy Sayers and Doris Lessing.

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Lagniappe: I saw this photo and caption on Facebook, but for the life of me I can’t find any other mention of these frustrated surveyors in Kansas. It may be “fake news”!

And reader Ginger K., who has contributed many items over the years for Caturday posts, has an announcement:

Today, Saturday, October 24, is my baby Stella’s birthday. She was born in a shelter, so her records contain her actual birth date.

I adopted Stella on July 4, 2023, from her original human mother. Mama had too many cats in her one-bedroom apartment. Not a hoarding situation, but Original Mama had eight cats and Stella was overwhelmed. Stella doesn’t like other cats. So she lives with me as my only cat.

Stella is a wonderful cat. She keeps me safe from bugs, is an attentive watch cat, and loves to sit in my lap.

I’ve attached a photo. Stella helps me make my bed, and she’s sitting on her favorite sheets.

Happy 13^th birthday, baby Stella!

Love,
New Mama

And a photo:

h/t: Barry, Peter N.