I know I promised to be fully on today, but my house is covered in cat litter, and everything smells bad and needs cleaning.
I’m going to post kitten pics, and let you ooh and ahhh. I’ll write a post tomorrow, promise.
Fifth Week and they’re now lapping kitten milk, which is good, as it supplements mommy’s milk. Next up, eating.Little orange boy and white girl, who SEEMS polydactyl. Um….This one is tiny little Circe, my future little girl.This little boy will go to a friend of mine.The kittens have discovered the toddler’s toy room.learning to read is SO hard! Mulligan and one of the little gingers. We don’t know which. They’re too small for collars.Man, if this bus had a motor, we’d be kittens from Hades!Playing is exhausting!Mommy-Miso is the best for cuddles.Big brother Prince is always on babysitting duty, though.
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86 thoughts on “Tired And Kittens”
“…and dis is da part that says we’re in charge of everything but the weather.”
When we kept our son’s dog, my nights went something like this:
Bosco comes into bedroom at some unsanctified hour whining to go out.
Get up, pad to front door in bathrobe, open door. Bosco lunges out the door and races across the yard and into the darkness.
I don’t remember how many nights I spent on the sofa, waiting for him to come back. Eventually, I’d go back to bed and hope I heard him at the door. Or I’d wake up, get up, and go to the door to check on him. Finally I’d find him at the door and he’d come back in.
It was worse than night feedings when our son was a baby. Sigh.
The function of crazycat is to shine a light upon the absurdity that we face in daily life by showing you feline craziness that is tangible, real, and fuzzy. They can be little stinkers quite often. Nastycat has a regrettable habit of rolling in anything smelly, sticky, or both and hiding when he knows that bathtime is upon him (and he does not like bathtime. At all).
Doofus the orangecat and his single tiny brain cell gets caught in open doorways, attempts to fight the curtains (and loses), dislikes everything to do with the outdoors (especially dogs) but insists on going out anyway (only to run right back in as soon as he realizes he is actually outside), and has been known to attempt suicide by drowning himself in chicken soup.
Neighborcat and Othercat are alright. Neighborcat pays the rent for the foursome by bringing one dead thing per day, no more, no less. Othercat disappears for days or weeks at a time, only to return with new scars and new green eyed short haired black and brown kittens somewhere out there (most likely).
Kittehs keep you grounded. They need food, demand scritches, and occupy laps and sunbeams. They care not a fig for the absurdities of Men, politics, relationships, or finances. Food, scritches, naps. These things matter to the wee fuzzballs. And in this simplicity there is much to appreciate.
We’re getting the last days of warm weather, so today was concrete day. Tomorrow (assuming no disasters with the poured conk’) it’ll be deck installation. Kat-the-dog supervised, but got bored, especially after I gave up on the mixer and went back to the wheelbarrow and shovel.
Some people use colored elastics, taped together at the ends, to code kittens that are too small for collars. Or use white elastic and write names on it.
The polydactyl cats often look like they have a thumb on their murder mittens. Sometimes the “thumb” is fairly functional, I had a Manx (serious mutant baby white with blue eyes too) who was way to capable tith his extra digits. I have had others where it was less functionally connected. Tradition is they are excellent mousers and were considered lucky by old New Englanders. You can actually track loyalist New Englanders flight to Canada by the increase in polydactyl cats in the remaining stray cat populations. If someone decides to uplift cats this is probably first on the mutations to use so they can be better tool users. I still hold feline uplift is probably a REALLY bad idea as enticing and addictive as they are to many humans they’re a rough equivalent of Futurama’s Hypnotoad.
I don’t know about the uplifted cats being roughly equivalent to Kzin. The Kzinti likely evolved from a top predator, House Cats (aka Felis Silvestris or Felis Libyca depending on which DNA analyses you look at) are mid range predators. Top predators do not have to be worry about being prey, it will affect their development with respect to attitude. Top predators seem likely to be far more aggressive then a species in the middle of the food chain. Cats (i.e. house cats) are both skilled hunters and excellent at avoiding interaction when needed. I suspect intelligence wise an uplifted F. Sylvestris might prove a far more dangerous opponent than the overconfident Kzin.
Which makes an interesting comparison with humans, who are omnivores that were for much of our evolution, NOT apex predators. As far as I can tell, it’s only been in the last roughly 50,000 years that we’ve attained apex status via tool and weapon development. I suppose that you could say that our aggressiveness/arrogance as a species has increased in that time.
I’m a bit allergic to cats myself. Doesn’t stop us from keeping ONE cat at a time. Does mean I have to wash my hands each time I pet him. Change my shirts a couple times a day, wash cushions from the living room once a week, vacuum all the rooms once a week (daily rotation), and remember to shut my bedroom door so he doesn’t get cat dander all over where I sleep. (Although the CPAP machine would probably filter most of that out of my breathing air.) He’s lying in his bed at my feet as I’m checking the morning e-mail.
Gort earns his keep, regularly catching the small mammals that invade the cellar. And I think we’ve mostly broken him of the habit of bringing in outdoor catches still alive and letting them go in the house.
I know there’s a group of people who complain about cats destroying the environment by killing song birds, but here’s the thing. Cats replace the natural predators we humans have displaced. They don’t catch the birds that are alert, fast, or strong. They catch the stupid ones that aren’t paying attention to their surroundings. If a domestic cat can catch a bird, it’s darn certain that some other predators could also catch and kill it. That’s how natural selection operates. And domestic cats are by no means the top of the food chain. Here in New Hampshire, outdoor cats are food animals for foxes, coyotes, fishers, bears, and a whole bunch of various hawks, owls, osprey, and eagles.
And at least for Gort, his catch and kill rate is about 20 small mammals to 1 bird. (Don’t ask me how many crickets and grasshoppers he’s munched.)
Clearly no one has told Gort “Klaatu barada nikto”. Bringing you live prey is essentially telling you “Look Stupid this is how you hunt, here’s a practice example” just like Mommy did for them.
I also have very mild cat allergies, apparently much of the human race is allergic to cats in one degree or another. I have found that my body gets used to the cats I live with. Pet or touch some other cat and I get a far stronger response, though not as bad as some I know.
We had a 20 year old cat, on downward spiral of years of chronic kidney decease, catch a hummingbird. Hummingbird. First hummingbird any of our multitude of cats over the years had caught. Ever (or since). What did the hummingbird do? Put itself in his paws? Seriously? He was so sick that he’d stopped catching anything. He was our most prolific bird catcher. Not that he stalked birds and caught them. Nope. He caught them because they were stupid enough to dive bomb him. The hummingbird was not dead when we found them. He’d dropped it. Couldn’t see/find any puncture wounds (he was planning on an inside “toy”). We picked it up and put hummingbird up where couldn’t get caught again, and nothing else could easily snatch it, not even the crows that hang around. All our cats were taken inside. Hummingbird was gone when we checked on it (doesn’t mean it actually survived, or something else didn’t take advantage, just that we tried).
The other prolific creature that none of our cats have ever caught are the fluffy tree rats, squirrels. Which are the invasive ones, not the native gray squirrel. Otherwise, their targets are generally mice, garter snakes, and rarely rats. Rat catching is bad, especially lately, because someone is putting out rat poison. Which affects up the food chain, even cats who don’t eat the rats (just takes contact with the poisoned rats blood). Mice and snakes typically aren’t even killed, on purpose. The cats just like the mobile “toy”. Which if they manage to bring them inside, just thrills me to death. What? You haven’t heard me screaming? Current cats aren’t getting these opportunities (because of the rat poisoning someone is putting out). But they have managed to discover at least 3 backyard locations where garter snakes hang out (one where cats can’t get to). Difference now is if a cat makes a sudden beeline for the closed door, then said cat has a very angry snake dangling from his/her mouth. Which means said snake can be “rescued” and released into a neighbors yard. Survival isn’t guarantied, just a chance of survival. Higher count of garter snakes, because we haven’t seen as many possums, or turkeys, lately. OTOH the snails and slugs are way down. Lately large crows, and hawks, around, so garter snake sightings going down too.
Never seen them. But have had reports of coyotes, near the school. Know close by fields have fox and bobcat. Have seen hawks. Reports of eagles and owls. Bears and cougars don’t have far to come from reported areas either west of us (wetlands) or east of us (Willamette green belt). All potential cat snatchers.
Out previous cat, a female, used to go romping with a bobcat we had in the area. Never caught them in a compromising position, but the bobcat definitely was NOT putting the munch on her.
I had cats for the better part of 30 years. When I ran out of them… gosh, 6-7 years ago?… I never bothered to get another one.
I was a little burned out on nursing sick cats by that point, I think. And now neither the home environment nor my current weekly activities nor my budget are conducive to keeping any.
Oh, once upon a time, my mother fell in love with this two-year-old beagle but hadn’t tried to adopt her.
So after hearing Mom taking about this beagle she wanted to adopted, I asked her “so why don’t you get Lilly?”
Mom looked at me and said “Do you want me to sleep on the couch? Your father doesn’t want a pet.”.
I almost laughed in Mom’s face as Dad had told me (some time earlier) that Mom didn’t want a pet. (This was a time when living at home, I asked Dad about getting a pet.)
I controlled my laughter and such said “Talk to Dad about getting Lilly.”
Well Mom did talk to Dad and Mom got Lilly. :wink:
Our Newfoundland breeder used colored ribbons on the puppies. It gives you “names” for them, until they develop enough to get names of their own. It also helps when you accidently end up with 12 Newfie puppies all at once. Names take time to come up with. Our dog was Mr Lime-Green as a puppy.
According to Caroline Glick, sources have revealed to her that the US is the reason why the Israelis haven’t entered Gaza yet, and is heavily arm-twisting Israel in virtually everything related to the war.
I haven’t watched the video (yet), but the American Thinker article provides a summary of it.
Frankly, the administration’s response to the current conflict felt odd to me. It felt like a sudden flip by both the administration and State Department, both of which have been steadfast in covering their eyes to what is going on with Iran and its proxies. Glick’s information – if true – is an unfortunate confirmation of what I’ve been fearing.
If little bitty Israel can engage and defeat an organizatopn as w backed and equipped as Hamas, the USA and FICUS look like imbeciles losing to and running from much more primitive Taliban.
Of course GrampySwampyDepends has to sit on them to let Hamas escape and survive. (And more importantly create epic antipersonnell boobytraps and IEDs against ant ground action
“See! See!”
He/his-puppeteers wants Israel defeated. Probably wants them -gone-, preferably at hand of Iran. (Spit)
Hearing idiots defend Islam and blame Israel and America is like hear Harley Quinn defend the Joker and blame Batman and the Gotham PD. Delusional doesn’t even cover it.
Travel tired is something I know. My father was stationed in Oregon near Corvallis many moons ago, and the family was back near Nashville in the Tennessee. That as before the interstates were anywhere near finished. Once a year. 4 days one way, much of it on the old US routes.
My son lives 820 miles away and we usually drive straight through. Almost all interstate, but still tiring.
I’m owned by a partial bengal. He has a vocabulary of some 10 words. Treat, play, thank you, no, lay down, come here, not going to add some of the unsavory ones… He can also read analog clocks. He gets me up and out of bed every morning at 7. He gets auto fed at midnight, six, noon, and six, so feeding isn’t playing a role in getting me out of bed. As soon as I’m up and moving, he lays down and goes to sleep. Despite that, he’s a good owner.
My daughter has a longhaired cat that likes to hang out with four kittens we rescued from a flearidden garage. We refer to them as “Meow Zedong and the Gang of Four.” Except for when he’s eating aaaaallll the treats, in which case he is “President Hoover.”
Nobody blames you for taking time to recover after a trip like that. Definitely sorry I missed the con and meeting the Huns there! The kittens are of course adorable and I wish I could go on the backup list but I don’t think my kitties would appreciate it! Especially not C…
There are low allergen breeds, e.g., Siberians, that most people with allergies can tolerate. My youngest (now 19) and I are the only two people in the family who are not allergic to cats. So, read up on it, found a local breeder – and all 6 of us descended on her house and stayed an hour. Breeder’s house. Maybe a dozen cats. And – younger daughter got a bit stuffed up, there were some symptoms among the others. But an hour’s exposure to many cats, in a house where many cats live, and nobody got serious reactions.
So we got Peaches, a little orange fuzz ball, that my prescient son promptly renamed Razor. Little cutie pie now weighs 18 lbs and has Claws of Doom, with which he is not the least hesitant to express his displeasure.
Downside: I never paid for a cat prior to this one, and it weren’t cheap. Add some vet bills over his 8 years with us, and I could have bought a nice little flock of sheep for the cost of that cat.
Never bought a kitten from breeder or rescue. Latest two dogs OTOH. $150 to veterinarian through their very occasional rescue. Came with all vaccines, spayed, and medically stable (her survival when they took her in was in question, way more money spent than the “rehoming fee”). Current pup was $400, 6 years ago (now the puppies are $800 – $1000). Included all puppy shots and spaying (at 6 months) as long as used the Spay Clinic for everything (since spay clinic shutdown don’t know who they are using now). At that time about $250 -ish, was “extra” (since the rescue only had her liter for a few days, and her a few days more). Compared to our veterinarian? Saved about $600. Compare that to the inlaws who bought two Papillons at $3500 and $3000, from a breeder, plus then had to spend for puppy shots and spaying.
Our first two dogs were mostly free from my aunt, who raised and showed Italian Greyhounds. One was a retired champion (Mary) while the other (Knight) never had much success at showing. He had been sold, but came back a couple of times (never his fault, the first case was after an accident, the second when the new owner died from cancer). I had to pay the air freight which went from the Midwest to Cali by a long route with layover. Poor dogs were scared, hungry and a bit thirsty. (They did get water at the layover, according to the airline. Maybe.) They recognized me, which eased things down. My uncle vowed “never again” about shipping any of the dogs by air.
We got the next two as puppies from the shelter. One in 2005, the other in ’07. We had to pay $85 each plus $35 for a spay procedure (required by the shelter), though the Lab-Aussie was at the minimum age and broke stitches the first night. Late night runs to the vet are not fun. Both dogs had their puppy shots.
Kat-the-Border Collie was one of a litter of 10. The first 5 pups were sold via Face/Craig’s, while the second batch didn’t sell right away. I saw an ad in the farm & ranch store (the breeder posted ads in both the farm stores in F-Falls), called $SPOUSE and we saw the pups late that afternoon. Non-papered, but both parents were present, so Kat was obviously BC, though with short hair (“Smooth Coat”, they call it.) and tricolored. We paid $200 (August, ’21) which was a huge bargain. Had to get puppy shots, but we got to delay spaying until Kat was almost a year old. (The techs at the clinic were surprised. They thought we’d breed Kat for one litter, because tricolors are a bit rare. Nope, we’re too old for puppies.)
Other puppies from that litter are around. I told one of the ladies at the mail drop about it, and she got one for her small ranch. Border Collies are pretty good at herding cattle. Kat saw one of her brothers at the vet, said boy was hiding from her. Knowing Kat’s personality, I can understand. :)
The psychopathic left keeps trying to do damage to James O’Keefe, no matter how petty, because they are psychopaths. After rules-lawyering themselves into control of Project Veritas and predictably running that organization straight into the pavement, they are now suing him and, in addition to the initial suit, they are trying to legally steal his copyrights from him.
The gist of the claim is that the three books were “work for hire” done for Project Veritas, and the factual grounds for that claim will have to come out in discovery, or the process of the lawsuit itself. Without O’Keefe’s contract, and documentation that he wrote the books on company time, we can only speculate on how much bite the claims might have.
But let us speculate.
There are some problems with claiming that Project Veritas is the “real” author of the three books in question.
To begin with, all three books are credited to O’Keefe alone.
Second, the copyright registrations are to O’Keefe, not to Project Veritas. (This is not dispositive, the copyright office only records registrations, it does nothing to investigate their veracity or correctness.)
Third, the copyright pages in each book credit O’Keefe, and O’Keefe alone, as the author and copyright holder.
Fourth (and much the weakest of these items, legally) the publishers presented all of the books as by O’Keefe alone, though two of them give him a sub-author credit as “Founder of Project Veritas”.
Prima facie, this puts the copyrights in O’Keefe’s hands. It’s not a certainty, but it’s pretty strong evidence.
What could muck that up?
As far as I can see, two things.
First and most important, the exact wording of O’Keefe’s contract with Project Veritas, along with documentation of whether he wrote the books while he was “on the clock” and understood that he was doing so. To be clear, Veritas cannot claim he created the books for hire simply because he wrote them while in the employ of Veritas. They have to establish that the books were written with O’Keefe understanding that he was writing them for the company, not for himself. Unless the contract was written with incredible stupidity (certainly possible, but not the way I would bet), the mere fact that he wrote them while employed by the company (that he created) does not make them work-for-hire.
Second, the supposed contributions of other employees of Veritas. (This is especially scummy, since Veritas has let go all of its original staff, meaning the current controllers are claiming work of people they fired as their own.) This is an area of potential problems depending on the nature of the contributions, the contractual terms under which they were made, and what the employees understood at the time they made the contributions.
If any employees wrote any parts of those books, then those contributions were almost certainly work-for-hire. But were they work-for-hire to Project Veritas? Or to James O’Keefe as an individual? Given that O’Keefe registered the copyrights to himself, it is not unlikely that any ghostwriting that occurred was work-for-hire contracted to himself, not the company. (This circumstance would blow Veritas’s claims out of the water, and probably will get them laughed out of court.)
If their contracts were with Veritas rather than O’Keefe, then Veritas as an entity has a claim at least on their contributions. How much of a claim depending on the scale of the contributions, and the natures of the agreements.
I have long, extensive, detailed rants on the evils of work-for-hire, even as I concede that it is a necessary thing in certain circumstances. But I’ll not go into those now.
But ponder the sheer psychopathic mendacity of stealing an organization from its founder and public face, and then trying to claim that all his work belongs to you because you played the corporate game better than the actual creator did.
Psychopathic mendacity is kind of their bag, man. The liberal has no personal responsibility, no shame, and no hard limit on the lengths he will go for the utopic ends he seeks. Any sin is forgiven those who remain lefty in good standing, though I’ve not seen cannibalism yet. Violent theft, rape, murder?
Those examples exist. Excused. Forgotten. Swept under the rug.
When there is no depth your opponent will not plumb in service of the truly apocalyptic ideals they eagerly espouse, it is neither inaccurate nor hyperbolic to call them what they are. Evil.
May they reap the bitter harvest they’ve sown, and may their victims find some manner of justice in the inevitable fall that they have prepared for themselves. May the just, the innocent, and the goodly survive what comes, and may the work of our hands lift up those that come after us.
And may our children and children’s children learn well the hard lessons taught in the hard times we live in.
When there is no depth your opponent will not plumb in service of the truly apocalyptic ideals they eagerly espouse, it is neither inaccurate nor hyperbolic to call them what they are. Evil.
There are options. Some much, much worse than others. I don’t think mass hangings will happen unless things drop precipitously- then we’re all in for a Bad Time.
But the best, surest of options?
Have children. Teach them well. Teach them to be strong. Independent. Tough enough to face a world actively inimical to them. Teach them charity without naivety. Teach them compassion, but teach them also the wisdom to tell sharpers from the honest but down on their luck. Teach them the value of hard work. Teach them the value of time well spent. Teach them to honor courage in the face of lies, prudence when their peers sink into hedonism, and the wit to separate the good from the wicked.
How?
Live those examples. Let them see your failures, and let them see how you accept the consequences- and do better. Be the man your wife rejoices to see when you come home. Be the one your friends and coworkers know they can depend on not just through the everyday muck, but when things are toughest. When everyone is tired, tempers are short, and time is shorter, take the time to do it right. Every time.
Speak your conscience, but take the time to take counsel from those you respect most first. Defend your principles but know when your words fall on deaf ears, and spare yourself the waste.
To do thus is to live upon the edge of a blade. Endure the hate that will come. Bear up under the burdens that righteous living always carries. Never shirk your responsibilities, but allow joy, fun, and delight into your heart. If for no other reason than the bastards on the other side purely hate honest happiness with all the vile jealousy of the utterly self-damned.
It’s a tall order. All men fail to reach that goal in life, by inches or by miles. That’s no reason not to try, though.
Lastly, know that there will always be barbarians, thieves, and vileness so long as mankind exists. We each hold the seeds of absolute depravity and transcendent grace within us. Sometimes all it takes is one good, solid example of a good man to turn the tide in a soul.
If nothing less, the world could always use more good men. Your efforts will never be in vain so long as you never stop trying to do just a little bit better.
Speaking of psychopathic mendacity, Biden the Pretendent is on national TV right now lying to us semi-incoherently. I had to shut it off after about a minute, before I heaved something large and heavy through an expensive HD flatscreen.
———————————
“You are now under oath. Do you understand what that means?”
“Yes. I do have one question, though.”
“What is it?”
“Why are none of you ever required to tell the truth? You lie most of the time.”
Regarding Biden’s speech. I didn’t get as far as letting it come on before switching the channel. No way was I watching that clown show. Not fond of clowns, he makes them worse.
Michael Malice just made me laugh entirely too loudly at work:
“The publishing industry is what happens when you have a deal that is run entirely or predominantly by sorority girls who like books. There is very little incentive for excellence. There is very little interest in looking at what readers actually want. It’s entirely about status, it’s very heavy-handed…”
One important bit is the voice you can hear encouraging the people standing in front of the bus to sit instead.
But of course, the person suggesting that idea doesn’t lead by example.
The people are getting fed up.
The YouTube channel for Podcast of the Lotus Eaters has a segment up today discussing a British MP who stood up in Parliament and basically said, “Throw out the illegals and asylum seekers.”
According To Hoyt 
“…and dis is da part that says we’re in charge of everything but the weather.”
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KITTIES!!!!!! SO CUTE!!!!!
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The internet is so terribl…. Oh, wait. Kitten pictures.
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Is there ANYTHING cuter than baby critters????? I think not!!!
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Are your current cats OK?
Over in Mad Genius Club, you mentioned that one was missing.
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She showed up at eight am. AFTER costing me my entire night awake, listening for her. Sigh.
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That’s a “like” for showing up not for keeping you awake. :wink:
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When we kept our son’s dog, my nights went something like this:
Bosco comes into bedroom at some unsanctified hour whining to go out.
Get up, pad to front door in bathrobe, open door. Bosco lunges out the door and races across the yard and into the darkness.
I don’t remember how many nights I spent on the sofa, waiting for him to come back. Eventually, I’d go back to bed and hope I heard him at the door. Or I’d wake up, get up, and go to the door to check on him. Finally I’d find him at the door and he’d come back in.
It was worse than night feedings when our son was a baby. Sigh.
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Cats…. Miz Kitty is keeping me sane by driving me crazy.
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The function of crazycat is to shine a light upon the absurdity that we face in daily life by showing you feline craziness that is tangible, real, and fuzzy. They can be little stinkers quite often. Nastycat has a regrettable habit of rolling in anything smelly, sticky, or both and hiding when he knows that bathtime is upon him (and he does not like bathtime. At all).
Doofus the orangecat and his single tiny brain cell gets caught in open doorways, attempts to fight the curtains (and loses), dislikes everything to do with the outdoors (especially dogs) but insists on going out anyway (only to run right back in as soon as he realizes he is actually outside), and has been known to attempt suicide by drowning himself in chicken soup.
Neighborcat and Othercat are alright. Neighborcat pays the rent for the foursome by bringing one dead thing per day, no more, no less. Othercat disappears for days or weeks at a time, only to return with new scars and new green eyed short haired black and brown kittens somewhere out there (most likely).
Kittehs keep you grounded. They need food, demand scritches, and occupy laps and sunbeams. They care not a fig for the absurdities of Men, politics, relationships, or finances. Food, scritches, naps. These things matter to the wee fuzzballs. And in this simplicity there is much to appreciate.
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Oh no! Kittens! Cute kittens! Aaaargh! The cuteness, it burns!
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KITTEHS! :-D
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Awwwwww-some!
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Too much cute!
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Never! Never enough cute cuz their ain’t no such than as “enough.” Moar cuteness!
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Too much cute!
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No such thing!
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Too much cute!
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Cute. Must test blood sugar. :)
We’re getting the last days of warm weather, so today was concrete day. Tomorrow (assuming no disasters with the poured conk’) it’ll be deck installation. Kat-the-dog supervised, but got bored, especially after I gave up on the mixer and went back to the wheelbarrow and shovel.
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Tired and needed kittens so that worked out beautifully.😋
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Some people use colored elastics, taped together at the ends, to code kittens that are too small for collars. Or use white elastic and write names on it.
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Kid-safe Marker.
Initial(s) on back of kitten’s head or ear.
Solved.
(Grin)
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Aww! Wot’s “polydactile?”
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Extra toes.
“EAT TOES!”
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multi-fingered. Usually means they have an extra finger.
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Ah, OK 👍
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USAian polydactyl kittens have an extra middle finger?
(Grin)
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Designed by God, with real life in mind.
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The polydactyl cats often look like they have a thumb on their murder mittens. Sometimes the “thumb” is fairly functional, I had a Manx (serious mutant baby white with blue eyes too) who was way to capable tith his extra digits. I have had others where it was less functionally connected. Tradition is they are excellent mousers and were considered lucky by old New Englanders. You can actually track loyalist New Englanders flight to Canada by the increase in polydactyl cats in the remaining stray cat populations. If someone decides to uplift cats this is probably first on the mutations to use so they can be better tool users. I still hold feline uplift is probably a REALLY bad idea as enticing and addictive as they are to many humans they’re a rough equivalent of Futurama’s Hypnotoad.
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Defy the laws of creation, wind up with Original Kzin.
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I don’t know about the uplifted cats being roughly equivalent to Kzin. The Kzinti likely evolved from a top predator, House Cats (aka Felis Silvestris or Felis Libyca depending on which DNA analyses you look at) are mid range predators. Top predators do not have to be worry about being prey, it will affect their development with respect to attitude. Top predators seem likely to be far more aggressive then a species in the middle of the food chain. Cats (i.e. house cats) are both skilled hunters and excellent at avoiding interaction when needed. I suspect intelligence wise an uplifted F. Sylvestris might prove a far more dangerous opponent than the overconfident Kzin.
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Which makes an interesting comparison with humans, who are omnivores that were for much of our evolution, NOT apex predators. As far as I can tell, it’s only been in the last roughly 50,000 years that we’ve attained apex status via tool and weapon development. I suppose that you could say that our aggressiveness/arrogance as a species has increased in that time.
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“I is vengeance! I is the night! I is BAT CAT!”
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“I is da loan kitteh of da poppyclypse! Trumbles when you sees me! When you hears my name, look to the night sky!”
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“white girl, who SEEMS polydactyl.”
And possibly walleyed! That’ll probably sort itself out when her head gets large enough to accommodate her eyes though.
… almost makes me want a cat.
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She might remain slightly crosseyed. Mom is half siamese.
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It does make me want a cat. Two of my daughters have cats. But alas, I’m a bit allergic and my wife is not at all pet oriented.
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I’m a bit allergic to cats myself. Doesn’t stop us from keeping ONE cat at a time. Does mean I have to wash my hands each time I pet him. Change my shirts a couple times a day, wash cushions from the living room once a week, vacuum all the rooms once a week (daily rotation), and remember to shut my bedroom door so he doesn’t get cat dander all over where I sleep. (Although the CPAP machine would probably filter most of that out of my breathing air.) He’s lying in his bed at my feet as I’m checking the morning e-mail.
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You’re a braver (and more industrious) man than I am!
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Gort earns his keep, regularly catching the small mammals that invade the cellar. And I think we’ve mostly broken him of the habit of bringing in outdoor catches still alive and letting them go in the house.
I know there’s a group of people who complain about cats destroying the environment by killing song birds, but here’s the thing. Cats replace the natural predators we humans have displaced. They don’t catch the birds that are alert, fast, or strong. They catch the stupid ones that aren’t paying attention to their surroundings. If a domestic cat can catch a bird, it’s darn certain that some other predators could also catch and kill it. That’s how natural selection operates. And domestic cats are by no means the top of the food chain. Here in New Hampshire, outdoor cats are food animals for foxes, coyotes, fishers, bears, and a whole bunch of various hawks, owls, osprey, and eagles.
And at least for Gort, his catch and kill rate is about 20 small mammals to 1 bird. (Don’t ask me how many crickets and grasshoppers he’s munched.)
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Clearly no one has told Gort “Klaatu barada nikto”. Bringing you live prey is essentially telling you “Look Stupid this is how you hunt, here’s a practice example” just like Mommy did for them.
I also have very mild cat allergies, apparently much of the human race is allergic to cats in one degree or another. I have found that my body gets used to the cats I live with. Pet or touch some other cat and I get a far stronger response, though not as bad as some I know.
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We had a 20 year old cat, on downward spiral of years of chronic kidney decease, catch a hummingbird. Hummingbird. First hummingbird any of our multitude of cats over the years had caught. Ever (or since). What did the hummingbird do? Put itself in his paws? Seriously? He was so sick that he’d stopped catching anything. He was our most prolific bird catcher. Not that he stalked birds and caught them. Nope. He caught them because they were stupid enough to dive bomb him. The hummingbird was not dead when we found them. He’d dropped it. Couldn’t see/find any puncture wounds (he was planning on an inside “toy”). We picked it up and put hummingbird up where couldn’t get caught again, and nothing else could easily snatch it, not even the crows that hang around. All our cats were taken inside. Hummingbird was gone when we checked on it (doesn’t mean it actually survived, or something else didn’t take advantage, just that we tried).
The other prolific creature that none of our cats have ever caught are the fluffy tree rats, squirrels. Which are the invasive ones, not the native gray squirrel. Otherwise, their targets are generally mice, garter snakes, and rarely rats. Rat catching is bad, especially lately, because someone is putting out rat poison. Which affects up the food chain, even cats who don’t eat the rats (just takes contact with the poisoned rats blood). Mice and snakes typically aren’t even killed, on purpose. The cats just like the mobile “toy”. Which if they manage to bring them inside, just thrills me to death. What? You haven’t heard me screaming? Current cats aren’t getting these opportunities (because of the rat poisoning someone is putting out). But they have managed to discover at least 3 backyard locations where garter snakes hang out (one where cats can’t get to). Difference now is if a cat makes a sudden beeline for the closed door, then said cat has a very angry snake dangling from his/her mouth. Which means said snake can be “rescued” and released into a neighbors yard. Survival isn’t guarantied, just a chance of survival. Higher count of garter snakes, because we haven’t seen as many possums, or turkeys, lately. OTOH the snails and slugs are way down. Lately large crows, and hawks, around, so garter snake sightings going down too.
Never seen them. But have had reports of coyotes, near the school. Know close by fields have fox and bobcat. Have seen hawks. Reports of eagles and owls. Bears and cougars don’t have far to come from reported areas either west of us (wetlands) or east of us (Willamette green belt). All potential cat snatchers.
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Out previous cat, a female, used to go romping with a bobcat we had in the area. Never caught them in a compromising position, but the bobcat definitely was NOT putting the munch on her.
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I had cats for the better part of 30 years. When I ran out of them… gosh, 6-7 years ago?… I never bothered to get another one.
I was a little burned out on nursing sick cats by that point, I think. And now neither the home environment nor my current weekly activities nor my budget are conducive to keeping any.
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Wonderful pictures. Definitely needed.
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Is Prince an odd-eyed cat, or is that an effect of lighting?
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No. He’s an odd eyed cat. He looks exactly like Harmony, except odd eyed.
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He also looks like he knows something and he ain’t telling.
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Well, apparently Toast 2.0 (the one with brownish ears) bullies him. (And the big dog too.)
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Too cute!!!!
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So cute!
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Aren’t they? All of them. :D
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Dan won’t let me keep all of them.
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Right! Blame it on the husband! :lol:
Oh, once upon a time, my mother fell in love with this two-year-old beagle but hadn’t tried to adopt her.
So after hearing Mom taking about this beagle she wanted to adopted, I asked her “so why don’t you get Lilly?”
Mom looked at me and said “Do you want me to sleep on the couch? Your father doesn’t want a pet.”.
I almost laughed in Mom’s face as Dad had told me (some time earlier) that Mom didn’t want a pet. (This was a time when living at home, I asked Dad about getting a pet.)
I controlled my laughter and such said “Talk to Dad about getting Lilly.”
Well Mom did talk to Dad and Mom got Lilly. :wink:
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No good husband will allow his love to become a crazy cat lady.
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I mean, he’s already got crazy and lady, and two out of three ain’t bad….. 8-)
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Our Newfoundland breeder used colored ribbons on the puppies. It gives you “names” for them, until they develop enough to get names of their own. It also helps when you accidently end up with 12 Newfie puppies all at once. Names take time to come up with. Our dog was Mr Lime-Green as a puppy.
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This is troubling, if true, and explains a lot –
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/10/is_israels_biggest_danger_from_the_biden_white_house.html
According to Caroline Glick, sources have revealed to her that the US is the reason why the Israelis haven’t entered Gaza yet, and is heavily arm-twisting Israel in virtually everything related to the war.
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If you haven’t, the Reader urges you to watch Caroline Glick’s video. The Reader found it scary and dismaying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xwPA57xOXA
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I haven’t watched the video (yet), but the American Thinker article provides a summary of it.
Frankly, the administration’s response to the current conflict felt odd to me. It felt like a sudden flip by both the administration and State Department, both of which have been steadfast in covering their eyes to what is going on with Iran and its proxies. Glick’s information – if true – is an unfortunate confirmation of what I’ve been fearing.
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If little bitty Israel can engage and defeat an organizatopn as w backed and equipped as Hamas, the USA and FICUS look like imbeciles losing to and running from much more primitive Taliban.
Of course GrampySwampyDepends has to sit on them to let Hamas escape and survive. (And more importantly create epic antipersonnell boobytraps and IEDs against ant ground action
“See! See!”
He/his-puppeteers wants Israel defeated. Probably wants them -gone-, preferably at hand of Iran. (Spit)
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Hearing idiots defend Islam and blame Israel and America is like hear Harley Quinn defend the Joker and blame Batman and the Gotham PD. Delusional doesn’t even cover it.
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This might be of interest: https://battleshipnc.catalogaccess.com/archives/28073
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Travel tired is something I know. My father was stationed in Oregon near Corvallis many moons ago, and the family was back near Nashville in the Tennessee. That as before the interstates were anywhere near finished. Once a year. 4 days one way, much of it on the old US routes.
My son lives 820 miles away and we usually drive straight through. Almost all interstate, but still tiring.
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Aw, they’re at the precious goblin stage! (Which doubles as the “I can fly!” stage…so beware.)
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I’m owned by a partial bengal. He has a vocabulary of some 10 words. Treat, play, thank you, no, lay down, come here, not going to add some of the unsavory ones… He can also read analog clocks. He gets me up and out of bed every morning at 7. He gets auto fed at midnight, six, noon, and six, so feeding isn’t playing a role in getting me out of bed. As soon as I’m up and moving, he lays down and goes to sleep. Despite that, he’s a good owner.
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Indy is that smart, though not the vocab yet. Pixel had a vocab of 20 words, at least. Might have been more.
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Gatos!
My daughter has a longhaired cat that likes to hang out with four kittens we rescued from a flearidden garage. We refer to them as “Meow Zedong and the Gang of Four.” Except for when he’s eating aaaaallll the treats, in which case he is “President Hoover.”
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Nobody blames you for taking time to recover after a trip like that. Definitely sorry I missed the con and meeting the Huns there! The kittens are of course adorable and I wish I could go on the backup list but I don’t think my kitties would appreciate it! Especially not C…
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Please don’t tempt me….I’ve already got two parrots. Smallish ones, not the big sort that intimidate cats.
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Our cat is his own brand of insane. He’s been an indoor cat pretty much since he was six months old.
And he has mostly decided he isn’t interested in the great out doors. He’s around 10-11 now. Way too old for that bs.
Except when it is cold. Then he’s really curious what’s outside the door.
I’m like, you’re a cat. You seek out every warm spot in the house. Since when are you a cold weather animal?
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There are low allergen breeds, e.g., Siberians, that most people with allergies can tolerate. My youngest (now 19) and I are the only two people in the family who are not allergic to cats. So, read up on it, found a local breeder – and all 6 of us descended on her house and stayed an hour. Breeder’s house. Maybe a dozen cats. And – younger daughter got a bit stuffed up, there were some symptoms among the others. But an hour’s exposure to many cats, in a house where many cats live, and nobody got serious reactions.
So we got Peaches, a little orange fuzz ball, that my prescient son promptly renamed Razor. Little cutie pie now weighs 18 lbs and has Claws of Doom, with which he is not the least hesitant to express his displeasure.
Downside: I never paid for a cat prior to this one, and it weren’t cheap. Add some vet bills over his 8 years with us, and I could have bought a nice little flock of sheep for the cost of that cat.
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Never bought a kitten from breeder or rescue. Latest two dogs OTOH. $150 to veterinarian through their very occasional rescue. Came with all vaccines, spayed, and medically stable (her survival when they took her in was in question, way more money spent than the “rehoming fee”). Current pup was $400, 6 years ago (now the puppies are $800 – $1000). Included all puppy shots and spaying (at 6 months) as long as used the Spay Clinic for everything (since spay clinic shutdown don’t know who they are using now). At that time about $250 -ish, was “extra” (since the rescue only had her liter for a few days, and her a few days more). Compared to our veterinarian? Saved about $600. Compare that to the inlaws who bought two Papillons at $3500 and $3000, from a breeder, plus then had to spend for puppy shots and spaying.
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Our first two dogs were mostly free from my aunt, who raised and showed Italian Greyhounds. One was a retired champion (Mary) while the other (Knight) never had much success at showing. He had been sold, but came back a couple of times (never his fault, the first case was after an accident, the second when the new owner died from cancer). I had to pay the air freight which went from the Midwest to Cali by a long route with layover. Poor dogs were scared, hungry and a bit thirsty. (They did get water at the layover, according to the airline. Maybe.) They recognized me, which eased things down. My uncle vowed “never again” about shipping any of the dogs by air.
We got the next two as puppies from the shelter. One in 2005, the other in ’07. We had to pay $85 each plus $35 for a spay procedure (required by the shelter), though the Lab-Aussie was at the minimum age and broke stitches the first night. Late night runs to the vet are not fun. Both dogs had their puppy shots.
Kat-the-Border Collie was one of a litter of 10. The first 5 pups were sold via Face/Craig’s, while the second batch didn’t sell right away. I saw an ad in the farm & ranch store (the breeder posted ads in both the farm stores in F-Falls), called $SPOUSE and we saw the pups late that afternoon. Non-papered, but both parents were present, so Kat was obviously BC, though with short hair (“Smooth Coat”, they call it.) and tricolored. We paid $200 (August, ’21) which was a huge bargain. Had to get puppy shots, but we got to delay spaying until Kat was almost a year old. (The techs at the clinic were surprised. They thought we’d breed Kat for one litter, because tricolors are a bit rare. Nope, we’re too old for puppies.)
Other puppies from that litter are around. I told one of the ladies at the mail drop about it, and she got one for her small ranch. Border Collies are pretty good at herding cattle. Kat saw one of her brothers at the vet, said boy was hiding from her. Knowing Kat’s personality, I can understand. :)
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The psychopathic left keeps trying to do damage to James O’Keefe, no matter how petty, because they are psychopaths. After rules-lawyering themselves into control of Project Veritas and predictably running that organization straight into the pavement, they are now suing him and, in addition to the initial suit, they are trying to legally steal his copyrights from him.
The gist of the claim is that the three books were “work for hire” done for Project Veritas, and the factual grounds for that claim will have to come out in discovery, or the process of the lawsuit itself. Without O’Keefe’s contract, and documentation that he wrote the books on company time, we can only speculate on how much bite the claims might have.
But let us speculate.
There are some problems with claiming that Project Veritas is the “real” author of the three books in question.
To begin with, all three books are credited to O’Keefe alone.
Second, the copyright registrations are to O’Keefe, not to Project Veritas. (This is not dispositive, the copyright office only records registrations, it does nothing to investigate their veracity or correctness.)
Third, the copyright pages in each book credit O’Keefe, and O’Keefe alone, as the author and copyright holder.
Fourth (and much the weakest of these items, legally) the publishers presented all of the books as by O’Keefe alone, though two of them give him a sub-author credit as “Founder of Project Veritas”.
Prima facie, this puts the copyrights in O’Keefe’s hands. It’s not a certainty, but it’s pretty strong evidence.
What could muck that up?
As far as I can see, two things.
First and most important, the exact wording of O’Keefe’s contract with Project Veritas, along with documentation of whether he wrote the books while he was “on the clock” and understood that he was doing so. To be clear, Veritas cannot claim he created the books for hire simply because he wrote them while in the employ of Veritas. They have to establish that the books were written with O’Keefe understanding that he was writing them for the company, not for himself. Unless the contract was written with incredible stupidity (certainly possible, but not the way I would bet), the mere fact that he wrote them while employed by the company (that he created) does not make them work-for-hire.
Second, the supposed contributions of other employees of Veritas. (This is especially scummy, since Veritas has let go all of its original staff, meaning the current controllers are claiming work of people they fired as their own.) This is an area of potential problems depending on the nature of the contributions, the contractual terms under which they were made, and what the employees understood at the time they made the contributions.
If any employees wrote any parts of those books, then those contributions were almost certainly work-for-hire. But were they work-for-hire to Project Veritas? Or to James O’Keefe as an individual? Given that O’Keefe registered the copyrights to himself, it is not unlikely that any ghostwriting that occurred was work-for-hire contracted to himself, not the company. (This circumstance would blow Veritas’s claims out of the water, and probably will get them laughed out of court.)
If their contracts were with Veritas rather than O’Keefe, then Veritas as an entity has a claim at least on their contributions. How much of a claim depending on the scale of the contributions, and the natures of the agreements.
I have long, extensive, detailed rants on the evils of work-for-hire, even as I concede that it is a necessary thing in certain circumstances. But I’ll not go into those now.
But ponder the sheer psychopathic mendacity of stealing an organization from its founder and public face, and then trying to claim that all his work belongs to you because you played the corporate game better than the actual creator did.
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Psychopathic mendacity is kind of their bag, man. The liberal has no personal responsibility, no shame, and no hard limit on the lengths he will go for the utopic ends he seeks. Any sin is forgiven those who remain lefty in good standing, though I’ve not seen cannibalism yet. Violent theft, rape, murder?
Those examples exist. Excused. Forgotten. Swept under the rug.
When there is no depth your opponent will not plumb in service of the truly apocalyptic ideals they eagerly espouse, it is neither inaccurate nor hyperbolic to call them what they are. Evil.
May they reap the bitter harvest they’ve sown, and may their victims find some manner of justice in the inevitable fall that they have prepared for themselves. May the just, the innocent, and the goodly survive what comes, and may the work of our hands lift up those that come after us.
And may our children and children’s children learn well the hard lessons taught in the hard times we live in.
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Yes, but how are we to be rid of them?
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There are options. Some much, much worse than others. I don’t think mass hangings will happen unless things drop precipitously- then we’re all in for a Bad Time.
But the best, surest of options?
Have children. Teach them well. Teach them to be strong. Independent. Tough enough to face a world actively inimical to them. Teach them charity without naivety. Teach them compassion, but teach them also the wisdom to tell sharpers from the honest but down on their luck. Teach them the value of hard work. Teach them the value of time well spent. Teach them to honor courage in the face of lies, prudence when their peers sink into hedonism, and the wit to separate the good from the wicked.
How?
Live those examples. Let them see your failures, and let them see how you accept the consequences- and do better. Be the man your wife rejoices to see when you come home. Be the one your friends and coworkers know they can depend on not just through the everyday muck, but when things are toughest. When everyone is tired, tempers are short, and time is shorter, take the time to do it right. Every time.
Speak your conscience, but take the time to take counsel from those you respect most first. Defend your principles but know when your words fall on deaf ears, and spare yourself the waste.
To do thus is to live upon the edge of a blade. Endure the hate that will come. Bear up under the burdens that righteous living always carries. Never shirk your responsibilities, but allow joy, fun, and delight into your heart. If for no other reason than the bastards on the other side purely hate honest happiness with all the vile jealousy of the utterly self-damned.
It’s a tall order. All men fail to reach that goal in life, by inches or by miles. That’s no reason not to try, though.
Lastly, know that there will always be barbarians, thieves, and vileness so long as mankind exists. We each hold the seeds of absolute depravity and transcendent grace within us. Sometimes all it takes is one good, solid example of a good man to turn the tide in a soul.
If nothing less, the world could always use more good men. Your efforts will never be in vain so long as you never stop trying to do just a little bit better.
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Speaking of psychopathic mendacity, Biden the Pretendent is on national TV right now lying to us semi-incoherently. I had to shut it off after about a minute, before I heaved something large and heavy through an expensive HD flatscreen.
———————————
“You are now under oath. Do you understand what that means?”
“Yes. I do have one question, though.”
“What is it?”
“Why are none of you ever required to tell the truth? You lie most of the time.”
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This is why I stick to watching Blu Rays and DVDs. Eurosleaze and film noir are ever so much nicer to view than the current world situation.
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Regarding Biden’s speech. I didn’t get as far as letting it come on before switching the channel. No way was I watching that clown show. Not fond of clowns, he makes them worse.
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C’mon, Jack! Well… anyway…
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Oh, my, it went even better than expected…
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/10/video-joe-biden-loses-another-battle-teleprompter-during/
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Michael Malice just made me laugh entirely too loudly at work:
“The publishing industry is what happens when you have a deal that is run entirely or predominantly by sorority girls who like books. There is very little incentive for excellence. There is very little interest in looking at what readers actually want. It’s entirely about status, it’s very heavy-handed…”
https://youtu.be/y2DYESxDPHk&t=125
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One important bit is the voice you can hear encouraging the people standing in front of the bus to sit instead.
But of course, the person suggesting that idea doesn’t lead by example.
The people are getting fed up.
The YouTube channel for Podcast of the Lotus Eaters has a segment up today discussing a British MP who stood up in Parliament and basically said, “Throw out the illegals and asylum seekers.”
The people are getting fed up.
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“Please, sit down so we can make you all good communists!”
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