Weekend Cat Blogging: Wild Cats on Earth Day

Every year on or around Earth Day, we at CatSynth dedicate our Weekend Cat Blogging post to the endangered wild cats of the world.

There are 37 known species of cats, including the domestic cats. As those of us who share our lives with domestic cats know, they share a lot in common with their wild cousins, especially the closest wild species Felis Silvestris, otherwise known as the “wild cat.” Indeed, domestic cats are considered likely descendants of the African and Middle Eastern subspecies of the wild cat.

Beyond the similarities, however, there is quite a bit of diversity among the species of small wild cats in terms of size, appearance and behavior. We have following the work of the International Society for Endangered Cats (ISEC) Canada over the past year, which has given us the opportunity to learn more about many of these cats and the efforts to protect them. Among ISEC Canada’s sponsored projects is the study of the Black-Footed Cat, which is found in southern Africa and is among the smallest of wild cat species.


[Image courtesy of ISEC Canada.]

The Black-Footed Cat is considered vulnerable, with an estimated population of about 10,000. They have been among the lesser studied cats, so this current project will help us understand them and the threats they face better.

ISEC Canada is also sponsoring a project in Argentina. Here they study the Geoffroy’s Cat.


[Photo by Mr. Guilt, courtesy of ISEC Canada]

Although considered to be relatively widespread in open areas of South America, little is known about them. This project has helped researches learn about the Geoffroy’s Cat, and also the rarer Pampas Cat.


[Photo © GECM-UNS, courtesy of ISEC Canada]

This and several other great photos of felids of the Argentine Espinal can be found here.

Over the past year, I have also become acquainted with another species, the Pallas’ Cat.

Pallas’ cats are native to the high-altitude grasslands of Central Asia including Mongolia, western China, and parts of Russia and Afghanistan. Though this particular cat resides in the Prospect Park Zoo in Brookyln. You can read about my encounter with the Pallas’ cat in this article.

Pallas’ cats are about the same size as domestic cats, but have quite a different appearance suited to their habitat. Another very distinctive looking cat is the Caracal, with its black ear tufts.


[Photography via Wikimedia Commons.]

Caracals have a large range over much of Africa and the Middle East, though they are not often seen. They are not considered endangered, though their populations are smaller in North Africa than in the south.

Another organization that works to preserve wild cats and educate the public about them is the Felidae Conservation Fund. They are based here in northern California, and one of their main projects is studying our local puma population. They are also involved in other projects, such as studying the Andean Cat and the Fishing Cat.


[Photo by Ben Williams, courtesy of ISEC Canada.]

The fishing cat is quite photogenic, as can be seen in the above photo by a member and supporter of ISEC Canada. (Click here to see more images.) Fishing cats are found in Southeast Asia, and are uniquely adapted to catching fish. They even have webbed front paws. Visit Fishing Cat Project (supported by the Felidae Fund) to find out more about their conservation.

We conclude with another cat species that we have not featured in previous posts, the Rusty Spotted Cat.


[By UrLunkwill (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-de], via Wikimedia Commons]

The rusty spotted cat is among the smallest of cat species. They live in southern India and Sri Lanka and appear to be at home in a wide range of habitats, from humid forests to open grasslands, and even in abandoned houses in densely populated parts of India. You can read more about them here.

There is always more to say about the magnificent cats of the world than we can fit in one article. Please visit our previous wild-cat articles for more. And please also visit ISEC Canada, the Felidae Conservation Fund, and the many other organizations working to conserve endangered wildlife.

Carnival of the Cats (and Weekend Cat Blogging)

We at CatSynth are happy to be hosting today’s edition of Carnival of the Cats, a weekly roundup of feline-themed posts from around the blogosphere.  We are also stepping in to host Weekend Cat Blogging.  If you would like to participate in either event, please use the handy carnival submission form or leave us a comment below.  We will be updating the post during Sunday.

In the meantime, we encourage everyone to visit our special Wild Cats on Earth Day post. It’s an annual tradition at CatSynth, with photographs and information about several wild cat species and links to organizations that support wild cat conservation.


Next up, Lost In the Cheese Aisle presents Bernadette as a great traveling companion. It sounds like she is quite well behaved during long trips, and this picture of her on the dashboard is quite cute.

Good news from our friends at Animal Shelter Volunteer. Ringo, Claire and several other cats have been adopted and are going to their forever homes. It’s always great to here stories of cats finding loving homes. Claire in particular has been waiting a long time. She is pictured above.

Animal Shelter Volunteer reports from PAWS, a no-kill shelter in Connecticut. Our friends Nikita and Elvira present a special report on the no-kill animal shelter revolution. Many shelters, like PAWS and like our own municipal animal services here in San Francisco already operate no-kill shelters, but the article describes an effort to reform the country’s animal-shelter system to make no-kill the rule. We support them in this effort.

On the lighter side, Elvira and Nikita also received some great new toys this week. They were purchased from a local independent store operated by a fellow cat-blogger, and as one can see the cats love them.

Cokie the Cat presents A Cat’s Last Will and Testament, dedicated to his friend Petie who recently past away. It is a very touching post, and a reminder about the joys of sharing life with animal companions.

At Mind of Mog, Meowza is enjoying some time outside, safely away from a visiting child. (I’m sure Luna would want to do the same in that situation.) It always looks like fun outside there, thought it sounds like it’s quite hot there this weekend, over 100F, so we hope Meowza stays cool.

We continue with some WCB participants. It’s turning out to be a lovely spring in Alabama, but this stark blank-and-white photo of Jules amidst the bare trees last winter is quite stunning. The high contrast and silhouette appeals to our photography aesthetic here at CatSynth.

Pam of Sidewalk Shoes presents the neighbors kitty, a lovely dark-fur cat who has “adopted” the people in his neighborhood while his original human wasn’t able to care for him. He is now able to go back home, which is good news but also a little sad for those who will miss him

re:BOUND, visual and performance art at Live Worms Gallery

Two weeks ago I participated in a two-day opening with visual artist Yong Han and performance artist Jacqueline Loundsbury Live Worms Gallery in San Francisco. Together, we created an experience combining sculpture and two-dimensional artwork with music and performance art.

The overall show was anchored by Yong Han’s sculptures, paintings and drawings. The sculptures, which range widely in size, use a combination of metal, ceramic, beeswax and other materials. The two dimensional pieces were a combination of ink drawings and paint.


[Image courtesy of Yong Han.]

There are elements that are common in his work across media, including graceful geometric curves and lines with organic shapes and patterns seamlessly integrated. Indeed, some of the two-dimensional works appear to the shadows of his sculptures.

What particularly works for me in these pieces, whether two dimensional or three dimensional, is their simplicity. The lines and curves form repeating patterns and leave empty spaces; and the areas of color are simple and well-deliniated as well. Many of the pieces have a very delicate feel to them, but some of the more recent ones are very densely packed and suggest strength.

The basic structural theme of thin metal and curving lines carried over from the visual art to the performance aspects of the event, providing a level of continuity between the two. The first night featured Jacqueline Loundsbury in an improvised performance piece called re:BOUND where she wrapped her body in steel wire bindings. Large rolls of steel wire were placed around the performance space where she stood and visitors were encouraged to participate by taking pieces of wire and wrapping them around her bare body. Throughout this performance, she was quite exposed and accepted the risks of not knowing what participants might do – something taken to much more dangerous extreme by some of the early performance artists in the 1970s. Indeed, the resulting “wrapping” was less of a cocoon and more an overwhelming array of adornments, such as headgear and other decorative elements, some sexually charged. And the whole amalgamation of wire seemed quite heavy and uncomfortable. But she successfully completed the performance and the resulting embodied artwork fit well with the existing sculptural pieces. After extricating herself from the wire, some of the pieces themselves became independent elements (along with the unused wire) for the presentation on the next day.

The second evening featured my live improvised electronic music in the space with the artwork and a video projection of Loundsbury’s performance from the previous night. For the set, I used several iPad apps including Animoog, Bebot and iMS-20, along with the Dave Smith Evolver and a couple of newly acquired analog synthesizer modules, the Wiard Anti-Oscillator from Malekko Heavy Industry and the E350 Morphing Terrarium from Synthesis Technology. Overall, I intended the sounds to reflect the wire theme that was present in the sculptures, drawings and the performance, with sounds that were metallic, continuously curving, or otherwise reflecting of the other elements. You can see a short clip below of the video projection and the music-gear setup in action.

re: BOUND, with Yong Han, Jacqueline Loundsbury and Amar Chaudhary from CatSynth on Vimeo.

The improved music continued for the whole evening, about four hours in all, with breaks for selections from my CD Aquatic.

A decent number of people came through the show over the duration, a combination of people who knew advance from announcements as well as some who wandered in from the surrounding North Beach neighborhood and enjoyed the experience. I am glad I was able to participate, and look forward to working with both artists again in the future.

Other Cinema: Re-Tracked Animation, Artists’ Television Access

A couple of weeks ago I attended an evening of silent films and live music at Artists’ Television Access called “Re-Tracked Animation.” The program was part of the regular Other Cinema series that occurs at ATA most Saturdays.

As we arrived, there were old film clips (from the 1940s or earlier) playing with various soundtracks. The initial film featured a keyboard player wearing a turban (to look stereotypically “exotic”) set against something that sounded like the Chipmunks. The next short featured a more abstract grainy cartoon with figures made from simple geometry against a more electronic noise-based soundtrack – this one was quite interesting in itself. The final video, a very old Porky Pig cartoon, was played straight.

It was then time for the main features to begin. Jeremy Rourke presented several of his animated video pieces with live accompaniment on guitar, voice and percussion – specifically, singing bowls. His visuals combined found material, often with a “turn-of-the-20th-century” feel to it, with more contemporary video backgrounds and illustrations. You can see one of the videos, eyes hearing stars, in this clip below:

This one in particular featured some moments I referred to as “Monty Python meets Central Park” in that it reminded me a bit of Terry Gilliam’s animations, but the highly processed background of modern-day urban park video and abstract graphical elements give it a unique feel. Musically, the texture was sparse and worked in concert with the video rather than vying for attention away from the imagery, so the overall experience was quite captivating.

For his final piece, Rourke came on stage wearing all white and carrying an all-white guitar. It was clear that he and his instrument were going to be part of the screen for the next video, and that is indeed what happened.

The final video featured more live footage than his earlier animations, and the music was purely guitar-based.

After an intermission, the program resumed with a screening of the Brothers’ Quay In Absentia with music by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Regular readers know that Stockhausen is one of my musical heroes, so I was quite interested to see and hear this piece. The film, although done in 2000, feels like it is much older. The grainy images paint dark and dystopian visuals of ruined machinery against the main scenes of a woman in an asylum and her repetitive existence, writing notes on paper, placing them in envelopes and into a grandfather clock. The music, which is from Stockhausen’s piece “Zwei Paare”, predates the creation of the film, but they nonetheless work together well to create the overall haunting and eerie landscape.

The final set featured members of the ensemble Thomas Carnacki with Greg Scharpen, Jim Kaiser, Jesse Burson, and Gregory Hagan performing live audio tracks to two films. The first was Jan Svankmajer’s The Fall of the House of Usher, based on the Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name. The Poe story was read live by Dean Santomieri along with the music. The visuals featured an empty and abandoned looking manner home, perhaps how the House of Usher would look after the fall. It was forlorn and sad, but rich with texture. And Santomieri’s voice is always captivating in live readings.

The final piece of the evening featured the ensemble performing live to Ladislas Starewicz’ strange but delightful stop-animation film The Mascot. The film, which was created in 1933, features a cast of puppet dogs, cats, dolls, skeletons and any number of other creatures.

It is amazing to think what Starewicz was able to do in the 1920s and 1930s with his creations, without the aid of 3D computer animation or even more modern model-making done at special-effects houses. Below is a still from the original film:

The film is available on the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org) in its entirety, so I will be tempted to try my own hand at an audio accompaniment for it one of these days…

Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt: Sturdy

We return to a combined Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt this Saturday on the theme Sturdy. Here we see Luna passing by some of the sturdy support columns that hold up CatSynth HQ.

The wooden beams are quite thick, and fastened with multiple bolts and metal junctions both on the top and bottom.

The diagonal beam adds addition sturdiness, especially in the event of a seismic event. But the strength also has a modernist aesthetic quality that fits the overall style of our space.

Weekend Cat Blogging #356 will be hosted by Kashim, Othello and Salome at PaulChens FoodBlog?!.

The Saturday Photohunt theme is Sturdy.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at When Cats Attack!

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.