Cat egory – Page 2

If You’re Smitten, Adopt A Kitten!

Seriously, people, we need to find them homes. I’m gonna pimp them a bit more right now, and if you think you know anyone who might be interested in gaining karma, increasing the cuteness levels of their daily existence and falling deeply in love, please direct them to this post!

You might have noticed from the pictures in the previous kitten post that two of them are pirate kitties. So after naming them Jack Sparrow and Davy Jones, my mother and sister went on to name the remaining two Smee and Blackbeard, but after some genital scrutiny it was concluded that Blackbeard ought to be renamed Tigerlily.

This is Smee. I think he’s the second cutest after Tigerlily, but don’t tell the kittens I’ve been ranking them like this in case it’s damaging for their self-esteem.

Davy Jones is perhaps a little less photogenic than his siblings, but he’s just as happy and healthy and I think his centre parting is quite sweet, like an old man with Brylcreamed hair. Or Hitler.

Jack Sparrow is so hyperactive that none of his portraits came out well, so I had to settle for some action shots instead. Here he is trying to climb the cardboard fencing we initially used to keep them enclosed, while Smee snoozes on the left.

And here he is inspecting a flowerpot for clamberability. Tigerlily looks as if she’s playing with a dead palm frond, but she was actually falling asleep in that “head droop… head droop… I’M AWAKE I’M AWAKE! …actually, no I’m not…zzz” way.

Lastly, here they all are with their long-suffering mom. You can even see Smee’s little paw kneading her belly.

If you’re interested, please contact me! “name of this blog” at gmail!

Fuzzballs Seeking Good Homes

My family generally tries to sterilise all the strays we can get our hands on, but Mother Cat (we call her MC for short) was heavily pregnant when she first appeared, so there wasn’t much we could do. After she’d given birth she came to our driveway to get fed, but the kittens were nowhere to be seen. Until Tuesday, when in the process of watering the plants my mum spotted a ball of fur which turned out to be a soaked kitten. Careful inspection under the plants revealed four more soaked kittens.

My mum dried them off (after first trapping a stressed-out MC) and created a little den for them and MC in the corner of the garden, where they’ve been happily snuggled ever since. Four kittens seem healthy, but there was a rat-sized runt who was shunned by the rest, including its mother. It died yesterday.

As adorable as these darlings are, we can’t keep them. If they keep living in our driveway they risk getting killed on the road outside (where we’ve lost 2 cats already) or wandering into neighbouring houses and getting savaged by dogs. We can’t bring them into our house because we already have three housecats and more would really be pushing it. If you’re interested, or know somebody who might be, post a comment and I’ll contact you with further details!

Stray Thoughts

Over time my family has come to be responsible for the care and feeding of about nine stray cats, three of which live in our house and six of which hang out regularly in our driveway. The numbers change over time depending on which cat wanders into the neighbourhood and gives birth (my parents sterilize as many as they can but some slip through the cracks) or which cat meets with tragic death.

Mandy was a orange tortoiseshell kitten who, when carried, would snuggle blissfully in our arms, look up adoringly at us and beg to be carried again once we put her down. We loved her, and were in the process of slowly cleaning her up for life indoors with us. On the same day Alec took me to Sultan Shoal to propose to me, back at home my mother gave Mandy a bath, let her scamper around on our carpet until she dried off, and then put her outside to play. Shortly after, she wandered into our neighbour’s driveway and their dogs mauled her to death.

My family ran over when they heard the commotion but it was too late. My mum tried to carry Mandy out from under their car, where she’d crawled, but Mandy was in terrible pain and bit my mum deeply in the hand. My sister then took over while my mum attended to her gushing thumb and carried our dying kitten back to our driveway. Her body fit perfectly into a small shoebox.

Not wanting to spoil what they already knew would be a joyful weekend for me, my family didn’t tell me what had happened until I returned the next day with a ring on my finger. At mass that evening, I knew I was meant to be happy, thanking the Lord for the wonderful blessing of having Alec in my life, for the rest of my life. But I couldn’t stop thinking of Mandy.

I didn’t write about her here at the time either, because I was trying to focus on being happy about what had just happened in my life, and to share that with all of you. Since then my family’s fallen in love with two black and white tom kittens, adopted into our home in anguish after their brother got killed by a car and we couldn’t bear the thought of them meeting the same fate. So we’ve gotten over Mandy, as well we should, because like it or not, these things happen to strays, and we can’t give all of them homes. But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten her. I don’t think I ever will.

I don’t have a picture of her to show you, but I take pictures of the orange tortoiseshell strays I see, because they remind me of her. Here are two of my most recent ones:

On the way to Aljunied MRT

In Old Airport Road hawker centre

I know the hawker centre cat looks a bit sullen here but he was actually very friendly and got lots of pats from people passing by on their way through the hawker centre. When an aunty at the popiah stall saw me taking photos of him, she came over excitedly and asked if I could help take some for her on her camphone, which she didn’t know how to use. “Can you put the cat as my wallpaper?” she asked (in Chinese), “My husband’s photo is there now but I want the cat instead.”

There isn’t really a point to this post, it just struck me that it’s been nearly a year since Mandy died, and I haven’t written about her, plus with the new camera I’ve been photographing lots of cats lately. Be kind to strays, it’s a hard (and often very short) life for them.

Shock And Aww

Singapore’s extreme humidity is generally a bad thing for me.

The eczema I’d had my entire life here disappeared completely for the 4 years I was in England, only to return with a vengeance almost as soon as I returned.

I trekked happily through Turkish desert heat with no problems, but every time I perspire here I break out in heat rash.

In England my hair is capable of being fairly attractive. In Singapore it is an unmanageable mess of frizzy curls unless regularly and expensively fried to within an inch of its life.

When I was giving my flat in London the final massive clean before moving out, I spent days surrounded by dust-thick air with not a single adverse reaction. In Singapore the mere act of sweeping or vacuuming renders me snot-nosed (or more accurately, sdot-dosed) for the next hour.

By now I bet you think this is another of my pointless I-hate-Singapore rants and are beginning to think that this blog has seriously jumped the shark.

HOWEVER!

None of the above is the point of this post at all. It is all merely prelude to my referring you to this discussion on static electricity and the stroking of cats, which has given me the first reason ever to be grateful for humidity.

Yay humidity. Yay fingers and faces buried in warm fur, yay little damp noses on smile-plumped cheeks, yay purring shock-free footrests. Sparks fly daily between my family and this beauty, but they’re all metaphorical.

Fuzzy Logic

While chatting with my mum on what she got up to while I was away:

My mum: Daddy and me went to Chinatown for the first time.
Me: That’s nice, did you have fun?
My mum: Yes! I bought Alec some cute cat coasters for his new balcony table.
Me: MUM!!??! He’s a guy! And he doesn’t have or want a cat!
My mum: That’s exactly why he needs cat coasters.
Me: ……

One, Two, Three, Four…

…I declare Kitten War!

If there’s a kitten cuter than Squee in the universe, I fear I may not survive seeing it.

Addendum: a slightly odd conversation I had with Alec last night.

Me: At this Kitten War site there’s a kitten that’s shooooooo cute! It’s called Squee! There’s another kitten called Sox that’s cute too but there’s something special about Squee that I really like.
Alec, eyes half glazed over: So, is Squee a black kitten?
Me, surprised: Yes! How’d you guess that?
Alec: Well, in all these contests, you always like the black one.

[To put things in context, here are some recent reality TV favourites of mine: Fantasia, LaToya, Jennifer, George (LOVED all of them in American Idol 3), Uchenna and Joyce (Amazing Race), first Anwar and then Vonzell after Anwar got boring (American Idol 4).]

Used To Be A Raver

At Jacob’s place on Saturday, we had to pick bits of paper out of a box, and then play a song which matched the theme written on the paper. Not having expected this little twist on his instructions to “bring obscure music”, I’d just brought a few CDs and some mp3s in a thumbdrive, but was happy enough with what I managed.

For the theme “Fat Bottomed Girls”, I played Vybz Kartel’s Picture You And Me (“in a tree, F-U-C-K-I-N-G”), feeling that this contained similar key elements of juvenile misogyny.

Alec then drew “Start The Panic”, and astutely observed that such a theme could pretty much apply to anything in his musical collection. However, we decided to spare everyone else the undeniable fight-or-flight impulse that a choice selection from The Chieftains In China would have provoked, so I played Knifehandchop’s Used To Be A Raver instead.

Other than that we drank, and ate Twisties, and played mahjong on the floor, and Jacob ate his cat.

Jacob gettin’ Ozzy wit’ it.

Mahjong tiles and alcohol.

I was joking about the cat. Witness intact Schopie with loving owner.

Pint-Sized

If only I’d had a pint glass close at hand when Casey was still kitten-sized.

My Naked Pussy

The scene: Casey running madly back and forth between the kitchen and the backyard.

My mum: What a streaker! Our cat is such a streaker!
Me: Er, mum, a streaker is someone who runs around naked.
My mum: Yes, I know. Doesn’t she run around naked?
Me: ……

Casey At 5 Months

For weeks I’ve been accumulating a pretty large backlog of photos I’d like to put up here. Many record cultural observations, or moments of beauty or humour, capturing my view of the world around me in my attempts at artistic exploration.

However, none of those photos will be displayed in this post. Instead, here be cat pics.

Casey is now 5 months old. On her first visit to the vet, she entered gibberish into her own veterinary records by wandering onto the keyboard as the vet was typing. She is very strong and can pin big healthy adults to the sofa for hours on end, simply by draping herself across a belly, falling asleep, and generally being warm and fuzzy. Her favourite food is finger, but she never breaks the skin.

Cute and she knows it.

Completely unposed, I swear.

Hasn’t quite grasped the distinction between terrapin food and water and cat food and water.

[Before anyone goes reporting me to the SPCA for cruelty to terrapins, let me just clarify that the terrapin spends most of the day clambering around the backyard and sunning itself. It only goes in that small tank to sleep and eat.]