We at CatSynth started this weekend a day early. Luna can be seen in restful repose Friday afternoon:
Would that every Friday was like this one…
For those who observe St. Patrick's Day today, what better than a lovely pair of emerald eyes?
Over at I Got Two Shoes, host Kamikazee is decked out in his green finery. Check out the WCB cats enjoying either St. Patrick's Day or just another fine weekend.
And don't forget, WCB 94 will be hosted right here at CatSynth!
For WCB 92 this weekend, we dig back into the archive. Here we see a seemingly erudite Luna catching up on some reading during a cold, rainy weekend back in February.
Metamagical Themas is quite a heavy tome for most humans, let alone cats. I suppose Luna is reminding me that I was going to post several more articles related to Hofstadter's writings. She also has a copy of the Yale alumni magazine and some modern furniture catalogs to keep her busy.
While we at CatSynth wax a little bookish, feats of athletics abound at whatdidyoueat, where Sundance and a rather fluffy Upsie do battle, all in good fun, of course. They also happen to be hosting this weekend. Go check out the other kitties in various states of activity, or lack thereof…
Just a nice quiet day for us here at CatSynth to relax and do, well, not much of anything, except of course taking photos and videos and posting them on Weekend Cat Blogging.
Here, Luna gets comfy near the glass doors downstairs:
This week, we also have some Catster videos to share. Hear Luna's cute “hunting noises” and watch her tail go and she enjoys her favorite view out the bedroom window:
Another video from today over at Catster has Luna responding loudly to getting pet while surveying her domain…
Hehehe…let's crack open a window!
Click on the image above to enlarge, you can see another kitty outside (you can be sure that Luna sees him, too).
The big WCB roundup is being hosted over at champaign taste, where Louis' enjoyment of the outdoors turned into a scary “Lost Cat” story for a day. Thankfully, he returned in the evening and everything is fine. We're glad the Louis made it home safely. Go read his story and check out the other kitties this weekend.
Our friend and regular WCB'er whaleshaman posted this great story as a comment on the Waldorf Pulse and cats. I thought this was worth bringing forward as it's own article. Enjoy!
few know that robert “moog” really was a cat! his name is more correctly spelled “mewg,” but changed to hide his real identity.
he had a cute little sporty car with the license plate “moog,” which he parked on broadway near columbia university in the riotous good old days [late 60s, early 70s].
people used to stand around and stare, and through the fog of “herbal” smoke, proclaim knowingly: oh, man, he is SUCH a cool CAT. and btw, end the war but sieze the dean's office first.
i suppose you're wondering how he got away with being a cat and having a drivers' license.
apparently there was a motor vehicle office back in the 60s, on central avenue in white plains [near the county center where i went to music camp in the summer of '59]. the employees in that particular office were unusually corrupt [driven insane by the music camp's awful band rehearsals] and would license “anybody” who showed up.
so that's how bobby the cool cat got to drive a car on broadway.
true story — parts of it anyway.
I can vouch for the DMV office on Central Ave. in White Plains, NY. That's where I got my first driver's permit and then license!
Maybe Toonces should try them for his license as well…
This cute photo is originally from synx508 over at flickr comes to us via matrixsynth,
Looks like we have mutual posts this week – in addition to our picking up the above photo, matrix has reposted Teodor Revolution from here.
The cats-and-synths meme is growing! It's in our name, it's a frequent topic here, at matrixsynth and elsewhere, and the number of photos and videos of cats with synthesizers seems to be on the rise. What is it that makes cats and synthesizers go together? Or in some cases, not go together – there are several boorish comments posted on matrixsynth under Teodor Revolution. That aside, it might simply be the case that “synth people” tend to be “cat people.” Cats are small and curious and likely to explore our large racks of gear, finding warm nooks within. Additionally, cats are less likely to be banned from home studio environments. Certainly, Luna is a welcome presence in my studio. I would never extend the same priveledge to a dog (then again, I doubt I would let a dog enter my house at all).
Please feel free to share you thoughts on the cat-synthesizer relationship below.
This New Years edition of Weekend Cat Blogging is being hosted by Champaign Taste. We wish all our WCB friends, feline and human, a happy and healthy new year!
Our contribution this week continues our tribute to James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, who is a hero of ours here at CatSynth; he passed away this past Monday. In addition to his music (which is playing in the background as I write this), he made contributions to civil rights and the “Black Power” movement, through his efforts to promote African American ownership of the distribution of music on records and radio, and of course his classic anthems such as “Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud.” It is in honor of this anthem that Luna strikes a proud, stately pose this week, reminiscent of the iconography of the Egyptian goddess Bast:
The connection between black cats and civil rights isn't entirely gratuitous. Consider the well-known symbol of the Black Panther Party. Although founded in Oakland in 1966, the story goes that the party took its symbol from the Lowndes County (Alabama) Freedom Organization:
We chose for the emblem a black panther, a beautiful black animal which symbolizes the strength and dignity of black people, an animal that never strikes back until he's back so far into the wall, he's got nothing to do but spring out. Yeah. And when he springs he does not stop.
Getting back to James Brown, I would be remiss if I did not also recognize one of my former cats Morty, the original “Supa-Bad Kitty”:
He got his nickname for his constant mischief, like sitting on the dining room table, but remainingly devilishly lovable. Plus, he could shake his money maker like no other kitty I've met. I miss him – he was taken by a former girlfriend and although I haven't seen him in many years, I hope he is doing well.
cats
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News of a studly on Alzheimer's disease for readers with ageing feline and human friends:
Ageing cats can develop a feline form of Alzheimer's disease, a new study reveals. Scientists at the Universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews, Bristol and California have identified a key protein which can build up in the nerve cells of a cat's brain and cause mental deterioration.
In humans with Alzheimer's disease, this protein creates 'tangles' inside the nerve cells which inhibit messages being processed by the brain. The team says that the presence of this protein in cats is proof that they too can develop this type of disease…
…”As with humans, the life expectancy of cats is increasing and with this longer life runs the greater chance of developing dementia. Recent studies suggest that 28% of pet cats aged 11-14 years develop at least one old-age related behaviour problem and this increases to more than 50% for cats over the age of 15.”
Perhaps one of the things that makes cats and other companion animals so endearing is that they go through many of the same life stages as humans, from kittenhood/childhood to old age. Having recently observed a 96-year-old relative and a neighbor's 20-year old cat who recently passed away, one can see similarities in both the strong and the sad qualities. The old cat liked to simply rest in her favorite spots in the neighbors garden, staring out into the world. Her physical state deteriorated very quickly towards the end, but I believe she crossed the rainbow bridge quietly and peacefully. My relative is still with us (saw her on my recent New York trip), though her health and mental state has deteriorated quite a bit as well. Again, I find myself thinking of the similarities between humans and cats in this stage of life – though just as with human infants in comparison to kittens, older cats seem to on the whole do a better job of staying independent than their elderly human counterparts.
I wonder if any of the stem cell research on Alzheimer's in applicable to cats…
At about the same time I found that last article on cats from Lebanon in Ohio, I came across this horrific story of animal cruelty from Tampa. One of the victims is in the photo to the right. The details of this case are pretty bad, and many of this forum's cat-loving readers would do best not to read the original articles. As for me, once I find out about something like this I feel compelled to “bear witness” painful as it may be, read follow-up reports and hope that some sort of justice or good comes out of it.
Indeed, one of my main motivations for posting is to expose the sick excuse for a human who allegedly committed these acts of cruelty. Apparently, he just doesn't like cats and was mad that they would sometimes climb onto his car. As a cat lover, it is hard to comprehend the level of anger/hatred he must have felt towards them, but even so there is no excuse for his cruel executions of these helpless creatures :(. He has confessed to the killings, and has been charged with multiple counts of animal cruelty, carrying a maximum five-year sentence. I will respect the justice system and not pass sentence on him myself, though many participants in a local online forum have their own creative punishments in mind. It is somewhat satisfying to see a unified front of anger and revulsion, with not one person coming to his defense.
Apparently, this guy took shots at a police helicopter not so long before this incident. That's pretty serious, one wonders why he wasn't already in jail. Indeed, why didn't he end up riddled with bullets? Certainly, that would have saved the cats whose lives seem more worthwhile. But it also raises some interesting questions in light of the recent police shooting in New York – I was actually still in New York for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend when it happened. The cases are of course quite different, but nonetheless I think they are worth comparing. In one situation we have 50 shots fired at three unarmed men who apparently struck an undercover police van – one of the men was killed, on the day of his wedding. In the other case, we have a man very openly taking shots at a police helicopter, and not only escaping the incident unhurt but free to kill three cats days later. Is it just the different locations and circumstances? Is it that black men are invariably more likely to be treated as threats and shot than sick white trash with a known record of cruelty and violience?
I intend to follow both of these cases to see what happens…
Another update on “cats in war”: several of the most “anti-social” cats that were airlifted to the U.S. from Lebanon have found a new home in a suburb of Cleveland.
I have been viewing on and off a collection of short films by Stan Brakhage. Brakhage was a very prolific and influential maker of short experimental films. Most of his films have little or no narrative, and in many cases are made from images created directly on the film (i.e., not filmed with a camera), as in the case of thethe frame from Resurrectus Est shown to the right. Most of the films are also silent, leaving the viewer to focus exclusively on the images.
One of the films that intruiged me was Cats Cradle, originally done in 1964. Basically, it consists of a series of clips of a black cat interspersed with separate closeups of a man and a woman (apparently there were two couples in the film, but was not able to see this as I was watching). The cuts are frequent and the lighting/tinting is an amazing shade of red/magenta. It really is hard to describe, though you can find a better attempt here. An interesting suggestion is that the film can be seen as the “cat's perspective” on the couple.
The film definitely has a sexual feel to it, though there are no explicitly sexual images (discounting the fact that juxtaposing images of a woman and a man usually adds some sense of sexuality). How does the cat fit into that overall sense? Juvenile word-associations aside, cats have a history of association with (female) sexuality and fertility, most notably through the Egyptian goddess Bast. Bast is definitely a goddess for my personal pantheon, and I've been looking for an excuse to use her in a post on this forum. Bast has quite a resume, as the protector of cats, women and children, also associated with perfume, fertility, love, music and dance. It is interesting to consider Cat's Cradle in the context of Bast, even as a tribute of sorts, although I have no basis to assume Brakhage had such an association in mind. Though looking through his filmography, i think he was fond of cats.
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