Weekend Cat Blogging #125: The Halloween Edition

Luna and I welcome everyone to Weekend Cat Blogging, Halloween Edition. We are happy to be hosting this event.

This is difficult time for cats, especially black cats. In North America (U.S. and Canada), some continue to view cats as “bad luck”, such as in this article, which fuels neglect and sometimes abuse which can spike around Halloween.

Many shelters continue to suspend adoptions of black cats around Halloween (sometimes for all of October). And while this is to protect them, it is unfortunate because black cats already have a harder time getting adopted.

So we at CatSynth want to celebrate black cats this weekend. Black is beautiful!

We invite all our feline friends to participate, but we want to especially welcome black cats. Households with multiple cats are encouraged to let their black siblings enjoy the spotlight this weekend.

To participate, regardless of fur color, please leave us a comment, or contact us. We will be posting the big round-up later this weekend.

And don't forget the other Weekend Cat Events ™. Friday Ark #162 is at the modulator. The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos is at Live from a Cat's Perspective with Samantha and Tigger. And Carnival of the Cats is going to Missy Blue Eyes' and KC's on Sunday.

Scary musings for Halloween

All Hallows Eve is again upon us as it seems to do just about once every year. Of course, the theme this year is on a happy and safe Halloween for black kitties, but that doesn't mean not getting more into the spirit of things.

Here I am attempting to provide a little Halloween spirit at the office, yet remain fully productive and engaged:

The astute observer may recognize Lotus Notes on the screen. Talk about scary


Want to hear something else scary? Check the latest report on climate change (aka global warming) as a human and economic crisis. Nothing new for anyone using their eyes, ears, and a fraction of their brain. But once again we see our leaders downplaying the dangers, calling for more science and questioning the costs of working to reverse the problem. Funny how they have all the science they need to ban stem cell research or deny the theory of evolution?

Forget the war. The biggest crimes against humanity by Bush, Cheney and their cronies are the failure to act against global climate change and the crisis already upon us, and their general dimissal of scientific reality and its benefits for all human-kind in order to support their narrow interests. Big oil, big outdated industries, big religion.

Close to home, this is yet another reason to oppose Richard Pombo (did we mention that he is California's worst representative?). Recall that he is the person who proudly tramples any attempt to preserve land and air and natural treasures and acts like polluting and plundering are divine rights of his friends. What amazes me is that the people of his district need other incentives like the war, corruption and general anti-Republican sentiment to vote against him. Isn't his shameful record on the environment enough?


More Halloween-and-politics convergence. With the election only a week away, here?s how things currently look (actually, this will always be current no matter when you look at it, at least through November 7):

Click for electoral-vote dot com

Click for electoral-vote dot com

This is where we start have to worry about the ability of Republicans to ?raise a zombie army? of voters, as I heard one commentator describe their get-out-the-vote effort in 2004. Actually, the phrase Republican Zombie seems to be quite common ? you can check that yourself with a quick Google search. Then again, any good republican zombie will tell you that Google is liberally biased. If that were the case, I would expect to see more amusing images on this topic. The best I came up with was this old movie poster:

If I had more time this week, I could easily put something together in Poser/DAZ-Studio, but I already have an incomplete Halloween image in the queue as November 1 rapidly approaches, so maybe an update later on?






Halloween Weekend Cat Blogging: Black Cat Appreciation

This special Halloween edition of Weekend Cat Blogging is being hosted by Linda and Aggie over at kayaksoup. It is a lovely warm sunny October afternoon here on the left coast, and Luna has some lovely harvest-themed pictures to share:

Here Luna obliges us with the traditional Halloween pose:

Sadly, Halloween can be a difficult time for cats in the United States, especially black kitties. The image of the black cat as “bad luck” or witches' familiars permeate folklore as well as the pop culture and commerce surrounding Halloween. Ritual sacrifice and harm to black cats is largely documented to be an urban legend, but the fiction can influence kids. Indeed, animal killing and abuse does rise around halloween mostly because of “poorly-behaved kids” influenced by the folk and popular images:

Far too often, the animals are tortured and sacrificed during pseudo satanic-based rituals.

“But not by the real religious satanic groups,” [Lillian Dubois-Tercero, president and executive director of Arizona Pet Line] stressed. “They don't sacrifice cats and dogs. It's the idiot juveniles (who are) responsible who don't know what they're doing.”

This is one reason why many shelters control (or ban) adoptions of black cats in the weeks leading up to and immediately after Halloween. However, shelters are trying to minimize another problem faced by black cats around Halloween – people “adopting” them as living decorations, trying to go one better than the ubiquitous paper cutouts. Even if not specifically “hurt,” many of these cats are apparently returned to the shelters after Halloween. Such “shelter whiplash” can be traumatic, and if I were a cat I would lose some of my trust in humans.

About.com has an excellent article on The Perils of Halloween for Black Cats. We join the author in dubbing October as Black Cat Appreciation Month. Of course, here at CatSynth every day is Black Cat Appreciation Day.

So be kind to kitties you meet these week, and keep your own feline companions indoors. Might want to keep an eye on some of those kids, too…

UPDATE (Oct 29): AP has an article today entitled “Black cat adoptions banned on Halloween”, which discusses both the practice as well as potential downsides for already stigmatized black cats:

Janet, a black cat up for adoption, pauses on a wall ledge at the Kootenai Humane Society, Thursday, Oct. 26, 2006, in Hayden, Idaho. The Kootenai Humane Society is prohibiting all black cat adoptions from mid-October to Nov. 2, fearing the ebony animals could be mistreated as a Halloween prank, or worse, be used in a satanic sacrifice. (AP Photo/ Kirk Mastin)

Doesn't Janet look a lot like Luna? Such a sweet face…