Friday, September 28, 2007

It's Coming!


The Laughing Cat carnival edition three will be here next week! Don't forget to submit your funniest cat stories, photos, poems, whatever to join in the fun! Submissions can be made via email or through the Blog Carnival submission page. They're due by Monday. Come back Tuesday to read about the funniest cats on the web!

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Boredom Leads to Cat House

I was bored. Always dangerous. Bored in Target (as I happened to be on that occasion) is usually a financial liability. Instead of spending bored money on myself I decided to shop for my cats. I selected this the Large Cat Jungle Gym. It looked like something the cats would enjoy and had the added bonus of lots of parts to put together so I was assured some amusement as well.

I brought it home, fired up the camera and asked who wanted to help me put it together. Friday was laying in the window watching birds. Kit stole a piece of the jungle gym and zipped down the hall to play with it. Hemmy offered to supervise.

Luckily I now have Seti who was delighted to help. Lucky, lucky me.

Seti and I got to work. He was responsible for touching each piece with his paw as I picked it up and biting the instructions. I did the rest. He took his responsibilities seriously. He was concerned about this particular note that was attached to the pop up canvas "cat house."
We took the warning seriously; it was on yellow paper after all. We opened the cat house very, very carefully and were disappointed when the best it could muster was a small stretch. We were hoping for something a touch more dramatic. We moved on.

After staring at the picture and screwing my face up into various expressions of confusion and frustration Friday took pity on me and helped. I soon made a box.

I was pretty pleased with my accomplishment. I'm no engineer. I'm a pet sitter. Luckily, I'm pretty creative so once I got the feel for the pieces I really picked up speed. I made lots of boxes.

It didn't take long to put the canvas pieces on either. Soon we had a new cat fort and Supervisor Hemmy decided to be the first in. He deemed it "fun" and soon everyone else came in for a turn.

Seti's favorite part? The dangly toy mice of course!

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The Laughing Cat Edition 2!


The September 4th edition of The Laughing Cat Carnival didn't quite make it up on time due to technical difficulties. Since you must own/borrow a computer to read this I'm certain you understand! Anyway, here it is the second edition of The Laughing Cat, late but as funny as ever!

GrrlScientist presents Jack, the Lion-Hearted Housecat posted at Living the Scientific Life. This is one of my personal all-time favs!

xco presents Bitchslapped posted at Blame It On The Voices. This reminds of me of the time my cat Kit decided to murder my father-in-law's Labrador.

xco presents Blame It On The Voices: Cat vs. Kid. Cat vs. Kid, you know who wins.

Alta presents Biscuits In The Dresser posted at Love Country Living. This family has a great story and excellent advice for what cat owners should do when they find clumps of cat hair around the house!

Jon Rochetti presents Cat Fight posted at The DC Traveler. Scroll down to watch the video of the World's Stupidest Monkey!

That concludes September's hilarity! Be back here October 2nd for more feline mayhem!

Sunday, September 2, 2007

The Biggest Challenge

When I found the kitten, I thought the trickiest part would be integrating him into my already cozy household of 3 cats and a dog. Of course, there was also the potential that my husband would snap and murder me in a fit of cat overkill. I had no idea that simply naming him would be so difficult. What's so hard about picking out a name anyway? It turns out a lot!

Initially, I called him Smidgen. He was so little, tiny that he needed a cutsie name. Anything else would have seemed to big for him. After some nutritious food and a safe environment he grew like a weed and Smidgen suddenly seemed like it wasn't going to fit much longer. A quest for a real name began.

Friday's full name is Friday the 13th because he's a solid black cat. Since the kitten is also solid black I thought it might be fun to name him something similar, sort of a cat name theme. I racked my brain and the Internet. I looked up web sites devoted to topics on Halloween and superstitions. Nothing seemed to match his personality. It was all so sinister and he's actually quite a lover. I gave up on the theme.

The kitten is a real lover but he's fiercely brave too. I decided to explore this avenue for a while. I wondered about famous people known for similar traits. The only one I could come up with was Don Juan and I didn't like that name. Ok, fine. I turned my attention to characters known for being brave lovers. Swashbucklers! Swashbucklers are notorious for romancing women and fighting daring battles. I could see the kitten with a little bandanna on his head and patch over one eye swinging from a rope on a ship, sword in paw. That reminded me of one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride. Giddy, I decided The Dread Pirate Roberts was the perfect name for my kitten and stubbornly insisted on calling him by his full name.

I soon got tired of trying to force six syllables out of my mouth every time I wanted to play with the kitten or stop him from climbing the side of the sofa. I'm a good talker but all those words were starting to stress me out and I couldn't think of a decent nickname so I scuttled The Dread Pirate Roberts and went back to work.

My husband and I toyed with all sorts of ideas: Bacardi, Rasputin, Burt, Barney – hey, we were getting desperate. The last straw for my husband was when I wanted to name the kitten Stevie Nicks because he makes a sound like a goat. I really wanted to call him Stevie Nicks but Brian reasoned that his meow might change as he gets older and ruin my joke. Sometimes life just isn't fair.

There was one name I kept coming back to throughout them all. Seti, like the Egyptian pharaoh. Apart from a somewhat goofy looking face the kitten is extremely sleek and long. His frame reminds me of tomb paintings of Egyptian hunting cats. The pharaoh Seti was the son of Ramses the first and the father of Ramses the Great. Under his leadership, Egypt kicked the butts of its enemies and built some really cool, big buildings. That seems like my kitten. Brave and artsy all rolled into one fur covered, black speck besides the name Seti has the added benefit of only two syllables.

So, Seti is the kitten's newest, and final, name. He doesn't answer to it yet but since it's approximately the sixth name I've given him it might take a while to catch on. Since he's only a couple of months old we've got all the time in the world.