Tag: cats

Sunday Stealing: Animal Questions

Ogden Nash

This week’s Sunday Stealing is Animal Questions from WTIT: The Blog.

 

1. If animals could talk, which one do you think would complain the most about their day?

Bee drones. “They don’t do much in the hive as they wait to mate with a queen bee from another colony. That means they are eating resources and taking up space. When the colony starts getting ready for winter, the worker bees, all female, kick the drones out. Sometimes, it’s swift, and I will find their stung dead bodies in the front of the hive.”

 

2. What do you think cats dream about during their epic naps?

An endless supply of food.

 

3. If squirrels organized an Olympics, what events would they have?

A decathlon, perhaps augmented. Surely, they can run, long jump, high jump, jump hurdles…

 

4. Do you think penguins are jealous of birds that can fly?

No, because they feel grounded. After all, they evolved from flighted birds.  Seriously, I worry about penguins because per Smithsonian: “The research suggests that the tuxedo-wearing waddlers might struggle to adapt to and survive the planet’s current rate of global warming.”

 

5. If animals had their own social media, what kind of posts would we see from them?

I’ve been fascinated by the Simon and Garfunkel song At The Zoo, which I wrote about here. It’d be just as annoying as the human variety.

 

6. What would be the title of the autobiography of a lazy house cat?

Caterwauling to Right Living

 

7. If you had to choose an animal to be your personal bodyguard, which one would you pick?
A panther: quick and strong, like the late T’Challa.
Loyal canines
8. Do you think dogs secretly judge us for not being able to sniff out everything they can?

Absolutely not. Dogs have evolved into being people pleasers. They like to be helpful, like Presbyterians.

 

9. If animals could wear clothes, which would have the best fashion sense?

I suppose I should ask someone from the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals or SINA, who require clothing for “any dog, cat, horse or cow that stands higher than 4 inches or longer than 6 inches.”  Racehorses already wear colors, so I’ll go with them. It wouldn’t be penguins or peacocks who are naturally snazzy. On a serious note, when it’s 110F (43.3C), as it was in Phoenix, AZ, for a month straight, it’s dangerous for dog paws. 

 

10. If a group of owls started a band, what would their music style be?

The choices are two. One is obvious: a hootenanny. The other is funk; since a gathering of owls is a parliament, I suggest they would emulate Parliament Funkadelic.

 

11. What do dolphins think when people swim with them?

The serious answer is that the interaction may benefit humans. However, “Dolphins… are wild animals, and human interaction can be detrimental.  Getting into a tank with a dolphin is theoretically no different than getting into a cage with a lion. Dolphins are apex predators and have the capability of killing a shark.”  So, it’s generally a bad idea and unethical, especially when they are in captivity.

 

12. What do you think squirrels gossip about when they chatter to each other in the trees?
The location of food, dogs, and traffic; the site of the Olympic tryouts.
Pink Floyd
13. If elephants played hide-and-seek, where do you think they’d hide?

In plain sight, trying to pretend to be a wall.

 

14. What do you imagine a llama would say if you asked it about the meaning of life?

Llamas have attitude, so they’d probably ask why you bother them with such a silly question.

 

The Lama – Ogden Nash

The one-l lama,
He's a priest.
The two-l llama,
He's a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn't any
Three-l lllama.
15. If you could swap places with any animal for a day, which one would it be, and why?
A cheetah, because being the fastest land animal in the world sounds cool.

Changing up the morning ritual

Quordle

Daily Quordle #51
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I’ve been changing up the morning ritual in the past, lessee, two years. Formerly, I would get up, check the email, and perhaps work on the blog, But at 7 a.m., my wife and I would go downstairs and watch CBS This Morning, now CBS Mornings, to watch “your world in ninety seconds.”

When the headlines were unrelentingly about COVID – the spread of COVID, the death toll of COVID – I sometimes passed on the opportunity to start my day with misery. Presently, I’ve been feeling similarly about Ukraine. I guess I’m more equipped to deal with distress in the evening. Besides, I tend to get enough news from various news outlets during the day.

Instead, I do the daily Wordle. I should note that my wife is MUCH better at this than I am, just as she’s better at Boggle. My daughter is better, too. Wordle has become an odd family bonding experience.

I’ve repeatedly told my wife she’d rule on Wheel of Fortune. We actually have the home game, a consolation prize from when on JEOPARDY! and our comparative scores prove my point. But at least we all still have our Wordle streaks going, unlike some people.

FOUR words

Then I attempt Quordle. The first several times I never got the four words in the nine tries. My mistake was to work it like I played Wordle. I know now to try to expose as many letters by finding three or even four words that hit most of the consonants. I’ve been much more successful.

After wishing my wife goodbye, I go back into the office. The cats want to be fed. I HAD been giving them nourishment at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. But with the stupid time change, if I attend them at 7 and 7, when we “fall back”, they’d be caterwauling to get food at 6 and 6.

This is just one reason that I’m OK with the idea of changing to permanent Daylight Saving Time, even though it’ll be dark on December mornings. I’ve made my feelings about changing the clocks quite clear here. (I’m essentially agreeing with  Marco Rubio; this pains me.)

After finally feeding the felines, I take my blood pressure and my pulse to make sure I’m not dead. THEN I eat. The rest is the usual alternating of email/blogging to music, riding the stationary bike while watching TV (JEOPARDY, 60 Minutes, Finding Your Roots, Trevor Noah, et al), washing the dishes/reading the newspaper to music. This may be altered by a medical appointment, Bible study, grocery shopping, or the eternal “something else,” that unexpected task that sucks up hours in the day.

Lydster: Midnight and Stormy

Aaron Copland

We have two cats. While they are both about seven years old, Midnight, the male black feline, is a few months older than Stormy, the female grayish one. And he is clearly the alpha beast.

This has created a problem of Midnight being overweight, and seeing them at mealtime explained why. Each of them receives a quarter can of wet food. Midnight devours this as though he had never been fed ever before. Left to his own devices, he’d bump Stormy out of the way and eat her food as well. Yes, one could stop him from stealing her food. But how do we slow him down?

Our daughter found this rolly-polly little feeder with a hole near the bottom. It sort of looks likes a tiny version of Arthur’s pet composting device, actually. Midnight’s job is to knock the device around and the kibble would come out of the hole. Meanwhile, someone would take Stormy’s half-eaten bowl of wet food and place it in a location where she could get it but he would not find it.

This is a twice-daily ritual at 7:30 Daylight Saving Time, 6:30 during Standard Time. I feed them in the morning because my wife is off to work. Our daughter feeds them at night, although she sometimes has to be reminded to leave the cave that is her bedroom.

Don’t mess with Midnightus

Midnight is quite hostile to most other human beings. He actually gets along with our contractor. He is civil enough to my daughter’s friend Kay that she can feed them while we’ve been away. But don’t take his tolerance of you as acceptance. My friend Uthaclena made the mistake of petting him, and Midnight’s claws came out. My MIL is terrified of him, as are others.

When we had inspectors visit our home for a loan, our daughter put them both in her room. Stormy wouldn’t hurt anyone, but she is terrified of strangers. One catsitter a few years back was afraid that she somehow escaped the house. Nah, she was just hiding, and she does it well.

Midnight can be quite affectionate to us. He’ll even let me put him up if I scratch under his chin before bolting. Stormy comes to people on her own terms, rubbing her body against my leg. She’ll sit on her laps if SHE feels like it.

We initially got the cats because our daughter wanted them. But my wife and I have grown rather attached to them, in spite of ourselves.

Here’s William Warfield, performing Aaron Copland’s song I Bought Me A Cat, with the composer conducting.

Movie review -Kedi (Nine Lives: Cats in Istanbul)

“I grew up in Istanbul and I believe my childhood was infinitely less lonesome than it would have been if it weren’t for cats.”

For the Daughter’s birthday recently, her mother and I took her and her friend to the Spectrum Theatre to see the documentary Kedi. From the description:

“Hundreds of thousands of cats roam the streets of Istanbul, free, without a human master, as they have for thousands of years. They wander in and out of people’s lives, affecting them in ways only an animal who lives between the worlds of the wild and the tamed can… Cats are such an important part of the city’s personality that everyone who grows up in Istanbul or lives there has a story about a cat—stories that are memorable, sometimes scary, sometimes spiritual, but always very personal. Istanbul-born director Ceyda Torun, in her debut, has created a heartfelt love letter to both cats and the beautiful city of Istanbul…”

Watching this movie, one can gets all philosophical about life. Should cats be owned? (And as someone with two cats, one doubts that they CAN be.)

What is abundantly clear is that taking care of the cats and their kittens bring joy and even healing to those people of Istanbul who are in their lives. These humans more aware of life and their place in it than the average American. “Cats are the mirrors to ourselves.”

The citizens fret that with greater number of sterile highways and high-rises, the very nature of the city will be irreparably altered for the worse, not just for the felines but for the people as well. An apartment-dwelling cats using a litter box are nothing like the street cats.

The director wrote: “I grew up in Istanbul and I believe my childhood was infinitely less lonesome than it would have been if it weren’t for cats – and I wouldn’t be the person I am today. They were my friends and confidants and I missed their presence in all the other cities I ever lived in. This film is, in many ways, a love letter to those cats and the city, both of which are changing in ways that are unpredictable.”

Kedi works in achieving its modest goals. Here’s the trailer.

Cat food

I have to feed Midnight in the back of the kitchen first.

catsI suppose I should use the fact that I have cats for greater blogging opportunities.

For the first year together, Midnight and Stormy used to fight all of the time, so this picture of them together represents a sea change. Not that they don’t fight occasionally, or, truthfully, nearly daily, but they have learned to tolerate each other.

We’re convinced that they spend a good deal of time on the dining room table, based on their insistence on trying to climb up there when we’re home. This bothers The Wife more than me, but I feign my outrage.

The cats’ mealtime is a ritual. In the morning, one of them would come up to my room, scratch on the door, or come in and talk to us. Or more correctly, me. I have to feed Midnight in the back of the kitchen first, then Stormy in the front. Invariably, after a few minutes, Midnight, though his bowl was not empty, would start eating from Stormy’s bowl, and she would walk away.

When they go down to the basement, or up to the attic, we used to be able to wrangle the felines by shaking a bag of cat treats. This still works on Midnight, but Stormy is no longer lured by them. OK, so she stays up there/down there until she gets bored, or, more likely, hungry.

LISTEN to Cat Food – King Crimson.

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