14 posts tagged “cats”
Here are some pictures of the new furniture in the living and dining rooms, finally! I just completely rearranged the furniture in the living room so was motivated to take pictures.
First, the dining table, complete with naughty kitty taking a nap on top
Here's a closeup of the buffet:
Now the living room. I moved the couch to create kind of a boundary between the dining area and living area. Now it faces the piano. This is now the view when you enter the room:
Here's the couch from the other side:
Ten days ago, literally at the moment at which I was coming down with the flu, Crate and Barrel delivered a new, non-defective hallway cabinet. I didn't have a chance to take a picture of it until tonight, when I saw Ulysses adopting it as a new place to sleep. (One problem with not having much furniture is that the kitties kind of have a shortage of sleeping places right now, so they find them where they can.)
I haven't figured out yet what I should put in the drawers, though.
One drawback of Ulysses sleeping on it is now there is cat hair all over the top...
who HAVE NO IDEA THEIR WORLD IS ABOUT TO TURN UPSIDE DOWN, OH, NOOOOO!!!
This video is so me and Ulysses at 6am just about every morning...
I don't reveal any major plot points but don't read this if you want HP7 to be a complete, unblemished surprise.
Since I finished HP7 on Monday, I've been reading the forums on Amazon and Slate, and have therefore expanded my knowledge of the trivia of the HP universe. There is more to the universe than the books, apparently. JK Rowling wrote another couple of small books (one about Quidditch, one about magical beasts) and also leaks details in online chats and interviews and on her website.
(By the way, for those who say she needs an editor, on her website she constantly complains that her editor makes her cut stuff. So, in other words, this is how she writes WITH an editor. Imagine what she's like WITHOUT an editor!)
Anyway, I found out some interesting stuff about Crookshanks, Hermione's familiar. In the book about magical creatures, JKR revealed the existence of a magical beast: a Kneazle. A Kneazle is like a cat, but smarter, more independent, and very good at detecting the difference between good and evil. Later, in an interview, JKR revealed that, not surprisingly, Crookshanks is part Kneazle. (Kneazles can interbreed with regular cats, apparently.)
That alone would explain why Crookshanks, alone of everybody in HP3, recognizes immediately that Scabbers, Ron's rat, is not to be trusted (he is really Wormtail, one of Voldemort's servants), but that the big black dog hanging around Hogwarts (who is really Sirius Black) is. But in HP7, we learn, almost as an aside, that the Potters had a cat at the time that Voldemort killed James and Lily. The cat (rather sensibly) disappeared subsequently.
Since the book came out a week ago, there has been what Wikipedia describes as a strong consensus that the Potters' cat is Crookshanks, who ran away, was a stray for 10-11 years, and then got picked up by the store that sells familiars. (In HP3, he is apparently described as having been there for a while before Hermione chooses him.) And therefore the reason he knows the relative merits of Wormtail and Sirius Black is that he had already met them personally.
(In which case, you think he could have somehow tipped off James and Lily that Wormtail was not to be trusted as their Secret-Keeper. But then we wouldn't have had a series.)
Other tidbits I learned:
- Hermione's Patronus is an otter. An otter is apparently part of the weasel family, and the connection with Weasley is obvious. JKR has already said that she named the Weasley family after weasels, and that the otter is her favorite animal.
- In Britain in the 30s, the National Socialist League, a group supporting Hitler, received financial backing from a stockbroker, who later changed his mind and cut them out of his will, leading to the group's demise. His name? Scrimgeour.
I made a Petsmart/Target run today for household goods (making my contribution to PCE growth in July--that's a Fed joke). Wow, it is kitten season! Cat's Cradle had several cages and there were at least a dozen kittens:
Plus, there was another shelter outside the store and they ALSO had kittens!
Last night, as I was walking home, I came across a cat. I often see cats in my neighborhood, both strays or indoor/outdoor cats. This one was different. She appeared to be a kitten (about six months old was my guess). She also seemed to be a purebred Abyssinian. She had no collar.
Two possibilities crossed my mind:
- She had insane owners, who, after spending hundreds of dollars on an Abyssinian kitten, let her go outside freely without at least a collar. But it meant I should just leave her alone.
- She had gotten out accidentally, which struck me as more likely (since I don't let my cats go outside), which meant I should take her home, and put up flyers around the neighborhood.
It was tricky getting her inside. I brought her into the front hallway, then unlocked the door. Ulysses, unfortunately, had heard my key and was waiting just inside the door. He therefore immediately came face to face with an INTRUDER CAT, which totally freaked him out and sent him zooming up the stairs with his tail poofed out.
(Ulysses, by the way, has never in his life set eyes on a cat besides his mother, his littermates, and Persephone.)
I whisked Iphigenia (the name is a family joke) up the stairs and into my downstairs bathroom. Ulysses hovered outside for quite a while:
Then I made flyers:
SIX-MONTH-OLD ABYSSINIAN KITTEN
NO COLLAR OR TAG
VERY FRIENDLY
FOUND FRIDAY EVENING ON D ST. SE, BETWEEN 11TH AND 12TH
IF YOURS, PLEASE CALL xxx-xxx-xxxx (cell)
and put them up over a two-block radius from where I found her.
At one point, when I checked on her, she slipped out and came face to face with both of the other cats. MUCH hissing and growling from all three. I was able to wrap her up in a blanket and put her back in.
Later that evening, I corralled Persephone and Ulysses into my bedroom and let Iphigenia out of the bathroom to play (she was complaining about being locked in there):
But my phone rang at 9am this morning. Turns out a nice older couple down the street from me missed her coming home last night, got worried and made their own flyers this morning, and when they went out to put them up, found mine and called me right away. The husband, Francis, who came to pick her up, said Ruffie (which is her real name) has caused them no end of trouble. She has already had to be rescued four or five times out of trees. She has gotten into the neighbors' houses. She is also, of course, SUPPOSED to wear a collar but is always getting it off. She is also very friendly to everyone and escorts the children of the neighborhood going to school.
She is, in fact, a purebred Abyssinian, and most astonishingly, he told me she was two years old! She is half the size of Persephone and Ulysses (big, clunky mongrels that they are), so I just assumed she was a kitten, which was really the main factor that made me "rescue" her.
(Most breeders and shelters these days want adopters to keep their cats inside. But when I said gently to Francis "Didn't the breeder say anything about keeping her inside?", he gave me a blank look.)
So now I feel guilty for making them worry (although I still think they're insane for letting her go outside...). And, more importantly, am I turning into a crazy cat lady? Isn't this how it starts? Rescuing cats that need to be rescued? Next thing you know I will have twenty cats in my apartment and will be bankrupting myself to buy pet food and kitty litter...
For anyone who has ever hung around kittens of a certain age, this is hilarious...
Sometimes I'm afraid this blog is turning into "Highlights of Cute Overload."
But then they post something like this that is SO CUTE YOUR HEAD MIGHT EXPLODE! I HAVE TO LINK TO IT!
Look at it carefully! I missed the cute part the first time I looked at it; it was lost in all the orange!
The kittencam unfortunately seemed to be down today. But I went to the website and saw they had posted a wonderful picture of all seven kittens together with their father. It's hard to get seven kittens to all look at the camera at the same time. Three of them are making some vague attempt to look at the camera but the other four are totally distracted. The father is probably thinking "What are these annoying little things that keep trying to play with me?" Male cats are not know for being involved fathers.
According to the web page, four of the kittens have been reserved, one has an "option", one is still available, and one is staying with the cattery (a female, I notice. Is she being kept for breeding?). They are about nine weeks old now, so the sold ones will be leaving in just a few weeks!
Update (4/1): The photo's been taken down! :( I can't tell if all the kittens have left yet. I haven't seen them on the kittencam lately, though.
