My ex sent me a link to this video by Will Braden. It is absolutely fantastic. I suppose sartre was a house cat in a previous life.... or was that a philosopher in a future life? I suppose it would all depend on which order you live your lives in?
Anyway, that's beside the point. I love this video. :-)
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Cat Documentary
Ever wonder where Laser cats hide out? I did. Until I got bored one day and decided to parachute into south east asia...
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Letters to Fred: Rattus Paineyassus
I think, my dear friend Fred, that what I am dealing with is a rat of singular audacity and intelligence. I am rapidly developing a deep respect for our furry little volunteer pet; a respect... yes indeed, but more so a rather alarming and disabling consternation with his latest means of eluding my traps. This little shit is so smart I truly hate to get heavy and exterminate his impudent little ass. On the other hand, if allowed to breed this smart-ass rodent would likely father (or mother) a hoard of other smart-asses of such intellectual endowment that I am certain they would vie for supremacy of the earth with the likes of machine gun totting communists dogs, and cats with thumbs.
Brazen as any goth girl jiggling bare, nipple taped breasts as she bounces her way down wall street in the noon day sun grinning with a secret smirk, that, only she knows comes from the financial success of her risque website, and the financial death of her alcoholic, spouse abusing, home mortgage day trading father -- our house guest out maneuvered my 'sure thing' placement of traps with the simplest of gestures.
The SVP (smart-ass volunteer pet) walked into the kitchen for a drink of water, perched on the cat's water dish, and started lapping away. I was seated at the kitchen table directly across the room from the water dish working on a pictorial essay about teleporting cats, and got quite an eyeful of the SVP. I have no idea where the cats were at that time.
I jumped up and chased the SVP under a cabinet next to the stove. Unlikely as it sounds, this was not merely a fortuitous turn of events for me. There are only two exits from that hiding place putting the SVP in a nearly (so I thought) untenable position. One the one side there is a small hole which is so tightly overhung by bottom edge of the cabinet that the crafty critter could not this time avoid the sticky traps by by simply jumping over them. I used multiple traps anyway... just in case. The only other way to exit is to go to the opposite side of the cabinet and crawl under the stove. I set the oven on broil (he, he) to try and limit his means of escaped and lined more sticky traps on the floor in front of the oven in case there was an attempt to run off before the oven got hot. Feeling that I was master of the situation by virtue of my larger more 'intelligent' brain, I went back to work on my essay, oozing only a modicum of smugness into the air. Honest, it was only a small amount. And smugness as we all know is a green gas.
Ha!
Did I notice when the SVP slipped out of the kitchen? No.
I did however notice when one of the cats reappeared and started chasing the little bugger down the hallway and into the day room. I was so convinced that my traps were fool-proof that I immediately started laughing and groaning about having a second Rattus Paineyassus in the house. It's not that I don't appreciate it when the cats decide to 'share the love' but this was really starting to feel like they were motivated more by the entertainment possibilities of having two rats than any desire to connect with me on a tender emotional level. So I checked the sticky traps next to the cabinet... to see just how many cat toys I had to deal with under the cabinet and stove, and well.... everywhere.
This is when I got the shock. Our resident SVP had quietly, and without fuss, push my array of sticky traps aside, clearing a no fuss path to freedom. I hadn't even noticed that this rodent savant had gone. I understood that the SVP recognized that the traps were traps... but who figures that an animal with the brain capacity of a pinto bean is capable of learning which parts of the trap are safe to grab onto when they need to... hmmmm, rearrange the furniture. Yes, that's all it was to this mangy little einstein. Furniture. They were only traps to me. The cats had avoided them from day one. What can I do? I can't expect any help from them. If fact I'm convinced at this point that they have found their new toy to be so much fun that they are being careful not to break it.
What do you think,
should we give it a name?
-m
PS.....
UPDATE! UPDATE!
A new development in the war on rattus paineyassus.
Having been so successfully slapped in the face by the little critter, it felt wrong to mention I was working feverishly on a devious (and secret) master plan to befuddle, and ensnare the furball so swiftly and securely that hordes of lesser SVPs for generations to come would be singing a tail of woe and warning to the children in their nests every night. The fact that I also considered my plan to be simple and stupid had nothing to do with my failure to mention it. Secrecy was key.
I would allow the rat to get cocky and make a mistake.
It didn't take long.
About five minutes after I started writing this, I heard a scuffle in the day room. Were the cats finally going at it with full grapples and wall thudding flings of their toy? I ran in to see what was happening. Tabby was over by the end of the couch peering intently into the small waste basket which, to the untrained eye, appeared to be shifting its contents around all by itself. Being a veteran of the adventures of more than a few escaped toys, I recognized the golden opportunity, fitting it neatly into my master plan. I rustled the top of the waste to alert the SVP of it's need to go and hide on the bottom of the basket, away from my tender fingers. I then picked up the basket, carried it outside, and dumped it unceremoniously on the lawn.
Out popped the SVP (now downgraded I suppose to being simply a smartass), and hopped as nonchalantly as anything that hops, can hop, into the cover of the flower bed. What can I say? The thing is alive, and much more experienced than before. But I just couldn't kill it. Who knows. Perhaps in year to come the climate change escalates to the point that we can set our watches by the daily-2:15PM-monsoon-hailstorm-and-tornado, and the bombs start dropping as people start scrambling for food and other handy natural resources, perhaps then, when the cockroach population overwhelms the surface of this planet, some distant descendent of our dear old SVP will rise up and devour all those fucking roaches.
Brazen as any goth girl jiggling bare, nipple taped breasts as she bounces her way down wall street in the noon day sun grinning with a secret smirk, that, only she knows comes from the financial success of her risque website, and the financial death of her alcoholic, spouse abusing, home mortgage day trading father -- our house guest out maneuvered my 'sure thing' placement of traps with the simplest of gestures.
The SVP (smart-ass volunteer pet) walked into the kitchen for a drink of water, perched on the cat's water dish, and started lapping away. I was seated at the kitchen table directly across the room from the water dish working on a pictorial essay about teleporting cats, and got quite an eyeful of the SVP. I have no idea where the cats were at that time.
I jumped up and chased the SVP under a cabinet next to the stove. Unlikely as it sounds, this was not merely a fortuitous turn of events for me. There are only two exits from that hiding place putting the SVP in a nearly (so I thought) untenable position. One the one side there is a small hole which is so tightly overhung by bottom edge of the cabinet that the crafty critter could not this time avoid the sticky traps by by simply jumping over them. I used multiple traps anyway... just in case. The only other way to exit is to go to the opposite side of the cabinet and crawl under the stove. I set the oven on broil (he, he) to try and limit his means of escaped and lined more sticky traps on the floor in front of the oven in case there was an attempt to run off before the oven got hot. Feeling that I was master of the situation by virtue of my larger more 'intelligent' brain, I went back to work on my essay, oozing only a modicum of smugness into the air. Honest, it was only a small amount. And smugness as we all know is a green gas.
Ha!
Did I notice when the SVP slipped out of the kitchen? No.
I did however notice when one of the cats reappeared and started chasing the little bugger down the hallway and into the day room. I was so convinced that my traps were fool-proof that I immediately started laughing and groaning about having a second Rattus Paineyassus in the house. It's not that I don't appreciate it when the cats decide to 'share the love' but this was really starting to feel like they were motivated more by the entertainment possibilities of having two rats than any desire to connect with me on a tender emotional level. So I checked the sticky traps next to the cabinet... to see just how many cat toys I had to deal with under the cabinet and stove, and well.... everywhere.
This is when I got the shock. Our resident SVP had quietly, and without fuss, push my array of sticky traps aside, clearing a no fuss path to freedom. I hadn't even noticed that this rodent savant had gone. I understood that the SVP recognized that the traps were traps... but who figures that an animal with the brain capacity of a pinto bean is capable of learning which parts of the trap are safe to grab onto when they need to... hmmmm, rearrange the furniture. Yes, that's all it was to this mangy little einstein. Furniture. They were only traps to me. The cats had avoided them from day one. What can I do? I can't expect any help from them. If fact I'm convinced at this point that they have found their new toy to be so much fun that they are being careful not to break it.
What do you think,
should we give it a name?
-m
PS.....
UPDATE! UPDATE!
A new development in the war on rattus paineyassus.
Having been so successfully slapped in the face by the little critter, it felt wrong to mention I was working feverishly on a devious (and secret) master plan to befuddle, and ensnare the furball so swiftly and securely that hordes of lesser SVPs for generations to come would be singing a tail of woe and warning to the children in their nests every night. The fact that I also considered my plan to be simple and stupid had nothing to do with my failure to mention it. Secrecy was key.
I would allow the rat to get cocky and make a mistake.
It didn't take long.
About five minutes after I started writing this, I heard a scuffle in the day room. Were the cats finally going at it with full grapples and wall thudding flings of their toy? I ran in to see what was happening. Tabby was over by the end of the couch peering intently into the small waste basket which, to the untrained eye, appeared to be shifting its contents around all by itself. Being a veteran of the adventures of more than a few escaped toys, I recognized the golden opportunity, fitting it neatly into my master plan. I rustled the top of the waste to alert the SVP of it's need to go and hide on the bottom of the basket, away from my tender fingers. I then picked up the basket, carried it outside, and dumped it unceremoniously on the lawn.
Out popped the SVP (now downgraded I suppose to being simply a smartass), and hopped as nonchalantly as anything that hops, can hop, into the cover of the flower bed. What can I say? The thing is alive, and much more experienced than before. But I just couldn't kill it. Who knows. Perhaps in year to come the climate change escalates to the point that we can set our watches by the daily-2:15PM-monsoon-hailstorm-and-tornado, and the bombs start dropping as people start scrambling for food and other handy natural resources, perhaps then, when the cockroach population overwhelms the surface of this planet, some distant descendent of our dear old SVP will rise up and devour all those fucking roaches.
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