Showing posts with label fur. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fur. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Hats, cats, and bunnies - does my bun look good in this?

Dear George,
It's not just cats that can wear hats you know, whatever Harry Spotter may think (see a posting two weeks ago). With the help of my carer's husband, Mike, I have been trying to decide if a bowler (like Harry Spotter's) or a para red beret would suit me best. What do you think? Do I look really amazing in these? Or do I look sort of odd? Janet, my chief carer, finds it difficult to decide. I wonder, are the humans making fun of me with these images?
Yours Cautiously (in view of your past record with rabbits)

Harve.
(http://harvey-diaryofaninspirationalbunny.blogspot.com)

Dear Harve,
I think that the bowler suits you best, as you are a rather British kind of rabbit, stiff upper lip, liking your daily routine, generally anxious to make sure your humans keep to the correct kind of behaviours at all times. Janet and Mike are almost like your butler and parlourmaid, to my mind. You accept their care with a very correct kind of upper class acceptance.
The red beret, on the other hand, is military verging on the savage. Better for tough cats like me, who are quite prepared to go in there and slaughter whatever wildlife we can. We go for the kill. Rabbits like you just don't do the carnivorous thing at all. So to my mind, it's a bowler for a bunny.
More on fashion for cats next week. I hear you are on Facebook....
My only anxiety is that humans will get above themselves and (instead of using Photoshop) start dressing up cats. We cats have dignity and style without any nonsense about wearing clothes like pathetic humans.
Love (oh yes, I love bunnies)
George
PS. Celia has signed the petition on my behalf against poisoning feral cats in Australia.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Where is my Bowler? Male fashion for cats.

Dear George,
As you know, Fiona is my sphynx sister and Sweet Pea is my two legged siser who is 5 years old. They find great delight in chasing me around the house trying to abscound with my Bowler. My Bowler is a very important part of who I am, without it I feel I am not the proper British Mancat who is well Suited and Booted. I feel I cannot show my face or spots witho
ut it. Ever since it has gone missing my chin has been down to the ground. What will I do without it I ask myself? Buying another Bowler to replace the one they lost will not do. That Bowler has special meaning to me, it was/is my very first British Bowler, it fits just right. Oh...what will I do? Can you help?
Sincerely
Harry Spotter, at http://spotandfiona.blogspot.com/
PS. I have three large blue spots, blue toupee markings and a blue tail.


Dear Harry,
Are you sure you want a Bowler? What about a Topper? Or a Yorkshire flat 'at? Finding the right size hat for a British (or any other nationality) cat is not going to be easy. Maybe you should have Ratcatcher riding gear (so called among the human hunting set, see http://www.iwfoxhounds.com/hunting_clothes.php ) to go with it - buff or yellow breeches with a tweed riding jacket? Ratcatcher used to be for cub hunting but now has caught on during the proper season. I like to think that humans have taken advice from ratting cats and are wearing as near as the poor souls can get to tabby or dark tortoiseshell fur.
My owner, Oh no, my secretary*, Celia, bought me a
Father Christmas hat (see photo left) by buying a Father Christmas soft toy and then detaching the hat. She then gave the doll (which was bald beneath the hat) to a rather puzzled human kitten.
I personally did not appreciate that hat, as you can see from my expression. I felt it was demeaning for me to
be dressed like any human being, the inferior species, and worse stlll one that went down chimneys and vocalised "Ho, ho, ho!" (A meaningless bit of human vocalisation but mind you, most of it is, anyway.). I do not wish to go up and down chimneys though I quite like terrifying my humans by getting on the roof.
Your spots bring to mind another thing. Why on earth are there so few cats in the Harry Potter books? Mrs Norris, the cat belonging to Filch the caretaker, is a bad 'un and only Hermione Granger seems to have a proper witches' cat, Crookshanks. Crookshanks is ginger and long haired. Why is there no Grimalkin, the traditional witch's black cat, I ask. We black cats need an PR image consultant.
Sincerely (not love because we are being British)
George
*How could I have made such a mistake. Humans owning cats is just laughable. Everybody knows cats own humans.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

If our humans had fur, what would they look like?


Dear George,
Humans are so odd about issues like fur. And why are humans fattist? Why do they think I am fat? I am Mustapha.... I glory in a symmetric fluffy white bib and I step out with my tail up. There are misunderstandings about my weight because I a big fluffy and solid. Like humans say, I have a heavy frame. I am not fat - just fluffy. My winter coat turns this brownish colour towards spring and the more stupid humans (yes, some are even more stupid than others) think I am a tortoiseshell. Usually only females are tortoiseshell. Here in Australia, we have to keep our humans in at night. It is a way of stopping them straying, roaming round looking for fights or sex. They believe they are keeping us indoors - when we are keeping them inside. What a species!

Love Mustapha


Dear Mustapha,
We cats have to realise that human cognitive powers are very limited. Can they even think? Many of us believe that they are incapable of abstract thought, though they can be trained by rigorous use of stick (claws) and carrot (purrs). They may think you are fat because they do understand that weight is not the same as apparent size.
I have purrsuaded my pet Celia to purchase a weighing scale, so that she can just read out the weight from it. A baby scale via amazon will do very nicely indeed. Vet scales are often those big ones used for dogs - quite unsuitable for cats. Pushkin, her current foster cat, who is meant to be losing weight, has taught her about High Fives.
Poor deluded human, she thinks she has taught him to sit and do an upwards high fives. It is the other way round. He has taught her to offer cat biscuits for this behaviour. This naturally extracts more food from her, though she doesn't realise it. Not bright. Not bright at all. His plan is to put on weight despite the obesity diet. He may well succeed. His vet records showed he put on an extra kilogram over two months on the diet (before Celia had him).
Looking at your photo, it makes me realise how attractive humans would be if only they were not bald. They wouldn't have pink fur, fur sure. Pink is just wrong. Celia could be a black and white, with white paws and face. Ronnie would look rather sleeker than he does, if he was black all over like me. Jacqui, the friend of your human pet, would make a very nice tortoiseshell. It is an amusing game, as we doze in the warm down under sun, to think what our naked humans pet would be like - fluffy versus sleek; black, black and white, tortoiseshell, pure white, or black feet; pedigree versus non pedigree...
Think about it and give your thoughts on this topic to me.
Love George

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Human whiskers - they've vanished!


Dear George,
My male human used to wear a moustache! Recently he shaved it (I think he tries to please someone). What I’ve noticed since….is that he’s no longer able to give correct directions when asked for. Could this be because…. he shaved his whiskers?
I’m really concerned! I wanted to ask him directions to a “sushi place” (Ah! those tuna sashimi – so yummy!) but I’m afraid that he’ll send me south instead of north and so on!
What can I do? How can he grow back his
whiskers? Should I water his face? Implant?
Worried,
Sir Winston

Dear Sir Winston,
Shaving off whiskers. What on earth does he think he is doing? This is one of the most worrying habits of humans. They self mutilate by shaving off the fur on their face - almost the only fur they have. They also shave off the fur under their arms and (sometimes) below the navel. You'd think, as they have to little of it, they'd want to keep all they have.
The only furry area they want to keep is the area on the top of their head. And that falls off somewhere around middle age. Some cats have tried grooming on the bald top of the head, sitting on the top of an arm chair so they can reach it. It doesn't work. Fur never re-grows though - and this is truly pathetic - some humans wear a little wig up there to hide the baldness.
Facial hair? One reason why humans shave it off or pull it out(female are particularly committed to the latter) is that their facial whiskers are so inferior to ours. The whiskers sometimes grow long and strong, but they can't DO anything with them. Their whiskers do not send messages to the brain - except for an Ouch if they are pulled too hard!
Our whiskers function as an extra sense. When we catch a mouse, the whiskers automatically move forward, touching the struggling rodent. That we, we can tell how much it is still moving and at what angle it lies in the mouth. We also have whiskers on our legs, so that when we hold down a mouse, we can measure its struggles. I have added a photo of these.
Whiskers don't just help us keep hold of our prey, they also help us measure the size of holes or small places. If our whiskers can get through, the rest of us probably can.
Love George
PS. May I say that yours are particularly fine, Sir Winston.

Help for cats whose humans show behaviour problems.

This blog is devoted to the study of human behaviour. We cats, who live with this sometimes unpredictable and always feeble minded species, can benefit from seeing their behaviour in its proper scientific context. The study of feline dilemmas, training problems, and difficulties with humans, can only benefit all of us. All of us train our humans - to buy the right food, for instance, but many of us do not have knowledge of how to improve our training methods. The human species is obviously not as intelligent as the cat, but nevertheless can learn quite a lot - if properly managed. Topics of interest include the use of claw and order, purring as a human reward, rubbing your human up the right way, when to bite, spraying as a method of making our wishes known, ignoring the human, human harassment, human inattention and sheer human stupidity. I welcome your questions. Photos can be sent via my secretary's website, www.celiahaddon.com This blog has been chosen as one of the top 50 feline blogs by Online VetTechprogramms.org