LICK MAH PAW

Well, we were wondering which would be the dominant one of the two cats.



Question answered.

UPDATE: More of the set at Keri's.

Did you know that?

...Many cats don't believe in Saturday morning sleep-ins for their owners?

Here're some cute photos of our little feline friends, taken on their last evening alive.





I miss them so much.

PS No, I didn't even bloody yell at them. I am the worst disciplinarian ever.

UPDATE: Keri has uploaded some shots, too.

"Firm Friends" (an increasingly accurately-named photo series)

From this to this:




I luvs you and when you're not looking I am going to steal your food.

PS Bonus plotting cat photo:


What evil deed shall I perform next?

"Firm Friends" (a misleadingly-named photo series)

Well, they're getting better with each other.

Started out with anger (no claws, please note):



Through wary confrontation:





To a cold war:



To "meh".



And some gratuitous cute photos of the new fellow (and his doting mam) to end:







(More chez Keri.)

Holy crap, my cat's a Nazi

Look at her! She's really getting into it.



She needs the calming influence of a new kitten, stat.

Is mine

This is how a cat shares the space in front of a heater:


You can sit off to the side if you like. Just don't block any of the heat. MY heat.

Reminds me of the old joke - I don't have a cat, but I know one that lets me stay in its house...

Look behind you!

Remarkably intolerant of blogging at work, bosscat.

Meaningless observations

Possible adaption: some people who are allergic to cats can, over time, get used to a particular cat and no longer have a negative reaction to its fur.



Impossible adaption: people who find a cat jumping on them repeatedly in the morning demanding food inconsistent with continued rest cannot, over any period of time, learn to sleep through it. It's true! My immune system is working hard on building up my resistance to violent cat assault, but so far has had precisely no success.

ELSEWHERE: I've discovered a really easy way to reduce your body mass index (BMI) figure - be a centimetre taller than you thought you were! It's like losing a kilogram, but doesn't require any sacrifice whatsoever.

Wii accidents

The UK Telegraph reports the dangers of Wii Fit:

It was meant to get the nation back in shape in the comfort of our own homes - but women working out on the Nintendo Wii Fit video game have helped cause £20 million of damage to their living rooms.

Flower pots, television sets and even pets have been sent flying by the high kicks and hula hoop motions of increasingly vigorous home exercise routines, a study found.

Pets is right. Polly is fascinated by the thing, and likes to try to get in the way if at all possible. You're spending a lot of time cavorting around with that electronic board, I must investigate it further. What are you doing sitting up and down again repeatedly? I'll probably get a better view of it if I walk behind your back as you sit up and... hey, I'm standing here! Why would you lean back on me! Do you mind if I walk on the board while you're trying to balance precisely? Hey, this Wii nunchuck thing you've just put on the table temporarily has a delicious-looking cord, mind if I steal it?

In other news, the Wii Fit program can't distinguish between weight gained by virtue of actually building up muscle, or by eating too much. If you put on a few hundred grams it asks you why, and "I've been doing these exercises and I think they're actually working by building muscle mass" is not one of the options. The available selections are all variations on "I... gutsed a packet of Violet Crumbles, sorry". And each time you answer the only non- food related answer, "I don't know", it suspiciously asks you if you REALLY don't know. Have you ever had an animated white rectangle raise an eyebrow at you? And it doesn't even have eyebrows!

The anthropomorphic board is a rude little bugger, actually. And not just on actual fitness issues. Not satisfied with nagging me to brush my teeth, it even started dispensing romantic advice the other day, telling me that if I wanted to keep my relationship with my lass strong, then "eye contact is very important". Gee, thanks, you patronising jumped up set of bathroom scales. There, I said it. (I wouldn't put it past the creepy thing to sulk, now.)

Polly chinups

...One!

Something wicked this way comes

Actually, I'll leave you with a photo of Polly and an associate, immediately prior to some feline crankiness:



You can guess what happened next.

Helpful advice

Visited the family yesterday for Easter, which was nice. We had a delicious lunch, a light-hearted and thoroughly enjoyable argument about what an angry man I seem to be on the blog, and admired the very pregnant dog of theirs. I mused tentatively that it was sad I didn't have room for one of the puppies, only to have a brilliant solution suggested. Why don't I get rid of Polly? She's only a cat, after all. And who likes cats? Frankly, no-one really understood why I'd even bothered looking after her to this point.

This was such an amazing idea, I had to act on it right away.


That's not a gut - it's an optical illusion created by fur and light. And her starting to podge up a little.

Thank god I have anonymous family members who simply don't like cats who can wisely suggest just not having one.

She did mew kind of sadly as the garbage truck picked up the bin this morning, though.

It has a flavour

Saturday is grass-munching day for one suburban cat. (And it's inflicting-photos-of-his-cat-on-innocent-passers-by day for one suburban blogger. Oh, don't whinge, it's been ages since the last one. And there were requests!)

Friday Polly photo

And now for something completely different -



To quote my sarcastic younger brother: "Good to see you're using your powerful new camera for exciting and interesting compositions. :-P"

As if a Polly photo doesn't automatically qualify.

PS Anyone know why the Canon DSLRs seem to have a different (wider)

Polly has a tunnel

And I finally have a decent camera.

You may see these two ostensibly unrelated pieces of information combined occasionally over the next year.

Weird creatures

Polly discovers humans come in tiny, bald, dribbling varieties, too:



Is not particularly impressed.

Saturday Saloon

Long weekend which I'm, uncharacteristically, not going to spend at the computer. So, just like at other, bigger, more interesting blogs - for example, Larvatus Prodeo's regular "Saturday Salon", but with an extra letter so it's not a complete ripoff - here's an empty comment thread in which commenters and lurkers can get to know each other better, or discuss whatever takes your fancy. (I expect at least one of you to be pregnant by the time I return.)

Here's are a topic to get things started: Peter Garrett's "gaffe" is what you get when you try to be all things to all people. (You can make remarks like that, of course - the Coalition undoubtedly lets its closest friends in the business lobby just what sort of things it's going to give them if it wins - but you do it privately to friends, not publicly to journalists on the other side.)

Also, a Saturday Polly Photo, since it's been a while:

When in doubt: more Polly

(Hey, it was a direct request in the comments.)


Yes? What is it? You're interrupting my snooze.

lolpolly

Perhaps this will help exorcise the lolcat demon.


(Original photo on flickr here. Alternative suggestions: "Oh noes! Kitteh takes ur kween!" and "Yor pees - i has it")


(Original photo on flickr here. Yes, cats apparently favour American spelling.)


(Too blurry for my flickr, but not too blurry for a lolcat!)

Be honest - you suspected this was coming.

There is one more lolpolly idea I have which, whilst my judgment is impaired by lolcat fever, I think will be awesome - but I'm waiting for the shot to go with it. CAN YOU NOT WAIT.

(Image edits courtesy of the lolcat builder at icanhascheezburger.com.)

UPDATE: Of course, there are more Polly photos on my flickr page, which, if you felt like it, you could also transform with the lolcat builder. Let your badly-spelled internet meme creativity run wild! Contributions welcome in the comments. Win the admiration of your peers! Make my efforts look foolish!

UPDATE #2: Wow, can you believe the misjudgment of this post? Not only thinking that people would still be interested in lolcats, but also in actually asking them to spend a few minutes making their own? Seriously, hopeless. The bloke responsible for this post, JeremyWhoStillThinksLolcatsAreFunny (he always gets into stuff just as it's finishing being cool), has been removed from midweek Onymous Lefty duties and relegated to the weekend shift.

UPDATE #3 (4/8/2009): Years later, Polly has become a lolcat! (Visitors from ICHC, this blog was moved to WordPress in April, and comments here don't work any more, but there's a post on Polly at the current version.)

Caturday photos - Polly's ferocious fight with the camera strap

Like a tiger!