Cats

Weekend Cat Blogging #70: Cat in a Box

This weekend's hosts, Boots, Tess and D at The Hidden Paw, have challenged us to produce Cat-in-a-Box submissions for WCB 70. That's not too hard for us, as Luna is quite fond of boxes:

In the photo above, she is caught in the act of chewing on pieces of her favorite box from Ikea. This is one of her guilty pleasures in life.

Here, we have Luna encountering an Amazon box in the hallway. I wonder how that got there…


Visit the round-up for more adorable pictures of cats in boxes, bags, and other sundry containers.








Weekend Cat Blogging #69

WCB 69 is being hosted by the crew over at The House of (Mostly) Black Cats. We at catsynth heartily approve of the black-cat concept, and encourage readers to check it out.

Meanwhile, things continue to be foggy, grey and a bit chilly on the California coast, but that doesn't keep Luna from surveying her domain:

I have another gig coming up tonight that I need to prepare for, with electronics and simple acoustic instruments. Luna of course is in the studio to help with the equipment:







Weekend Cat Blogging #68: Luna and Cats of India

This week, chefsarahjane hosts again. We wish her a happy birthday, and say hi to Tiggy as well. Do visit them and check out this week's round-up.

Meanwhile, Luna poses with Ganesh for our special WCB feature on Cats of India:

Inspired by masak-masak's street cats from last week's round-up here at catsynth.com, I present a few cat photos from my trip to India last winter. We begin with this feline and bovine duo from my father's hometown north of Delhi:

As many readers are probably aware, cows are considered sacred in Hindu culture, and a family cow is treated in many ways as a prized pet. Cats in India don't quite have the same status. Not only do most Indians not consider them as appropriate pets, but some also regard them in a suspicious, even superstitious manner (as have many cultures throughout history, sadly). Thus, most cats are street animals that generally must fend for themselves. As many of us know, cats are supurb hunters and scavengers, so many do manage. I tended to see cats near food establishments, this near-white cat was wandering the dining area of a dormitory in Delhi we stayed at for a couple of nights, begging for scraps (which I of course provided). The grey-striped fellow in the photo below managed to find a good location at the cantina in one of heavily touristed palaces in the city of Jaipur. That probably accounts for its more healthy appearance:

I did come across this article from IndiaTimes that discusses the state of cats in Indian society. Unfortunately, the HTML seems to have come thru as plain text, which makes it difficult to read.

Ultimately, I plan to create a photo-essay featuring these and other photos/videos from my trip.







Weekend Cat Blogging 67 Roundup

Well, it's time to get started with the great WCB 67 roundup!

To start things off on the music theme, here's a repost of Luna bedding down next to one of my MIDI keyboards – this was featured on the inaugural post of this forum:

Thanks to everyone who has submitted so far, and also for the many kind words about Luna and this site. Keep 'em coming, and I'll keep updating throughout the weekend. Just submit a comment at the WCB #67 call. Links back to this site are also appreciated ;-).

First off, we have KuDin and Siri joining WCB for the first time. Siri is looking quite relaxed on the rug.

Mr. Mao aspires to be a feline TV star (or a feline celebrity stalker) over at Kross-Eyed Kitty.

Upsie at “What Did you Eat?” reminds us that long hair and autumn leaves are a dangerous combination. Parents beware!

I love those little black girl kitties, like Aretha Franklin over at Miss Ellie's Page. That's what Luna must've been like as baby. Such a sweetie! I really hope someone gives her a nice home.

cooknkate gives us some Mimi chillin' out in the ironing room. If you ever visit, be prepared to share your guest quarters.

Over at chefsarahjane, the adorable Tiggy shows off her toys. Play, nap, play, be cute,…If only we could all lead her existence…

Jelly gives us some extreeeme closeups of Kamikaze. Apparently, he hasn't been in the best of moods lately.

Columbus Foodie introduced Frankie and Sammy in their first WCB appearance. Looks like Frankie's got the prime spot in the bedroom, at least for the moment…

Anne at Anne's Food gives us the adorable pair Glinda and Kelly contemplating a spider. I'm imagining the classic Odd Couple theme playing in the background here…

Over at passionatenonchalance, babaganoosh reminds us just how tiring it can be to play with ribbons. Believe me, I know, I've tried it.

More classic themesongs come to mind as Trixie and Colin at The Westering Hills reenact a scene from Rocky. Ouch, kids, round over!

Bonus points to Taboo over at jellypizza for choosing a speaker as a hiding place. I'm with you on hiding from meds, Taboo, but speakers can be dangerous hiding places, especially if your humans have any Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera CDs…

Over at Rosa's Yummy Yums, we have Fridolin and Maruschka lying together in their basket, or “two lazy sausages” as Rosa puts it. Makes me feel all warm and sleepy just watching…sleeeeepy…

…today was a beautifully warm September day here (unlike yesterday), so I spent much of the afternoon outdoors. The outdoors felt especially welcome after being stuck sick indoors so much the last few days. A short walk out the ocean, followed by a relaxing couple of hours in the backyard, reading and whatnot…I'm now back inside for the sunset, and time to get back our cat blogging roundup…

From masak-masak, we have several street cats, who appear to be doing well thanks to the Malaysian fondness for felines. It's great to see a culture that loves cats. This is also a self-reminder to write a photo-article for this blog about the cats I encountered in India last winter.

Mr. Neelix and Sinda are a veritable yin & yang, enjoying a moment of perfect harmony in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, courtesy of Tina at A Blip on the Radar. Just look at the way they're eyeing each other, though. You know something pretty serious is about to go down…

From Cin at “A Few of My Favorite Things”, we have a very regal Bella being served a fine meal as she surveys her domain…um, are you going to eat that?

Extreme cuteness alert! Feline Foster Mom Ellen presents an irresistable pair of young kittens from the CASPCA in Charlottesville, VA. Do check them out as well as the other kitties available for adoption, especially if you're in the Charlottesville area. That is some great photography – family photographers who have to deal with unruly kids, take notice.

Cats are experts at finding new comfy places to sleep, and Lucky is no exception, as Riana at “These Days in French Life” shows us.

farmgirl presents an installment in the riveting drama Hot Dog vs. Parched Pussycast. I guess we'll have to check back in to find out what happens next. Please also visit The Wild Animal Sanctuary, they still need support for the efforts to help (formerly) captive wild animals in the U.S.

Molly curls into a cashew and purrs while Kaji's Mom attempts to do her blogging. I know, I can't resist that tummy, either.

Heather tells us about the wet weather in the hill country of Texas. More poignantly, however, she dearly misses her kitty Spooks who was hit by car this past week. Our thoughts are with them both.

Well, at this moment there's about five minutes left on the weekend, at least where I'm sitting (which is on the couch). I will continue to post any entries I receive through Monday morning.

Thanks to all who contributed. It has been great fun hosting Weekend Cat Blogging, and should the opportunity come around Luna and I would happily do so again.

Good night!





Sick days, the mighty hunter and "this hole in the ground"

I've been a little under the weather the last couple of days. Actually, more than a little. Mostly just resting and recuperation, with Luna?s help, of course. That is, when she?s not too busy looking out the window or hunting bugs, which she spent a lot of time doing yesterday and today. There was one large fly in the window that she became quite obsessed with, tracking it and swatting. Took a while for the mighty hunter to finally catch her quarry.

I did read some more from Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas (which I briefly discussed in an earlier post). I would like to share some interesting thoughts from that as soon as I feel up to the task.

Of course, one can?t spend the entire time on intellectual pursuits, however recreational; so Luna and I also caught up on some DVDs:

I pretty much use the TV as a DVD viewer, I don?t have any television service. So I?m not really up on either current popular programs, nor what?s going on in TV and cable news. Aside from the occasional good drama that I can rent on DVD anyway, it doesn?t seem like I?m missing much, especially when it comes to television news. However, TV news does intrude into other domains however, for example, I found several references online to this commentary by Keith Olbermann. As a follow up to my [post from a few days ago], I provide the following quote which mirrors not only what I have been thinking with frustration not only about the big empty space in New York, but about what happened (or failed to happen) politically in the past few years:

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

I strongly recommend reading or viewing the whole article in its entirety.

Like I said, I'm pretty out of it when I comes to TV and cable news personalities, so I'm reading a lot of this for the first time. Seems like he?s a bit of an anti-O?Reilly but a bit more civilized. His recent commentaries have earned him a fair amount of praise at several internet outlets that I read; but not surprisingly a lot of flak from the right. He even has his own anti-fan site, though who doesn't these days?.

I'm also curious about this whole “worst person in the world” thing…does he take suggestions?

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Thoughts on last night's performance

In this article I review my performance last night at the plug:dos headphone festival in San Francisco.

First, the venue itself. 5lowershop is in a warehouse near the junction of highways 280 and 101 in San Francisco. It’s at the edge of the Bernal Heights neighborhood.


The venue and its surroundings have that seedy edge-of-the-city feel that I probably wouldn’t want to live in but nonetheless often find intriguing and romantic. It’s just another part of the quintessentially “modern” world.

The interior matches the exterior, a jumble of areas within the warehouse, including the main performance area. The space is quite porous with the outside, and I noticed several cats wander though, including the grey fellow and a small black-and-white kitten. They were presumably feral cats attracted by the warmth, activity and possibility of food. Feral cats are an inevitable part of urban environments, but it’s still heartbreaking to see them this way. I was also concerned for them because of the dogs that were present, fortunately the dogs seemed to be pets and quite mellow.

The atmosphere of people crowded in a warehouse listening to headphones was quite unusual to say the least. Some of the performances were quite interesting, including a serinate for voice and hammer-dulcimer, and of course several acts mixing guitar, analog synthesizers and turntable. The analog synths didn’t strike me as a good fit for headphone performance, and thus avoided them myself (as described in my article on the preparation), but they did a good job of keeping the sound within a reasonable range.

Despite the best efforts of the organizers, whom I liked and thought did a good job overall, things tended to run rather late, and I ended up going on 9:40PM, two hours after my scheduled performance. But I think it went well musically, pretty much meeting my expectations for mixing ambient and rhythmic/punctuated material while keeping things mellow for the headphones. I did bounce around and repeat elements more than I expected, but such is the nature of improvisation, reacting as things unfold.

The equipment (Dell Laptop, Emulator X, E-MU 1616m, E-MU Xboard 25) performed flawlessly. I did make a direct recording on the laptop, and will be posting that shortly. I am also planning to make that the first release in my planned podcast series.

UPDATE: you can now listen to the audio from this performance. Enjoy!

Weekend Cat Blogging #65: Luna in stained glass then and now

WCB this week is being hosted by Bonnie Loves Cats, featuring Darlin' Darla, a purebred Himalayan kitty who is available for adoption in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Last August (2005), I got a great shot of Luna basking in the light from our stained glass window:

This is one of the images featured on my Art Photography page, which definitely needs to be updated with some recent (and not so recent) selections.

This August, I managed to get a shot of her in nearly the same spot by the window again:

It's amazing to see how she's grown up in a year. But she'll always be a kitten to me.




Cats after the war

This photo from the Haifa-based Israeli Cat-Lovers Society is an interesting juxtaposition of cats and the recent war:

In Lebanon, BETA continues its work in the suburbs of Beirut:

We stayed with them and we will never leave them. They are those who cannot speak, those who cannot comprehend what is happening around them, those who never had anything to do with this war, and those who were left behind.

While this forum and others have referenced efforts to rescue and care for pets on both sides of the conflict, the following AP article suggests that there is little or no cooperation between groups on either side:

More, the Israeli animal rescuer, said her group [Ahava] had contacted BETA to offer assistance in evacuating animals, “but they are not interested in being in touch with us.''…She said Ahava has proposed meeting fleeing Lebanese in boats in international waters to collect their pets. “Believe me, dogs and cats in Lebanon don't see themselves as political animals. They just want to leave.''

El-Massih said BETA was never contacted by the Israeli animal rights group, although it did receive a sympathy e-mail from a former member of Ahava who now lives in the United States.

If true, this is another sad development in the erosion of civil society amid the tribalism that dominates the Middle East and elsewhere…