MadMup.com

Are you familiar with lolcats? I'm guessing the majority of you are, but for the rest of you, it's basically a picture of a cat with a caption on it, meant to be humorous. The nomenclature is rooted in the "LOL" ("laughing out loud") of instant messaging and texting speaking patterns.

If you follow my Flickr page at all, you've already seen the following picture and you might even have read Marshall's comment on it. Since ICHC has a builder that lets you submit lolcats, I thought I'd go ahead and submit Nutmeg's picture with Marshall's caption.

moar funny pictures

Clicking on the picture will take you to a page where, if you are so inclined, you can rate Nutmeg and her caption. I won't tell you what to rate it, but if you're not amused, don't feel you need to rate it :)

Now, those of you who know Nutmeg know that "Rated G Kitteh" is probably the biggest misnaming of her ever - we all know she cusses like a sailor - but think of it as her acting a part and maybe that will help.


Oh, and for those of you who like dogs more than cats, there's now a loldogs site, too.

Labels: cats

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Labels: cats

14 comments

When I get home after work, Nutmeg comes to greet me from wherever she’s been scheming.

Less than a minute after I get in my bed at night, Dala has hopped up on the bed (if she wasn’t there already). Nutmeg’s there within five minutes.

When I open the bathroom door after I’ve showered in the morning, both of them push their way in.

These things happen every. single. day.

My apartment has a utility room right off the kitchen. The washing machine, dryer, water heater, and airconditioning/heater unit are in there and there’s a door to the room. I decided before even moving in that the room would be perfect to house the litter box and the food and water dishes. That way if I ever needed to lock them up for a while they’d have everything they needed all in one room. They’d still freak out about being locked up, but at least they wouldn’t die.

I feed them every day at both 6:30s (or thereabout), a half-cup of food per time. This, too, has become part of their schedule, though they’re not exactly right about it. At night they start pestering me for food about an hour and a half before the actual time. In the morning, Nutmeg starts batting at me and purring as loud as she can about a half hour before it’s time. When I head downstairs, they almost trip over themselves hurrying to get to the cabinet where their food is before I do. They’ll stare at cabinet door and meow, pacing back and forth like expectant fathers. Once I get the food, they bolt for the utility room, and I can barely pour the food because their heads are in the way.

A few weeks ago I moved their food and water dishes out to the end of the counter in the kitchen, maybe eight feet away from where the dishes have been for the past year and a half. I did this for a couple of reasons:

1. Most “cat experts” tell you the food and the litter box should be in different areas. Makes sense. I don’t think I need to explain the thinking behind this one.
2. Sometimes feeding time intersects with laundry time. I’ve noticed during these times that Nutmeg won’t eat. The noises scare her. And while Nutmeg could stand to not eat and Dala could stand to have more unmolested access to the food, I still feel bad that Nutmeg gets scared.

A funny thing has happened. When I get their food from the cabinet, they both still head for the utility room. I realize they have brains the size of a walnut, but it’s been a couple of weeks with this new setup, and I’d have guessed they would have figured this out by now. It’s become a lab experiment of sorts, and when Dala actually did head to the end of the counter the other day, I got the same sort of thrill you might get when your team scores a touchdown. Sadly, the next day she was back to the utility room.

It’s particularly odd because to get to the food cabinet, they go right past the food dish. You’d think that they’d see it on their way and remember, “Oh, yeah, the dish is over here now,” but I guess a starving cat isn’t so much concerned with little details.

They’ll eventually figure it out, I know, I’m just surprised it’s taking them so long. But then it strikes me that I’m exactly the same way. It’s no surprise to anyone who’s read this blog for more than a week that I’m one for ruts – I do things the way I’ve done things and that’s how it is. I get the same things at the same restaurants, I drive the same routes, I do the same things over and over. For me, there’s comfort in familiarity. For as much as I like Star Trek, I’d make a lousy space explorer. Spock would alert me to sensor readings indicating a never-before-seen lifeform on a nearby planet and I’d say, “Yeah, but… we’re headed to that other planet and besides, the lifeform’s probably dangerous and most certainly ugly. Let’s skip it.”

Some habits are good to have and keep – brushing your teeth, making your bed, being nice to other people. Other habits aren’t so good, and just like the origin of the phrase “stuck in a rut,” it becomes next to impossible to get the covered wagon up out of it and on to a new course.

Note those words “next to.” It’s hard, but it can be done. About two years ago, I changed what hand I use to brush my teeth. I know, it’s such a weirdly random thing to do, but I read an article that talked about different things you could do to exercise your brain and that’s the one I remembered. I’m a righty and have brushed my teeth with my right hand for however long I’ve been brushing my teeth. Switching to my left hand was hard and felt awkward and I wasn’t so good at it for a long time, but it eventually became natural. In fact, these days I can’t brush my teeth with my right hand. Now it feels weird and awkward.

My brain’s slightly larger than a walnut (but still smaller than a watermelon), so it should be easier for me to make these habit changes, especially if the habit’s destructive. If the cats never figure out the food dish thing, the only problem they have is two extra seconds of walking when they hear or see me pour the food in the bowl. My bad habits could cause infinitely more damage, so why’s it so hard to change them?

I think tomorrow I’m going to start re-training myself to brush my teeth with my right hand.

Labels: cats, life

7 comments

EDIT: Ahem Cat is now available on a mug. I'm sure I'm breaking some sort of law by co-opting someone else's cat pic, but I wanted one for myself and thought maybe someone else might, too.

Labels: cats

10 comments

There are people who will tell you that dogs are much smarter than cats because you can teach a dog tricks, but not cats. Not only is that a strange judge of intelligence in my book, but it's simply not true. What any cat person worth his salt will tell you is that cats simply choose when they want to do something, and that is the proof of their intelligence. That's why the love of a cat is a treasure - dogs will like you any time, anywhere. The gift of cat affection (thank you Garrison Keillor) is just that: a gift. You can't earn it, so you know when you're getting it that it's the real deal.

You'll also hear that cats have no personality. Imagine if you will that I've just rolled my eyes as big as possible. In fact, I've taken them out of my head and rolled them around the room. That's how ridiculous I think the phrase "cats have no personality" is. My two cats are as distinct as night and day. Dala is sweet, loving, and friendly. Nutmeg is a jerk. She can be mean, she can be nice, she can be sweet, but she's usually just a jerk. Try to pet her head and you'll get the open-mouthed-almost-bite. Pick her up and she'll meow like you're trying to shiv her in the shower in some sort of cat prison. Try to scratch her belly and you'll pull back a stump. She's just...jerky.

Which is why it's so odd that she's developed this little ritual that she does. Every day after I've showered, I'll open the bathroom door and she'll come in. She's obviously been waiting for the door to be opened, and she comes in and makes an inspection of the room, and then winds herself around my legs for a few minutes, purring. Then she leaves and she's back to being a jerk, until it's time to try to sit on my lap and love on me while I'm trying to play Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic or something.

I'm not sure if she just misses me for the twenty minutes I've got the door closed, or what. Maybe it's just the fact that a door is closed and she doesn't have the freedom to go where she chooses. Comedienne Paula Poundstone (famous for talking about cats) has a bit where she talks about using a water bottle to spray the cats when they were doing something bad (an excellent deterrent, by the way), and then the cats being amazed when she showered. She imagined that they were saying, "What did you do to deserve that?!?" So maybe Nutmeg's worried about me.

I'm thinking the answer is simpler than that. I've heard it said that a dog will spend the rest of its life pining over the loss of its owner, even going so far as to sit on its owner's grave all day every day. But a cat will start using its owner's body as a food source after 48 hours if no one has found them. Cold? Unfeeling? Clinical? Ruthless? Maybe. Or maybe it's just the best answer in the situation. How else will they eat? No one's pouring the food for them anymore...

So I think that when Nutmeg comes in to check on me in the morning, she's not really expressing love. I think she's reading a menu to see what's available for the day.

Labels: cats

2 comments