Weekend Cat Blogging #370

Cats are smart. They set aside time to do nothing. I suspect Luna will be resting like this a bit during the weekend. As for me, however, I will be quite busy as usual. Today we are working on our final track for the upcoming Reconnaissance Fly album. Tomorrow I will be at Touch the Gear for the Outsound Music Summit.

And somewhere in between we will be hosting Carnival of the Cats. If you would like to participate, follow the link or use the handy BlogCarnival submission form. Alternatively, you can leave us a comment below and we’ll add you to the carnival tomorrow.


Weekend Cat Blogging 370 is hosted by Samantha, Clementine and Maverick.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted by us!

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Weekend Cat Blogging #305

In the midst of all the other excitement going on, we at CatSynth are once again hosting Weekend Cat Blogging.  Honestly, we’d just like some extra time to rest, but we honor our commitments and are ready with our “WCB Street Sign” and this post.  And of course we look forward to seeing weekend feline friends old and new.

To participate, leave us a link to your cat-related post in the comments below.  You can also tweet us @catsynth with the hash tag #WCB.  We’ll add you to the round-up.  (Note that this week’s round-up will be a bit more sporadic and delayed given my focus on Open Studios this weekend and next week’s performance at the Marin Headlands, but it will be there.)

And so let us get on with the round-up.

It is usualy Jules who joins us from Judi’s Mind Over Matter, but this week it is Vincent who is featured.  It looks like he is enjoying some affection.

Arthur from Gattina’s My Cats and Funny Stories approves of a litterbox to have elegant surroundings.   As for us, we like the clean straight lines of the garden path.

It’s Caturday at Catsparella, which is when they feature a feline from one of there readers.  This weekend it is the aptly named Nosey Rosie, a cute tabby with an inquisitive nature.

There is some good news at The Chair Speaks, as Cinders is doing much better at recently being ill.  Here we see her resting in an airplane pose on newspaper and giving her thanks to all those who sent healing thoughts.

Speaking of newspapers, our friends at Animal Shelter Volunteer Life share the news that the well-informed newspaper-reading cat Conrad has been adopted.  They also list many other cats that have recently found their new homes.

Trees abound at Life From a Cat’s Perspective, where Samantha and Clementine interpret this week’s Photo Hunt theme of trees. They are also celebrating their 4th Blogoversary and we wish them well.

Over at Team Tabby, Moe says “This is what we do on Sunday“:

That sounds to us like a great way to spend a Sunday.

Naps are also good after a grooming session, as demonstrated by Luna and Zulu in their post :

They have the most amazing coloring.  It almost looks like one is an exact grayscale copy of the other.

Over at Pam’s Sidewalk Shoes, Coco reminds us to take time to smell the roses…err, tulips.  Something we at CatSynth need to keep in mind.

There are certainly times when we feel like this:

Check out the full size version from Kashim, Othello, Salome and Astrid at PaulChens FoodBlog?! for a cute image, even if “nobody’s home.”

At Whiskey Tango…Hello!, Allie and Chloe are showing off their better sides.  Readers can judge for themselves.

Finally, we have Meowza enjoying a nice day outside at Mind of Mog.

He stays happy and content via “canned kitty food, Temptations, mousies and lots of love.”

That concludes the round-up for this week.  Thanks to all who participated!

Weekend Cat Blogging #295

Weekend Cat Blogging #295 will be hosted by…wait, it’s being hosted by us!

Weekend Cat Blogging (WCB) is a weekly event where bloggers share entries about cats, whether or not cats are the focus of their blogs.  We welcome longtime participants and newcomers.  If you would like to participate, please leave a comment below or tweet us @catsynth with hashtag #wcb.  We will add you to the roundup, which will appear below.

We are excited to have several first-time participants this week  First up, we have a visit from Catsparella where they are having their own Caturday roundup, featuring several cats including Miah, pictured above.

Aurelia from the blog Modern Woman also joins us for the first time with a post featuring Poppy, the neighbors’ kitten.  Poppy is very cute, but apparently not supposed to be in the garden. “As cute as she is, would you want to mess with the claws behind that face?”

Over at The Accidental English Teacher we have Oliver poking his head into the frame and wondering what could possibly be more interesting to look at than him.

Over at Pam’s Sidewalk Shoes, Patchouli demonstrates the fine art of napping.  And she does so in such tasteful surroundings.  On a side note, Pam and the cats are longtime participants, and several of the new participants this week found their way to CatSynth through them.

From Create With Joy, we have this expressive and detailed photograph of Tsunami.  Follow the link to see the full-sized version.  Meanwhile, Legend comments on the latest pantry items.

Uh oh, it looks like Clementine is being a bad kitty.  But it also looks like Samantha is ready on defense.  See the whole drama unfold at Life from a Cat’s Perspective.  (I have to admit, I was hoping for at least one combative post after finding out my #WCB hashtag on twitter is also being used for a boxing match.)

At Herman’s Hideaway, Herman is displeased with his busy mom.  This apparently involves the appearance of both the area vacuum (aka the “sucky monster”), but also the feline vacuum (aka the “furminator”).

I have to admit, I’m a little envious of the picture of Elvira, Nikita and their dad sharing a bed on a lazy Friday.  They look so relaxed.

Oh dear, “The Boys” and Karen over at Kittens ‘n Things had quite a few scares.  First, Bowie had a scary moment with his asthma.  Then, as they describe in the comments below, there was an explosion and fire in a neighbor’s garage.  Fortunately, no one was hurt.

Conrad is one of the many cats from PAWS in Norwalk, Connecticut, featured on Animal Volunteer Shelter Life.  He is apparently quite well read and keeps up with current events in the newspaper.  We hope he finds a permanent home soon.

Finally, we have this question from Mama Grace and Company: is Audace a cat in the manager? Look at the picture above and follow the link and decide for yourself.

That concludes Weekend Cat Blogging (for now).  Next week, we will be hosting Carnival of the Cats.

Autumn sun, Midnight Monday, and Site Improvements

Well, I am back home at CatSynth HQ in California. That means back home with Luna, of course:

Although she is calm and poised in this photo, it's been all purrs and cuddling today, even while I try to work. Not that anyone is complaining.


Today we enjoyed what I traditionally called the “August sun”, that really deep yellow sunlight that gives everything, but especially green leaves, a rich yellow coloring, that feels warm even as the air cools down. It is difficult to capture in a digital photo, but here is one attempt:

I think I should change “August sun” to “Autumn sun”, since the phenomenon extends well into September and even October. And not only here on the west coast. New York was exceptionally warm and getting plenty of “Autumn/August” sun this past week.


I have been working on several improvements for this site, including upgrading our software. As usual, a few things break in the process (e.g., comment displays were a little off, the “tag search” featured on the highways page and elsewhere was completely broken, our “cats synthesizers music art opinion” slogan was missing, etc.). Those are mostly fixed, and now we can proceed to making actual improvments.

Actually, the main change we need to make is in our hosting service. The good folks at A Plus net (the same people who messed up our domain name and left us stranded in the CatSynth FEMA trailer for a week) let us know that we have exceeded our CPU usage limits (not storage or bandwidth) and will need to switch to a more expensive hosting plan – all in a message from the friendly-sounding “abuse at aplus dot net.” So we could simply upgrade our plan, but since our lease is up on October 7 anyway, it might be a good time to shop around for an alternative. We welcome suggestions from our readers on good and bad experiences with hosts – please leave a comment or contact us. Of course, we have to act quickly on this matter…