Fri 26 Jan 2007
Friday Cat Blogging: Kelly
Thu 25 Jan 2007
3 Good Links Thursday
One Good Cat Link: In Tel Aviv, a couple rescued and likely saved the life of Dahni, The Eyeless Wonder Cat. In return, Dahni taught his humans lessons about life and how to live it.
Link found at The Pet Museum. A lot of good stories are there!
One Video Link: Three foster kittens are getting to know each other the way kittens do…
One Other Link: Years ago, I regularly read a Usenet group devoted to comic strips, and it was there I first saw intelligent, informative posts from Mark Evanier. A little later, I began to read a group dedicated to television game shows, and there were more good posts from M.E.
Somewhere in there, I found Mr. Evanier’s website POVonline, from which spun off the blog News From ME. Both of these are entertaining and loaded with pop culture goodies.
So having written all that, I’m going to join the ever-growing crowd of bloggers who have joined Mark Evanier, who have jumped on the bandwagon as it were, to promote… well, the promo banner is right below…
(Red Sox Nation, are you wondering whether Theo Epstein will once more don a monkey suit? If he does, it’ll be a different one from last time…)
Wed 24 Jan 2007
Good Things: 3 in 1
(1) Granddaughter Diana
(2) No measurable snow so far this winter
(3) Diana having fun anyway making grass angels instead
Tue 23 Jan 2007
What is a Good Cat?
A cat without whiskers can still be a Good Cat, but it probably won’t move with the confidence of one. Form follows function in the animal kingdom, too, and a cat’s whiskers do in fact perform useful functions, particularly as a way of measuring the size of an opening.
By using his whiskers, Kelly seems to have determined that he will be unable to fit through the space between the bottom of our deck and its railing. The Big Guy will be content to look through the opening, and we can enjoy looking at his handsome face, and recognize the useful bent whiskers that belong to this Good Cat.
Mon 22 Jan 2007
Monday Home Video: Caitie the Calico Diva
For some reason, I was thinking Sunday was the last day of the Six Word Cat Story contest, organized by Luxor (aka “His Highness Luxor the Undulant of New Invention”) and his human, the reigning “Food Dude of the Year.”
That’s why it was just a few minutes ago that I checked the site and learned (surprise #1) the contest is over and (surprise #2) Caitie won 2nd prize!
The Calico Diva is napping now, so I’ll accept the award for She Who Must Not Be Awakened. Most likely I’ll do it while staring wide-eyed at my shoes and mumbling “Thanks…appreciate it…this is so great…”, then try to get off the stage without stumbling down the steps.
Now, back in my accustomed position behind the scenes, I’ll tell you this fits right in with this week’s Monday Home Video.
First Caitie demands to be brushed, then tells her human to lie down on the bed so she can knead his soft belly through his soft bathrobe. Bossy and demanding, that’s our Caitie. What a Good Cat she is!
Sun 21 Jan 2007
Easy Like Sunday: Caitie
And this being Sunday, the 148th Carnival of the Cats is being hosted today by enrevanche.
Sat 20 Jan 2007
3 Good Dots Saturday…
I feel good today… we finally have a little winter where we live. Friday morning, there was even a thin coating of snow on the sidewalk. It’s too darn cold and windy now. Try telling that to the Good Cats, though…
– Unexpected visitor: One morning this past week I was up earlier than usual, giving up and getting up well before sunrise. The reason was that the morning before, I’d slept through a reasonably loud “Sweet Emotion” on the clock radio, and if I can sleep through Aerosmith at 6:30 a.m. one day, I’m afraid I can do it again the next.
So I was downstairs, the laptop booted up and my headphones on, when I heard pawing noises behind me on the sliding door. I got up just as it went silent again. Pulled back the curtain and saw an orange and white cat walking off the deck. When it saw me, it trotted off to the next yard. Quickly, not panicked. No collar, but it looked healthy, and evidently, this cat knows where to go in the neighborhood to be treated like royalty. Smart cat — smarter than the people who let their cat run around outside unsupervised in 19-degree weather.
It would have been a lot less quiet if Kelly had been down here too…
– One fringe benefit from my job was that employees were allowed to install Microsoft Office on the home PC for much less than full price. Not anymore, though… an email this week said effective January 31, we either must purchase MS Office at full price or uninstall it. But with so much free and open source software, that’s not a problem. Exit MS Office, enter Open Office. Out goes Outlook, in with Mozilla Thunderbird…
– Found while looking for something else: In 1954, General Foods celebrated its 25th anniversary by buying 90 simultaneous minutes in prime time on all four (yes, four) networks. Total cost: $250,000.
In 2007, thirty seconds of commercial time on the Super Bowl will cost $2.6 million.
– Now, let’s pause for this word from our alternate sponsor…
– Meanwhile, across the ocean in France, last Sunday night Beatrice Schonberg wrapped up her final newscast of the weekend and promoted the upcoming programming on TF1, the movie Swordfish, starring John Travolta and Halle Berry. The trouble with that is Ms. Schonberg is employed by France 2, not TF1. In this 22-second clip, you’ll also see Claire Chazal of TF1 mention the same film.
– Hey, anyone can make a mistake… just the same, in a recent Wall Street Journal column about wildly wrong predictions made in the early part of the last century, the author cited one that wasn’t wrong at all…
“The time will surely come when the methods of electrical intercommunication will have been so developed and multiplied that the people of the world’s different countries may become real neighbors.”
— Maj. Gen. George O. Squier, 1911
That was so prescient that we can forgive its author for inventing Muzak…
– One thing more: in a 21st-century form of electrical intercommunication, on Home Video Monday, Caitie bosses me around. I know, that’s more of a “dog bites man” story than “man bites dog,” but if you’re owned by a cat, you’ll understand. I’ll talk to you later…
