Sunday, August 12, 2007

the small/medium/large is the message

oh packaging and presentation... how you've left our planet discholarated...


i intend this entry to be all about the cats i know.


when youtube initally swept through and caught people's fancies, i remember ____ telling me how she got bored and went looking for videos all about cats. it made me laugh to think of her typing 'funny cats' and 'silly cats' and 'crazy cats' into the search field. but then, one day not too long after, i closed the drapes or angled the screen from the rest of the cafes view, turned off my phone and, likely blushing, commanded youtube to bring me videos of 'funny cats'. i just did it again, but this time just had to type 'fu...' and 'funny cats' automatically appeared in the search field. so i thought i'd share a few personal experiences of 'funny cats' with you...


Marbles, so named for her mottled turtle-shell and big eyes, was a little cat with big dreams. and an even bigger temper. and she'd stalk around our backyard in Oakville, her pride keeping her dismissive of any human activity... a bit of a thug she was, arrogantly patrolling the perimeter with disdain. one day, after a rainfall, she concentrated her prowess on the pool-area, (we once had a freakin pool!) leaping up the ladder of the slide in two bounds... but she overshot her landing at the top, and slipped onto the slope... for some reason it was timed so well that we were all looking at her when she did it. her paws splayed in front of her, trying to stop the inevitable, she made a pathetic mewl and then went very uncat-like into the pool. we fished her out, not too quickly mind you, and she skulked off for a pout somewhere. perhaps the most embarassing part of the story is that i wrote a poem about it for my grade 6 english class (i was in grade 6, ok?).


Cricket chirps when she's happy. and she likes warm spots. and suckling on wool. and sitting in the sink. and sitting on top of things. last winter, ____ and I were in the middle of a 72 hour Civilization 3 binge (we consulted each other about most everything, setting up impromptu war cabinets with each other etc) with Cricket sitting on top of the monitor for days at a time. halfway through, probably at 4 in the morning, she came back from a litter-scrape and made her way over us and prepared to hop back onto the monitor. she misjudged the firmness of the surface she was jumping from and launched herself at the screen itself, barely managing to get her paws over the top edge. she plastered herself to the thing as ungainlily as a pie in the face, waiting for about 20 seconds before letting out the most pathetic little mew i've ever heard. it was likely the first time ____ or i had blinked in about a half hour... that really cracked me up.


Ziggy has a foot fetish. Domino/Sushi/Fidel quacks when she's happy (the chillest cat ever). Steve's friend Chantal's cat has a really small head. Gribbles has an attitude and sleeps in the bathroom. ____'s neighbour's cat gets stuck on the flyscreen. Their downstairs neighbour's cat wears wifebeaters occasionally. A cat broke into my room last year and I caught it chewing on my dirty laundry. Brian's cat Scar needs anger management coaching. Graham's cat once returned with no fur on its tail. Chewy once ate Sammy the Ferret's tail. Sammy the Ferret once dragged Chewy behind the couch.


Ok, I'll stop, but I must close with this picture..


4 comments:

Lucy said...

I LOVE this picture- it's SO Charlie's angels - all it's missing is a ferret.

One more cat story for you: My friend once had a cat named bucket. The family was a cat family, having up to 13 cats at some points. All the cats' names started with a B. EX: Bridgette, Buster, Boots, Buttons, Bert etc...
Bucket loved sitting in the laundry room staring at the dryer doing its thing. It would sit there for hours watching the clothes go round and round - drawing 0's in the air with his chin.

The years passed and bucket became senile. He would disappear for days at a time, which became worrisome. They finally followed him out to the storage room in the basement and watched him sit down in front of the old, broken-down, *inactive* dryer. His head started moving in circles, his eyes peeled on the empty dryer window, staring at (what we assume were)imaginary clothes going round and round in there. Bucket continued going out to the dryer until the day he, ...uh... kicked the bucket.

Eve said...

Hahaha. Cats are really funny. My old roommate's cat was so mean, the owner/feeder wrote a song about him: Little beast likes to bite and scratch. That was pretty much the whole song, but it was funny. Man, I love that cat. He also likes to sleep on the bed with me sometimes, but he hogs the whole thing, and pushes me off with his paws. What a weirdo he is.

S'Mat said...

Lucy - All the world is missing is a ferret! Ferret for President!!! Bucket is a great name for a cat, its like they expected him to go senile. That's a really cute story.

Eve - its nice to feel like you somehow tamed the beast by sharing in those tender moments... sounds like he thinks he's people... awwwwwwwww

Ray said...

is this cat chuck norris'ing the rottweiler?