Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

No one could have predicted…

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

I was promised a recession.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Fani Willis claps back at Trump chihuahua, Jim Jordan.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

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Reader Interactions

147Comments

  1. 1.

    Roger Moore

    Sleeping with you every night doesn’t mean he’s happy with the haircut; it means he’s cold and wants to snuggle for warmth.

  2. 2.

    Sab

    He is not happy with his haircut. He sleeps with you because he is cold. However, he doesn’t seem to be angry with you. That is good. He looks weird as a shorthair.

  4. 4.

    Keith P.

    I’m doing my first inlaying project tonight, after 2 years of false starts. Have a newly-built CNC machine that I finally got dialed in, and it is just cutting through purpleheart like it’s not even there.

  5. 5.

    ArchTeryx

    What a happy looking cat. Whiskers are forward, tailtip is curled and he’s folded up nicely into a catloaf. That’s a very contented kitty.

  7. 7.

    Yarrow

    He looks very happy and content on your recliner. Such a cutie. I like the bumper sticker as well.

  8. 8.

    Sab

    @Keith P.: I don’t even know what you are talking about but it sounds interesting what with your excitement. Enlighten the Luddites, please.

  9. 9.

    seaboogie

    The Tao of Steve is much in evidence. Cats have short memories for angsty inconvenience – get pissed off in the moment, and then are all “I feel so gooood now”.

    When I took my late cat to the vet she would be so stressed that her paw pads would sweat and leave little moist marks on the vet table – and she’d try to crawl all up into me. Minute we got home and I let her out of her crate, she was all “I’m ALIVE! and HOME!”. And also – “I believe you owe me a treat..!.”

  11. 11.

    chris

    Thanks, John. You inspired me to look into getting Pumpkin a haircut. The matts are getting get ahead of me.
    Steve (I didn’t name him) on top, Pumpkin (didn’t name her either) underneath looking slightly aggrieved. She’s been here for a year now and has settled in remarkably well. Her favorite place is behind the wood stove where the young’uns can’t bother her.

  13. 13.

    Suzanne

    I am watching Not the White House Correspondents Dinner and drinking some peach Bellini stuff from Trader Joe’s. It has been the best day in quite some time.

  14. 14.

    DocSardonic

    @Keith P.: CNC is fun, but make sure you are wearing very good dust protection because purple heart dust can make you very ill.

  15. 15.

    Sab

    John,
    We have a guy who looks a lot like Steve. If you scratch our guy on the neck, he starts madly licking his chest as some sort of nervous reaction, almost like he is ticklish. Steve do anything like that?

  16. 16.

    Olivia

    I had 2 long haired white cats and I got them shaved twice a year because the cat hair all over the place was horrible. The cats looked absolutely ridiculous after the haircuts but they loved it. They would sashay around and stretch and preen like they were walking the runway in a fashion show.

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    One heckuva printer there.

    Reminded of a different Lanier, whose essay about online collectivism rang true then and moreso now.

  21. 21.

    DocSardonic

    @Sab: CNC stands for computer numerical control. Basically a computer programmed cutting tool. For wood working it is great for quickly making pieces that could take days,weeks months by hand into hours and have them easily replicatable. For inlay work it takes a lot of the trial and error out providing a savings in time, but very little dimininution of sense of accomplishment.

  23. 23.

    amk

    peak wingnut has been achieved?

    Trump got a crowd to cheer that they are losing healthcare & are paying for a wall that was previously told Mexico would pay for.

    Amazing—

    Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) April 30, 2017

  26. 26.

    Sab

    @DocSardonic: Thanks. No wonder he is so excited. I am a sixty-year old woman so they never let me take shop or learn this stuff. I do everything with a jigsaw and it takes actual months.

  28. 28.

    Keith P.

    @Sab: Computer-controlled “head”, basically. Mine’s a 3 axis router, so my “head” is a Dewalt router that moves along X,Y,X axes to cut wood (it cuts in a planar (layered) fashion…5 axis CNCs can make more arbitrary cuts. A 3D printer is very similar, as is a waterjet. Inkjet printers are still another offshoot of the same principle, but with a single axis.
    Long story short, you can make extremely precise and repeatable works with it by drawing it in the computer and converting it to machine instructions (i.e. MoveToXYX, StartSpindle, etc)

  30. 30.

    Sab

    @Keith P.: Thanks. Very cool. You have been excited about it for a couple of threads , so I wondered. I am jealous now. Perhaps Luddism isn’t all that useful as a mindset.

  33. 33.

    Gemina13

    Steve’s a gorgeous cat. And he’s happy. Congratulations, John; that huge feline loves you completely. :)

    I know nothing about the printer, but I assume that once it gets warm, Steve will nap on it.

  34. 34.

    Keith P.

    @Sab: Yeah, mainly because I built it from scratch, with about $1k worth of hardware in it, including a fully custom controller case. My obsession is really the project I am building with it, but I got overly focused on the machine itself for way too long. The project itself was one I first designed when I was in high school and later refined right after I graduated college, so it’s over 20 years in the making. I have a stockpile of exotic wood and mammoth ivory that I’ve been dying to start putting to use.

  38. 38.

    Yutsano

    STEVEKITTEH!!!

    Well, at least I have an excuse why I have been absent today. I bought a car.

    And proper authoritahs alerted.

  40. 40.

    Suzanne

    My dearly departed Nico, RIP, was a Maine Coon/Persian mix, and I never shaved her. SO MUCH HAIR. Nico was so into her dignity that I thought she would hate it. But Steve looks cute. Derpy, but cute.

  41. 41.

    efgoldman

    @Yutsano:

    I bought a car.

    I read too fast, and given the subject of the thread, saw “I bought a cat”
    Who buys a cat?

  42. 42.

    Keith P.

    purple heart dust can make you very ill.

    Ditto for Spanish cedar. I got some of that dust in my sandals while making a humidor and got a real bad rash on both feet. Now, paduak wood…that stuff smells like candy when it’s cut. Like I would devour a paduak-scented pastry if they had one in a bakery. But purple heart is my favorite wood to work with. I have to cut a lot of tiny, intricate pieces, and PH looks great but also is able to hold up to that kind of cutting. Puts something like walnut to shame.

  43. 43.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: Technically Yagyu Ryu style boken and jos – I also have three purple heart training tantos, but I figured I’d not confuse everyone who doesn’t do either aikido under Saotome Sensei/Aikido Schools of Ueshiba and/or Yagyu Ryu kenjutsu and jojutsu.

  47. 47.

    Sab

    @efgoldman: You’d be amazed. I knew someone who bred fancy cats to support his whippet raising hobby. Couldn’t make money on dogs. Could on cats. Sounds horrible to me. My spouse’s cats are all rescues, as are my dogs.

  49. 49.

    Sab

    @Sab: And contrary to all the stereotypes I get along fine with his cats, he gets along fine with my dogs and the cats and dogs get along fine with each other except for the rottweiler who is afraid of the tuxedo cat. Go figure.

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    @Sab

    Mildly curious what people referred to those cats as prior to the late 1880s, when the word tuxedo for a formal dinner jacket with accompanying ensemble entered the language.

  53. 53.

    LesGS

    Look at those happy squinchy eyes. My long-hair Ragdoll, Max (26 lbs when I adopted him, a svelte 19 now), likes his summer lion-cut too. He allows us to pet him rather than chomping the heck out of us as when he has his full coat. (He loves skritches, tolerates pets for just a few strokes, unshaved.)

  54. 54.

    Suzanne

    So since we’re on the topic of cats……Mr. Suzanne and I adopted a stray about six years ago, and she is a sweet cat, but she has some really annoying habits. Like, REALLY annoying. She has no personal boundaries like most cats do, and will climb all over people, including jumping onto your shoulders as you walk by. A few times, she has jumped directly onto Mr. Suzanne’s head—and he has a shaved head. I have joked (not really joking) that this cat would climb into my mouth if she could. The problem comes when you want her to move from where she wants to be, be that your chest or belly or your face. If she doesn’t want to move, she will dig her claws in to hang on. And it hurts like a mofo. We have never declawed a cat, but we are considering it with this one. I know it’s horrible for them, but the SoftPaws don’t stay on more than a day or two, and we are sick of being scratched up.

  55. 55.

    efgoldman

    @Sab:

    My spouse’s cats are all rescues, as are my dogs.

    I assume most people find them, like Cole does, or take one from a litter of kittens, or get one from the shelter like my daughter did.

  57. 57.

    Achrachno

    As long as we’re discussing pet hair: a few years ago we rescued a young dog that had been abandoned, turns out (according to our vet) it’s a puggle (pug -beagle cross), and is a somewhat pricey “designer dog”. That doesn’t matter, because we like her a lot whatever she is. She has only 2 drawbacks, one of which is hair. She is about the size of a a beagle, but sheds more hair than any dog I’ve ever been around. Our last dog was a black lab mix that shed a fraction of what this little thing does. It’s on my mind because I was vacuuming and doing laundry today and was again impressed with how much she sheds in a week. I wonder if this is normal or if we got a dog with weakly attached hair. :) Are pugs or beagles particularly sheddy?

    Her second drawback is that she is worthless as a guard dog. She likes all people, and most dogs, immediately. The only intruders she’d repel would be the ones allergic to dogs. She’d be on them in seconds wagging, and coating them in hair.

  62. 62.

    efgoldman

    @Suzanne:

    she has some really annoying habits. Like, REALLY annoying. She has no personal boundaries like most cats do, and will climb all over people

    Daughter’s cat was estimated 18-24 months when they met him at the shelter; he came to her, jumped in her lap and started purring, so of course she took him.
    That is the last time he went to anybody’s lap.
    He’ll lie across her feet, or next to her on the couch or the bed, purring like crazy. He’s friendly enough, petting and scritching are fine. He’ll lie on the top of the couch next to or behind her shoulders. But not actually on a person.
    It’s like he got her, and he knows it.

  63. 63.

    Sab

    @NotMax: Did they even think about cat breeds then? I thought cats were kind of new to human acceptance. We have domesticated dogs for tens of thousands of years, but I think cats are only hundreds of years. Don’t need to domesticate a critter whose only purpose is ratting and mousing, when that is what they do naturally.Herding livestock takes more human cooperation . and direction. Dogs herd, but not necessarily where , when or how you want them to without human imput.

  64. 64.

    Yarrow

    @Suzanne: Have you checked with WereBear and her Way of Cats site to see if there’s something you haven’t tried yet? Might be worth a look.

  65. 65.

    Suzanne

    @efgoldman: Every other cat I have ever had has been affectionate/snuggly to different degrees, but this cat is brazen and ridiculous. I wouldn’t mind if she would take the hint when I, for example, need to get up and go to the bathroom or something, but oh my God, if she wants to sit on my chest and purr in my face in EXTREME CLOSE-UP!!! style, she will do it, and the claws are awful. She’s simultaneously a sweet cat and just completely obnoxious.

  67. 67.

    Sab

    Good thing about Labs is they only shed (in amazing quantities) from the front half. German shepherds crank out fur from all ends of the dog twelve months a year. But still my favorite breed, even though Labs are great and also special.

  72. 72.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Sab: My current black lab mix is a black lab/German shepherd (or Malinois) mix. She sheds from everywhere. The previous one, her big sister, was a black lab/Australian shepherd mix. She would also shed from everywhere.

  73. 73.

    Suzanne

    @Yarrow: Not yet. I will be investigating over the next few weeks. I hate the idea of declawing, but I don’t know of a better option. She drank paint water a few years ago and nearly died of liver failure. She recovered, but doesn’t seem to have the same balance or vision that she had before that happened, so I think that her being outside would be disastrous. She’s older, so I don’t think that she could be rehomed very easily. And we like her when she’s not shredding us to ribbons.

  74. 74.

    Gemina13

    @Suzanne: I wonder if she might have some kind of separation anxiety. :/ Think maybe Prozac or melatonin might do the trick?

  75. 75.

    Suzanne

    @Adam L Silverman: My Luna is a black lab/pit mix, and she sheds from everywhere, too. But not a ridiculous amount.

    Of course, I used to have Siberian Huskies, so everything feels like a small amount of shedding compared to Husky undercoat.

  78. 78.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @amk: I like how Donald’s minions only have him play in small venues, so they don’t look as empty. Try filling a stadium in Pittsburgh or Philly, shitgibbon.

  80. 80.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: Funniest/strangest one I’ve ever seen was when I lived in Scotland. One of the little old ladies had a German shepherd/basset hound mix. Had a basset body and German shepherd head.

  81. 81.

    Yarrow

    @Suzanne: Poor thing! Paint water sounds awful. I hope you can figure something out. WereBear always has great suggestions that would never occur to me, so maybe she would have something you could at least try. I can imagine the claws sound terrible. Maybe her balance is off and she’s not sure of herself and gets clingy–both in your space and using her claws.

  83. 83.

    NotMax

    @Sab

    Domestication and breeding is documented to have occurred in ancient China and of course also during Pharaonic times.

    As domestication was not as steadfast with cats as today, wealthy families would often curate examples of well bred felines, show them, and pride themselves in the coloration and behavioural adaptations that are seen in today’s organized shows.

  84. 84.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Achrachno: I’ll post some pictures some time. Of just one room. I brushed out her undercoat/coat yesterday, then dusted, then vacuumed, then steam mopped the floors. Today, other than the floors still feel nice, you’d think I hadn’t even vacuumed.

  85. 85.

    Sab

    @Adam L Silverman: Dog fancier magazine calls them German Shedders. My first lab was only 90 lbs, and my second (late lamented recently departed) was only 55 lbs, so maybe it only seemed like the 130 lb shepherd shed more per share inch than the others. But she could crank out the fur. Damn I miss her. What a dog.

  86. 86.

    LesGS

    @Sab: Cats have been with us for thousands of years. Check out the frescos of cats retrieving water-birds for hunters in ancient Egyptian tomb art. Plus, you know, all those cat mummies.

  88. 88.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Suzanne: Both my black lab mixes have had massive undercoats that build up. My other current dog – chocolate lab/boxer (or rottweiler) and (we think) Catahoula leopard dog mix (she’s got crystal eyes and some of the spots) also sheds, but her coat is much finer hair. Basically if you need dog hair, I can hook you up!

  90. 90.

    Major Major Major Major

    This all reminds me of the meme joke you see around sometimes, like so:

    Dog owner (picture of a dog): “this is Finneas, he’s a quarter pomeranian, a quarter shih tzu, a quarter Maltese and we weren’t sure about the rest but we got the genetic test, and would you believe it he’s a quarter sheltie too! He barks a lot, sorry, although it’s been a lot better since we got him on Ritalin.”

    Cat owner (picture of a cat): “This is Nacho and he’s an asshole.”

  94. 94.

    NotMax

    @Adam L. Silverman

    Oh, lawdy, Scotland and dogs.

    At a farmhouse way out in the boonies there, was sitting down to tea when the owners’ dog, a small curly-haired thing, came in and promptly decided its place was on my lap.

    Which would have been fine save that it had just rolled around (a lot) in fresh manure.

  97. 97.

    Suzanne

    @Gemina13: Maybe. I don’t really know. People here often have good suggestions, so I wanted to throw it out there.

    @Yarrow: I don’t think so. She was super-claw-y even before the paint incident. She would perch on counters or tables and wait for someone to walk by, then she would jump on you even though you weren’t expecting it, and then dig her claws in to hang onto you, because you were by now freaking out because a cat jumped on your shoulders or even the top of your head totally unexpectedly.

    @Adam L Silverman: We have Luna and then Chica, my mom’s Chihuahua/terrier mix, then the two cats, who are both shorthairs. So we are good on pet hair. THANKS, THOUGH! Though seriously, the Huskies were ridiculous. I have heard of Husky and Malamute owners spinning the fluffy undercoat hair into yarn and making sweaters. I remember their undercoats coming out in handfuls. We would brush and rake and still, the carpet would look like it was covered in snow.

  100. 100.

    LesGS

    @Sab: Well, I confess I don’t have definitive data on whether cats lived in their homes. But there are Egyptian images of cats with pierced ears and earrings. If they actually did that, I’m betting those cats were family pets.

    What is your evidence that cats didn’t live in our homes until a few hundred years ago?

  102. 102.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Sab: Funny story: In July 2008 in my CHU (containerized housing unit – basically 1/2 of a single wide trailer) at FOB Hammer in Iraq I needed something out of my C bag. I cannot remember what the piece of gear was or why I suddenly needed it, but I did. So I clear off a space on my spare bed (as a civilian with pay grade equivalent to a colonel, I had single occupancy in my quarters), which I used for laying out gear, and started to remove the stuff from the C bag until I found what I needed. There was straw blonde dog hair on some of the gear, as well as black dog hair. This was the color of the coat of my oldest dog at the time (my greyhound/terrier mix) and my first black lab mix. What made this strange is that none of this gear had ever been anywhere near either dog or my house. I did my equipment draw at the Continental Redeployment Center at FT Benning, then spent a week in Atlanta before flying to Germany to attach with our brigade and from there to Iraq with the brigade. While I’m pretty sure there was some cross contamination with my clothing that had been near the dogs, it was just somewhat amazing that this much would occur.

  105. 105.

    NotMax

    @Adam L. Silverman

    That farmhouse was the first of two times in life have slept on a featherbed. Tres comfy. Cold, cold, cold at night in late December. Four down comforters + a coal-fuleed brass bedwarmer + three of us in the same bed to generate warmth.

    (The second was an overnight stay at a Civil War site mansion/museum, however that’s a story for another time.)

  106. 106.

    LesGS

    @Adam L Silverman: My sister recently bought a Mini Coop. She has never put any of her four dogs in that car. The back “boot” area is already sprinkled liberally with their hair.

  109. 109.

    NotMax

    @Major Major Major Major

    One reason the archeological evidence is spotty is that a lot of such evidence comes from garbage dumps. People didn’t eat cats so the cat bones didn’t end up being dumped.

  112. 112.

    Sab

    @LesGS: Yay for me, but I should track that down. Seemed plausible at the time (what with our own family cats) but the mummified Egyptian cats make me wonder. Also heard on NPR that the two domesticated species you can turn out into the wild and they will probably survive are cats and goats.

  114. 114.

    ruemara

    @Suzanne: Give her something else to do, but please don’t declaw. You’re literally amputating her fingers and often, leaving her in pain.
    If she does it, you can drive home the point by saying “Ow” and refusing to pay attention to her. Does she have enough activity in her life? SHe may need more climbing towers, more game playing, something that tires her out. You can keep her nails trimmed and blunted with a kitty file. Don’t free feed her and use feeding puzzles instead. Declawing is really a last ditch, “this cat could be put to sleep if we don’t” thing. Werebear is a good resource, so is this behaviourist, Pam Johnson http://www.catbehaviorassociates.com/
    Check the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behaviourists to see who locally you can consult with. https://avsab.org/

  116. 116.

    SWMBO

    My daughter and SIL adopted a sweet old man named Chucky. He was orangish red brown color. And that dog could shed an entire dog in a week. He could be walking across the floor and you would see little tufts of orangy hair floating behind him. They would brush and brush and still would find piles of hair everywhere.

    @Adam L Silverman: Chucky died in 2010 and they STILL find his hair in weird places. It has to be him because he was the only dog that they’ve had that was that particular color.

    @LesGS: My daughter and SIL have lint rollers in each car, near the doors of the house, in their GO! bags and they still have dog hair everywhere. They also have 5 dogs.

  118. 118.

    John Weiss

    @Keith P.: Heh. I used to get purpleheart from pallets that were either free or five bucks or so.

    Damned difficult wood to work. Couldn’t do much with it without carbide.

  119. 119.

    Sab

    @Sab: Not recommending it for responsible owners of family petsl@Major Major Major Major: Just shows you cannot believe everything you hear on NPR, but would you really trust your ferrets to live in the wild? Tear stuff up,yes. Be cute beyond belief yes. Survive in the wild? I think they’d be too focused on entertainment to survive. Gotta eat and not be eaten by coyotes.

  127. 127.

    Origuy

    There’s actually quite a bit of archaeology about cats. Here’s an article from a British publication, Current Archaeology.

    Excavations have uncovered cat remains all over the world, but genetic studies suggest that the domestic cat (Felis catus) first emerged as a distinct species from their ancestors, African wildcats (Felis silvestris lybica), in the Near East around 10,000 years ago. Since then they have spread around the world, being transported by humans (knowingly or otherwise) as we explored, traded, and settled. By 7000 BC, we can see evidence of cats cohabiting with humans in China, while some 5,300 years ago they had reached Cyprus – almost certainly introduced by humans, as the island had no indigenous cat population.

  128. 128.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    Who buys a cat?

    Sixty-some years ago, my mother asked my father to buy her a Siamese cat instead of an engagement ring. The breed was still rare & exotic in 1954. It was a charming idea, but like many of their other decisions, disasterous in the long term…

    Of course, plenty of people still pay money for purebred cats, and as someone who’s paid money to get the dog breed I wanted (but only for ‘leftovers’, and rescues!), I can’t be too judge-y. Didn’t keep me from rolling my eyes when an acquaintance not only paid $1500 for two Maine Coon kittens, but drove down to North Carolina to pick them up. Since she’s not going to show them, and there are plenty of ‘MC type’ cats in every single New England cat shelter…

  130. 130.

    Anne Laurie

    @Suzanne:

    If she doesn’t want to move, she will dig her claws in to hang on. And it hurts like a mofo. We have never declawed a cat, but we are considering it with this one. I know it’s horrible for them, but the SoftPaws don’t stay on more than a day or two, and we are sick of being scratched up.

    A decent vet won’t declaw a cat, but they should be able to help you keep the claws trimmed enough that your cat can’t ding you up so much. You may (both) have to learn to deal with a dremel-style nail-grinder, though…

    Seriously: Apart from the fact that declawing is painful & crippling, every declawed cat I knew (20 – 30 – 40 years ago, when it was more common) turned into a biter. You think those scratches are unpleasant, you do *not* want to deal with a cat who chomps instead, if only because cat bites are notoriously toxic.

  131. 131.

    Anne Laurie

    @Yutsano:

    A 2016 Passat.

    My Virgo-fussy Spousal Unit drove from Boston to Columbus to acquire a second-hand 2014 Passat station wagon. We’ve been extremely pleased with it, for the eight weeks or so we’ve had it. He especially appreciates the turning radius, which is waaay better than the Ford Focus it replaced.

  132. 132.

    Anne Laurie

    @Suzanne:

    I have heard of Husky and Malamute owners spinning the fluffy undercoat hair into yarn and making sweaters.

    Heck, the nomads who developed the first Samoyeds apparently did so specifically for that wealth of undercoat!

    Papillons are not supposed to have undercoats (fur, vs hair) worth noting. (Their closest genetic relatives are chihuahuas (ditto) and (hairless) Chinese Crested). Out of the seven Papillons we’ve lived with, only one has the “correct” no-undercoat, no-mat, easy-to-wash coat. And he’s a puppy-mill product who’s otherwise distinctly un-typey — head like a pit bull, rear like a whippet, giant dewclaws on all four feet. I should be glad he sheds / mats less, but it just irks me more that he’s got this one ‘virtue’ amid all his disqualifying traits, especially his horrible personality.

  133. 133.

    Anne Laurie

    @LesGS:

    What is your evidence that cats didn’t live in our homes until a few hundred years ago?

    Europeans apparently didn’t have indoor (pet) cats until early Medieval period — thus, the association of this new novelty with witchcraft. Not to mention those fairy tales where a cat is considered a valuable legacy (Puss in Boots) or an exotic novelty (Tom Whittington). Also, IIRC the introduction of ‘household’ cats in Europe tracks pretty closely with a reduction in plague outbreaks.

    Plenty of not-much-bigger-than-a-housecat European wildcat breeds, all of which can interbreed with our own hearth-beasts, but those wildcats are notoriously untameable. Apparently there’s a not-common genetic ‘anomaly’ that turns the standard wildcat into a beast that can abide not only human contact, but living in close quarters with other cats.

  135. 135.

    Anne Laurie

    @Sab:

    Also heard on NPR that the two domesticated species you can turn out into the wild and they will probably survive are cats and goats.

    Nope, also pigs — which is why feral cats, goats & pigs have become invasive pests in so many areas. Also rabbits, if you include Australia.

  136. 136.

    sm*t cl*de

    @Sab:
    Also heard on NPR that the two domesticated species you can turn out into the wild and they will probably survive are cats and goats.

    Horses. The semi-feral ponies in Iceland are the only domesticated species that survive out in the open all year (cows and sheep are rounded up and kept inside over winter). In New Zealand, the Kaimanawa horses.

  137. 137.

    Anne Laurie

    @sm*t cl*de: Those are two fine-looking felines!

    Our current two cats are both (neutered) boys & weigh exactly the same, but they couldn’t be more distinct. Piper is a ‘British blue’ tuxedo shorthair, built like a plushy tank, with a distinctly Colonel Blimp personality; Rocket is an Oriental-style orange tabby, all angles except for his outsized hindquarters, with a no-undercoat ‘silk satin’ coat and a Viking mindset.

  138. 138.

    Anne Laurie

    @sm*t cl*de: Good point! Also the wild horses of the American southwest, and from what I remember five ‘distinct breeds’ of wild horses on five different Japanese islands.

  140. 140.

    sm*t cl*de

    No-one ever hears about the feral elephant problem because they are so good at concealing themselves.

  141. 141.

    satby

    @Anne Laurie: I have had the same experience with declawed cats. They all became biters or otherwise really neurotic. My son and daughter in law declawed their cat, and though they love her, now they’re probably never going to own another cat. I tell them it’s their own fault.

  142. 142.

    prob50

    @Suzanne:

    She would perch on counters or tables and wait for someone to walk by, then she would jump on you even though you weren’t expecting it, and then dig her claws in to hang onto you, because you were by now freaking out because a cat jumped on your shoulders or even the top of your head totally unexpectedly.

    Just a guess, but it sounds like the cat may have been been taken from it’s mother too soon. Does it do a kneading thing when it’s sitting on your chest or shoulders?

  143. 143.

    Glidwrith

    @Suzanne: Probably too late to the thread, but my Spice is also an aggressively loving beast, but freaks if you need to move. I make a clicking noise and a bit of a nudge when I want her to move. And trim her claws. It works well.

  144. 144.

    xjmueller

    @Major Major Major Major: I was wondering about the CD case too. I just disposed of one at work recently complete with CDs of obsolete crap. I inherited it 11 years ago and never added anything to it. Great picture of Steve, though.

  145. 145.

    SW

    Fantastic! He will live a longer, healthier life. Looks really happy. Grooming is so important to a cat that when they can no longer stay on top of it, they appear to exhibit something like shame. P.S. he’s not cold now, but may have been hot before.

  146. 146.

    asiangrrlMN

    Sir Willie Whiskerton III’s milkshake keeps bringing me back to the yard! He’s looking so dapper in his haircut. Good to hear he’s forgiven you, Cole!

    @Yutsano: Thanks for the heads up, Yutsy!

  147. 147.

    Suzanne

    @prob50: Late coming back, but I have no doubt she was separated her mother too soon. I found her on top of my mother’s old house as a very tiny kitten. She was on the roof, crying, and when we finally got her to jump down, it looked like she hadn’t eaten in quite some time. Tried to find her family, but no luck, so we kept her. She may have been feral. She’s a sweet cat, and I have never ever declawed a cat because I know it’s awful. The clawing is just freaking ridiculous. She gets stimulation (cat trees and scratching stuff, plays with the other pets and the kids, though I don’t let her go outside). I should note that she doesn’t scratch inappropriately, doesn’t tear up the furniture or anything. She just wants to HANG ON FOR DEAR LIFE!!! and it’s like, dude, cat. THAT’S MY SKIN.

    I haven’t really clipped her nails because she does scratch at the post like she should and that keeps them from being too sharp. I’ll try it. This is bad enough that I don’t think I want any more cats after this one, though. I love them but AAAARRRRGHHHHHH.

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