Cats

Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Domestic Violence Awareness badge

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Our friend Diamond Emerald Eyes has made the graphic above to help spread awareness about domestic violence as it affects both humans and animals. Diamond’s own story crosses domestic violence (fortunately, she hid under the bed and was safe), but has a happy ending. Not so for Norman, the orange tabby who was killed by bit actor Joseph Petcka. Petcka is currently on trial for his incredibly cruel act.

We’re in the middle of a nasty election season, and as such there is always talk about “family values” – this time it’s often from supporters of Proposition 8 here in California. Our request is that when people encounter those who claim to be “defending marriage and family”, challenge them to condemn domestic violence, and to punish those who hurt their partners, children or animals. Even if it means ending a marriage. An abusive marriage or an abusive family is not one worth defending, and any tradition that would excuse violence in the name of “protecting a family” is not a tradition worth preserving.

We hope all our human and animal friends will continue to have safe and loving homes.

You can read more at the National Coalition against Domestic Violence website, and here in San Francisco more information is available at Domestic Violence Consortium. The Humane Society has information about pets domestic violence.


Under The Paw

Last week I finished reading Tom Cox’s Under the Paw: Confessions of a Cat Man.

Both the book and his blog The Little Cat Diaries chronicle his life as a “cat man.” There is undeniably a love of cats expressed in this book, but without being overly maudlin, or overly cuddly. The more frustrating or ridiculous moments of living with cats are not hidden. There are some very funny stories, some quite familiar to anyone who has lived with a cat, and also some very poignant and sad moments, such as the story of his youthful companion Monty. Between chapters, I often flipped back to the inside cover, which featured photos of each of the cats in his life, and comparing the images to the stories. Did the image of “The Bear” fit with his narrative, for example?

As a fellow “cat man” (I suppose there is no avoiding that label when you write a site about music and cats), there is certainly a lot in common, but also quite a contrast. While Tom Cox and his wife Dee live with six cats, there is only one cat here at CatSynth. Tom moved with his cats from London back to rural and small-town England, while I recently made the transition from a smaller coastal town to downtown San Francisco. One cat man has a passion for golf, another for modern art, photography and mathematics. But music is a common theme. And black cats (the Cox household boasts three black felines).

I found myself reading Under the Paw while getting some maintenance on my car in one of the outer neighborhoods of the city. A man came in with a large but friendly dog who did what large but friendly dogs are wont to do, namely try to become best friends with everyone sitting and waiting and systematically being told that they had a “burnt out headlight that needed to be replaced.” (What are the chances that three cars in a row would all have burnt out headlights?) After the man asked if I wasn’t fond of dogs, I showed him the cover of the book I was reading. “Hmmm, Confessions of a Cat Man…”, he mused. There was no accusation in his voice, just curiosity, and it turned into brief but friendly conversation between two people on opposite sides of the “pet divide.” Actually, the conversation was mostly just my describing the book, which I highly recommend…


Math Cats

In search of my next mathematics topics, I stumbled upon the Math Cats, a site that uses cats to explore a variety of mathematical topics, from the very basic to the more esoteric. The emphasis is really on “exploration” rather than a series of lessons or tutorials, though there is a collection of resources for teachers and parents. Beyond the basics, the attic is full of facts and definitions, some of which are quite sophisticated (for example, do you remember exactly what a geodesic is, and who doesn’t want to forget avoirdupois weights). Sadly, I could not make the “Animal Math” link work. I was particularly fond of the virtual mobile, which also introduces viewers to the work of Alexander Calder. There is also a visit to a more recent geometric artist George Hart. Indeed his art studio looks a bit like the music studio here at CatSynth HQ, festooned with stuffed cats.

Among the shapes the Hart uses in his work are the regular polyhedra, but also Archimedean solids, such as the truncated icosohedron, or “buckyball.” You can see an example here, as well as some of the more esoteric shapes.

This of course ties into our discussion of the 13 Archimedean solids at the last Carnival of Mathematics, and we at CatSynth of course like to see our mathematical discussions interconnect.

And who can go wrong with the intersection of cats, mathematics and art?


Weekend Cat Blogging: A Busy Week

Every week is a busy week here at CatSynth, but this past week has been exceptionally so. Of course, there was the show and all the preparations. Work was more intense than usual as well. Also a fun this week, good food and drink and friends; and a volunteer activity. And lest we forget, the Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos last weekend.

But in the midst of all of that, Luna makes sure to get the attention she deserves:

As the studio takes shape, old activities return, like pawing at my chair for attention, and resting in the beanbag.

And now, we rest:

Some very sad news from our friends Megan and the Bad Kitty Cats. Braum Kitty and Rimbaud have passed away in tragic circumstances, and are dearly missed by their family. There is joy as well, with the new kittens the “Three Blind Mice.” And they will be hosting the Carnival of the Cats this weekend.

The Cat Blogosphere has this wonderful tribute to mothers, feline and humans.

More food and friends. Weekend Cat Blogging #153 is being hosted by sher and Laura and Pumpkin. Laura is growing and looking more like Luna.

The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos is being hosted by Sleeping Mommy. And of course the Friday Ark #190 is at the modulator.

Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos #43

We welcome everyone to the 43rd Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos. And, not surprisingly, we have some chaos with the official Blog Carnival site being out of service as the weekend began. But we still have many cats who joined us, so let's get started.

The theme of the week's festival is music, art and technology. And the cat boys Kashim and Othello get us started with their talents in singing and music criticism.

Over at Life from a Cat's Perspective, Samantha shows off her skills in the visual arts. Meanwhile, Mr. Tigger goes techno.

The kittens at Sleeping Mommy are all extremely cute . But Colby has found a pair of headphones, for some music and relaxation.

It looks to us like Cece is about to break into song at iInfidel. But he prefers this photo to the one posted at Mind of Mog.

Gree reminds us that “a sleeping cat is a work of art” at the House of the (Mostly) Black Cats.

Cheysuli takes to the road and presents Find Chey Friday posted at Chey’s Place.

We're not the only ones who thing about wild cats. As wild cats move into cities, it raises some significant issues. A few of these are discussed on Everyone Needs Therapy/

Meanwhile, at Pet's Garden Blog, SonnyBob wants to know .. where are da fishies

Weekend events in San Francisco (Music, Art and Cats)

Another busy weekend, especially with the number of things going on. We only have time for a partial review…

First, there a quick stop at downtown pub to see some friends/colleagues. Then a rush to BART to get across the bay to Berkeley and my old stomping ground, the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT).

I was a few minutes late, but still had plenty of time to hear Joker Neils and Gino Robair performing a improvised duet. Robair has an amazing talent for getting electronic-like sounds out of acoustic percussion instruments, and did so again on this evening. Neils was primarily using custom synthesizers, both professional instruments as well as circuit-bent toys. We have discussed circuit bending previously here at CatSynth. He brought several well-crafted examples, including Suziki Omnichords with contact-resistance interfaces; and he also brought a tremendous enthusiasm to his performance and to his discussion of circuit bending in between sets.

Also presenting was Rob Hordijk, who designs custom synthesizers (or “works of art” as he described them). Among the technologies he employed in the “Blippobox” that he presented were chaotic oscillator pairs, where two oscillators feed back into one another to create non-linear modulation, and a filter that he called the “twin peaks” filter (presumably because it has two resonant peaks).

Amy X Newburg lent her vocal and electronic-music talents during the presentation and in the second half of the show – readers may remember her from a a recent music festival that we reviewed.

I had some interesting conversions with both Amy X Newburg and Joker Neils following the performances, which is always a nice coda to a concert.

It was another exceptionally warm weekend in San Francisco (I wouldn’t mind it becoming less exceptional), so more opportunities for walking events. First off I finally made the trip to the San Francisco SPCA to inquire about volunteer opportunities and see their much touted adoption center. The cat area featured large rooms, “kitty condos” as well as comfy areas to hide – it actually seemed on par with the “cat resorts” where I looked into boarding Luna. The SPCA is actually a short work away from CatSynth HQ (well, it’s at least short from my perspective).

Another short walk in the opposite direction from CatSynth HQ led to the Yerba Buena Gallery Walk. Open studios and gallery events are pretty regular occurrences, even within walking distance. Plus, there’s often free food and drink. I didn’t see too many things that truly interested me, except for some abstract paintings at 111 Minna that I had already seen during the first Thursday earlier this month. But that doesn’t mean the afternoon wasn’t without its attractions. Some of the galleries, such as Varnish, were in very interesting spaces, such as converted industrial buildings from the early 20th century. A view of Varnish is in the photo to the left. Additionally, some of the sights on a gallery tour aren’t the works of art, but the people viewing them – and this is even more true on a warm sunny day. Finally, I did have a delightful conversation with Jesse Allen at Chandler Fine Art – his very psychedelic/natural works aren’t what I am usually drawn to, but some of them did include abstract representations of cats and other animals and one “wild cat” in particular caught my attention.

More art on Sunday, this time photography. This Sunday was “Pinhole Photography Day” (who knew?) and the RayKo Photo center featured an exhibit, demonstrations, and most notably a ride on the Bus Obscura a school bus converted into a large camera obscura.

The bus obscura toured our South-of-Market neighborhood, providing a unique view via the pinhole-camera images. Small dots of blurry light would suddenly come into focus as a sidewalk or car or storefront.

Because the image were so localized, it wasn’t always clear exactly where the bus was, though every so often a familiar landmark would emerge. The ride was accompanied by live acoustic and electronic music, adding to the experience and making it different from the regular “tours” of our neighborhood.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Wildcats, House Panthers and "erf day"

Luna continues to enjoy her “House Panther” status and all the warm compliments. But this weekend, we celebrate cats both domestic and wild, just as we did last year on Earth Day (or “erf day”).

We start again with the Cat Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union (CSG), but focusing on something positive. They are featuring a study of the jungle cat (Felis chaus) and leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis), pictured to the right:

The family Felidae is well represented in India, with 15 species occurring here, making it the richest in cats worldwide. However, except for the large cats the rest figure very poorly in research and conservation policies in the country, probably because of their rarity and elusive nocturnal habits, coupled with cumbersome bureaucratic formalities in studying rare species. Fortunately, in the past few years non-invasive molecular techniques have been introduced in wildlife research in India, which has made small cat research easier.

Another endangered cat of India and Southeast Asia is the Fishing Cat. It is a close relative of the leopard cat, and shares some of the same habitat. However, the fishing cat (not surprisingly) is better adapted to hunting and eating fish, and is an excellent swimmer.

The fishing cat is one of many species featured in The Smithsonian National Zoo's Cat Conservation Project.

Note that these are all “small cats”, which often do not get the attention of the larger cat species, which are of course magnificent and also seriously endangered in many cases. Certainly, the small cats share some of the endearing qualities in appearance to our domestic felines (which are believed to be descendants of African wild cats).

Few wild cats resemble their domestic counterparts more than the Oncilla of South America. However, it seems relatively little is known about this species of cat. According to the CSG, it has never been studied in the wild, and little is known about its behavior or population. However, it is been trapped in the past for the fur trade:

n 1971, 28,000 pelts were counted in Brazilian warehouses, and in 1983, 84,500 skins were exported from Paraguay (Broad 1988)

The Oncilla closely resembles the better known Margay, which inhabits both Central and South America, and is not considered endangered. They are skillful tree climbers, and sometimes referred to as “Tree Ocelots,” taking the name from one of the more well-known wild cats of the Americas.

If you interested in this topic, please visit last year's article, which discusses some of the worlds most endangered cats, including the Iberian Lynx, which continues to be the most endangered in the world, with an estimated population in the hundred. Also, the intriguing little Andean Mountain Cat, illustrated to the right.

And speaking of house panthers…

Weekend Cat Blogging #151 is hosted by Luna's “twin” Puddy, along with Katie of A Byootaful Life.

And that's not all. The Carnival of the Cats is being hosted by the Diamond Emerald Eyes (whose mom created Luna's collage at the top of this article) at House Panthers!

The Bengal Brats may not be “house panthers”, but we still love them. They are hosting the Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos at Pet's Garden Blog.

And lest we forget, the friday ark is at the modulator.

Calculus for Cats and Prime Number Theorem

<I was looking for a quick way to combine cats and mathematics this morning, and came across the book Calculus for Cats.

This is a book for people about to take calculus, and for survivors of calculus who still wonder what it was all about. It gently explains the basic concepts and vocabulary without making the reader ever do a single problem.

Basically, the book draws (quite literally) an analogy between the fluid motion of cats at play (or in pursuit of “prey”) and the concepts and techniques of calculus, which focuses on continuous functions.

We at CatSynth remember calculus fondly as a mathematical pursuit. But number theory is more my thing. Calculus primary concerns itself with continuous functions of real and complex numbers, while number theory deals with discrete entities, like integers. But in mathematics, all things are interconnected. For example, we demonstrated the connection between the gamma function, pi and factorials, combining continuous and discrete concepts.

Consider the function π(x), the prime-counting function. It's a bit unfortunate they chose the symbol π, but it is what it is. Basically, this function counts the number of primes less than or equal to a particular number. For example π(20) would be all the prime numbers less than 20: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17 and 19. So π(20) = 8.

So to calculate π(1000) would one have to literally count all the prime numbers less than 1000, including figuring out which numbers are prime? And what about π(1000000)? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. But there are good ways to approximate the number of primes, using the results of the Prime Number Theorem. Those interested in the formal theorem are encouraged to follow the link, but we will skip ahead to one of the interesting results. One of basic functions to come out of calculus is the natural logarithm ln(x), whose base is the famous constant e. If you don't know about it, go look it up. Otherwise, the rest of this article will not make much sense. One can use ln(x) to build more complicated functions in calculus, one of which is the offset logarithmic integral, or Li(x):

This is one of those functions, like the gamma function, that cannot be expressed without the use of calculus. Turns out, however, that it is a good approximately for π(x), which is very much a discrete concept and quite distant from the continuous motions involved in calculus. The prime number theorem provides the connection.

This article is included in Carnival of Mathematics #31 at recursivity.

Weekend Cat Blogging and more: A beautiful and sad weekend

It's been a weekend of contradictions, of warmth and fun and rest and work and excitement and fear and sadness.

We lost a friend and former colleague this past week. But we also got to see friends we haven't seen in quite a while. We are still saddened and worried at frightened for our feline friends caught in a terrible fire (UPDATE: we just heard that they are alive!). But we continue to settle into our own home, and things are taking shape.

And it's been warm and sunny hear at CatSynth HQ, perhaps the best weekend since we moved to the city. And there is so much to do, both fun and work, but at the same time we just want to lie around, and enjoy a little of what's important.

We have watched our friends, locally and online, deal with much sadness and tragedy over the past few months. For us, there is an exciting but anxious new life beginning.

Sometimes it's hard to write. But here we are.

A special edition of Weekend Cat Blogging will be jointly hosted by A Byootaful Life, HotMBC and Kashim and Othello at the Cat Blogopshere.

Kashim and Othello are pulling double-duty, actually, as they are also hosting Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted today by Mr. Tigger at M-Cats Club.

And of course the Friday Ark is at modulator.