Remember Pearl? She was a foster synth cat living with frequent contributor Anne Corwin. But she is a foster no more, as stated in this Instagram post.
Well, this one is officially our first foster fail. Welcome to the family, Pearl! #blackcatsofinstagram #catsynth#kittensofinstagram
Congratulations to Pearl on her new home. We look forward to more CatSynth Pics 😺
New video from our friend Eric at polynominal.com featuring the handsome Marcel and a reel-to-reel tape recorder.
this is why you should not let your cat play with a reel to reel tape recorder 🙂
You can see Marcel’s previous posts here.
Happy Birthday to our synth-cat friend Runkl in Portland! From Jeph Nor:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO RUNKL!!! Our best little goofy cuddle ninja
Jeph hosts the Volt Divers series that I played at in April. If you are in Portland, I recommend checking it out.
Meet “DJ Pearl”, an adorable foster kitten who lives with Shadow and Brodie (whom we met a few weeks ago). She even has the same affinity for playing the M-Audio Axiom keyboard as Shadow. Submitted by Anne Corwin via our Facebook page.
Introducing Shadow’s tiny assistant, foster kitten DJ PEARL! She is ready to rock…and looking for her forever family!
Pearl seems so sweet and charming, and we suspect she will end up as a “foster fail” 😻
https://www.facebook.com/anne.corwin.7/videos/10156408542318618/
Our feline pals Shadow and Brodie are back! And they appear to be hard at work on their next hit song as they sit at their keyboard – an M-Audio Axiom – together. Submitted by Anne Corwin via our Facebook page.
Our new friend Shadow returns for a solo on his M-Audio Axiom keyboard. Submitted by Anne Corwin via our Facebook page.
My boy Shadow likes the heavy beats.
You can see Shadow’s debut last week along with his brother Brodie in this post.
Beautiful black cat Luna strikes a “noir” pose atop one keyboard and next to another. Submitted by Matthew Vasquez via our Facebook page. I really like the way the stripes of light play against the keyboards, which in turn heighten the black cat’s figure.
This is Luna is not our Luna, but looks so much like her! You can read our more recent tribute to the late great Luna of CatSynth here.
Identification of the synths/keyboards left as an exercise to the reader.
June 10 was Luna’s Gotcha Day. For many years, it was one of the most joyous days of the calendar. Since her passing in 2016, it has been challenging and melancholy. There is rarely a day when I don’t think about my special little girl and soulmate of almost 12 years.
Grief is a nonlinear process. The memories of her life, and of her loss, have mostly been integrated. I can casually see pictures on a regular basis of her and remain in the moment, but scrolling back through them in a deliberate process this morning brings some tears. CatSynth HQ is very much Sam Sam’s now, and we respect her territory (and spoil her rotten while doing so). Yet even she sometimes seems to sense a presence of a former kitty in some of the corners and crevices that defy cleaning.
There is so much I miss about Luna. Her beauty and elegance, her shy but sweet nature.
And she was fiercely territorial, especially when it came to me. She did not like to share, but she made me feel very loved. She could sit patiently while I made weird sounds in the studio. And despite being a “strictly indoor” cat, she loved going outside on the patio after we moved to San Francisco.
Regular readers know I am not at all religious. And I don’t have a particular notion of an afterlife. But I do like to sometimes think about Luna taking her place among those I have lost over the years, mostly human friends and family. The visualization is of them all standing and waiting patiently, a little black cat in front of the much taller people. I also take comfort in the Rainbow Bridge, and in the community of cat bloggers who have loved and lost over these many years.
I do not expect that the grief will ever disappear entirely. And that’s ok. We continue.
Black cat with Elektron Analog Keys. Instagram by anika_or from St. Petersburg, Russia.
The Elektron Analog Keys is a four-voice analog synthesizer that can also be used as both a MIDI and CV keyboard controller. You can read more about it on Elektron’s website.
You can find more Elektron photos and our NAMM reviews via this link.
I found myself back again in Napa Valley wine country a couple of weeks ago. Specifically I was in St. Helena to meet Elsie the Library Cat. I am not a morning individual, but Elsie apparently is, so at the early hour of 7AM, I headed up from San Francisco, crossing two bridges before exiting the I-80 onto Highway 29.
I have written about traveling through the Napa Valley on Highway 29 before, specifically in a post from 2007. Once again Highway 29, multiplexed with Highway 12, was a parking lot south of the city of Napa, so I was once again able to snap a photo at almost the same exact location. It was quite theraputic to do so, chasing away some of the demons of 2007, which themselves chased out the demons of 2000. The road has been upgraded into a better expressway, and Highway 221 (just a short connector to downtown) is now signed.
The traffic thinned out north of Napa as the road narrowed north of Yountville. Here the landscape is dotted with modest vinyards and over-the-top mansions and tasting rooms. Finally, I arrived in St. Helena, my favorite town in the region. I pulled into the library parking lot around 9AM, just in time for my visit with Elsie.
Elsie is a very sweet cat, and quite playful at times despite her advancing age. With her black coat, she reminded me a bit of Luna, though Elsie has mismatched-colored eyes compared to Luna’s emerald green. She and the staff of the St. Helena Public Library were great hosts and extremely welcoming of me and my video project. If you haven’t already seen our CatSynth TV feature on Elsie, you can watch it here.
It was still relatively early when I finished at the library, so I headed to the main street in town for brunch – a protein-heavy heuvos rancheros and some additional coffee seemed like a good idea after the morning video shoot and before heading out for wine tasting.
My main winery destination was Flora Springs, also in St. Helena. In 2014, I had come here for both wine tasting and a photo shoot – you can see one of the photos in this old Wordless Wednesday post. I had selected it because of the modernist architecture and interior design, but I enjoyed the spicy bold reds as well. Plus they have a patio that is lovely on a warm afternoon.
The same qualities that attracted me to this winery four years ago were in play again – the modern style and bold red wines. I particularly liked the Trilogy red blend and the Holy Smoke single-vinyard cabernet from Oakville. This visit was also featured on CatSynth TV.
Having enjoyed a full glass of both the Trilogy and Holy Smoke along with tastings of the standards, I decided I shouldn’t do anymore tasting for a while. But I still wanted to some more exploring. So instead of heading straight back south, I turned east onto Highway 128 in Rutherford towards Lake Berryessa, with the goal of finally completing the route. (Yes, I am weird that way.)
The narrow but well maintained highway took us out of the valley and into the hills to the east, winding our way through several canyons. The central towns of the Napa Valley were largely spared from last fall’s devasting fires, but here along Highway 128 one could still see some of the scars from the Atlas Fire. The green wooded hillsides were periodically streaked with bands of ashen gray and bare trees. But even within those bands, one could see bits of green. Some of these were trees that were spared during the fire, which jumps from one tree to another, as well as new growth replacing the burns. It’s amazing to see how quickly nature bounces back, especially compared to human development. It will take a bit longer to replace the homes, wineries and other businesses, and the mental and emotional scars may never heal.
Eventually, the highway aligns to the southern shore of Lake Berryessa, an artificial lake created by damming the Putah Creek. It’s quite large and major center for water recreation. I was just there for the visual aspect – I was particularly curious to see the “Glory Hole.”
The Glory Hole, which as also featured in a recent Wordless Wednesday post, is an internal spillway for the reservoir. When the lake gets too full, the water drains out through it like a bathtub. This happened in 2017, and must have been amazing to see.
We followed the highway down from hills into the Sacramento Valley, where it ends in the town of Winters. I had stopped here on the way to Portland a few weeks earlier, so had already shot some video. But that one is still a work in progress…
See more of California’s Napa Valley Wine Country and many other fascinating places in our Highway☆ app, available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
