I just woke Tunch from a nap and snapped some photos. That is his futon, which has sort of become his bed. At any rate, I have given up trying to keep him off it and just vacuum it all the time now instead.
He looks evil in this close-up, but he is really just sleepy:
More as he does something interesting. Although, usually something interesting involves attacking my feet or knocking something over, so it will be hard to get a picture.
Comrade Jake
He might look better if you would just spend about $150k on his wardrobe.
Joshau Norton
Cats just love to be woken up from a sound sleep to do crap like have their picture taken. If ever I’ve seen a look that says "WTF", that’s it.
Sarah
If you die, Ryan and I are taking Tunch.
Shinobi
I love how squishy he is. Squishy and Evil, what more could you want in a cat?
Ted
I have two cats who are just plain pampered. Yet one seriously gets on my nerves, and the other is a needy neurotic attachment case.
They love each other though, even though they’re not related or close in age.
The Moar You Know
Jesus Christ, I thought my cat was fat.
And what a boy cat he is! Look at that jawline! Got some testosterone in that one.
Oh yeah, and I have a feeling that there will be some revenge exacted for the interrupted nap.
Soylent Green
One hell of a nice animal, frequently mistaken for a meatloaf.
Polish the Guillotines
Opposable thumbs.
I'mRubberYou'reGlue
My cat can beat up your cat.
Bey
He is rather, um, sturdy.
jake 4 that 1
Sleepy and evil.
Caption: Tonight your jugular is MINE, monkey boy.
Joshau Norton
I believe the correct term is "fluffy".
greynoldsct00
I have a cat like that, I like to say he’s my "endless black hole of need"
Thanks for adding Tunch to the pet parade, John. I love that little touch of red on his head. Keep them coming!
SGEW
Tummy rub demands. When mai kitteh demands a tummy rub, I am powerless before her.
greynoldsct00
My mother has a cat that’s bordering on being frequently mistaken for a prime rib… blew past meatloaf a while ago
Laura W
I loves me some a big fat white boy cat!
What does that darling bruiser weigh, anyweigh?
Is that coke burn on his left nostril?
Lookit his adorable front pigeon paws!
I can haz?
(man…David Shuster has been whacking the McCain whores over the head all day today! PROOF! I want PROOF! Says WHO? Name ONE!)
The talking potato heads are feeling pretty safe lately.
Atanarjuat
Mr. Cole, I see that you shot these photos at ISO 400. This means that you’d likely get a nicer, much more natural effect just shooting with existing light versus using the onboard camera flash, unless, of course, it was very dim in this room and not much light was streaming in from the outside.
I do suggest you try the existing light method; I’m confident that you’ll be pleased with the results.
Dork
That cat is seriously fat. Michael Moore fat.
Laura W
Hey! Those are NEW photos so you got your NEW camera?
What did you get?
I finally decided and have a Canon PowerShot SD880IS en route.
Of course, much like the pellet gun I ordered months ago, it will sit in the box until I can "deal" with reading the manual and learning to use it.
Unlike the pellet gun, it will not go to live in the closet unopened.
Delia
My cat Saffy has a surefire way of getting me up when it’s time to eat. She claws the rugs. She also claws them when I’m away and she’s bored. Or when I’m home and she’s bored. She’s got lots of nice scratching posts and boards and she’s occasionally claw them, too. Other than that, she’s a fine cat. I’ll send a pic of her and her companions when I get around to it.
Church Lady
Good lord, what are you feeding your cat? I think a diet might be in order, for health reasons alone.
Joshau Norton
That’s exactly how I ended up with 2 video cameras. Maybe I should buy a digital one to keep them company.
Comrade Jake
I assume you woke Tunch up to tell him how his portfolio did on the market today. I bet that went over well.
Ted
True, John Cole’s cat is almost as fat as the one Sadly,No! photoshops the head of NRO’s Mark Hemingway onto.
jake 4 that 1
And yeah. No offense, but your fat cat makes my fat cat look like a super model.
I thought you had him on a diet. He must be supplementing his meals with the occasional small dog or child.
Dr. Squid
Tunch the cat looks about as big as, well, Tunch the Stillers lineman/colorman.
The Moar You Know
I noticed that too. And that is not common on a boy cat. That, combined with his size, makes me wonder if he is not a Klinefelter male. Tortoiseshell markings, even a little "van" marking like this, are the realm of female cats only, with the exceptions being Klinefelter males (two X chromosomes and one Y chomosome) or an embryonic chimera (two fetuses that fuse into one).
References:
Tortoiseshell cats
Cat Coat Genetics
Apologies for Wikipedia but it has a good overview of the subject.
Ted
I used to have a Siamese pure bred who had to be forced to diet. I kept her diet food in a cleaned out 10 gallon bucket, with a brick on the lid for security. Every now and then she would have the wherewithal to pry the lid open anyway, and would eat until she vomited.
The Moar You Know
What the hell? I "do not have permission" to edit my comment?
OK, then.
I realized after posting that Tunch is more likely part Turkish Van – both the boy and girl cats have the markings.
jnfr
In a Beckham v. Tunch match-up, I’d bet on Tunch.
The Other Steve
So my tip of the month…
So we’ve got two cats who have a bit more weight then they should. One was at 13 lbs, and the other 15lbs… and they ought to be more around 10 each.
It’s entirely because we were lazy measuring out the food. And we found if we started measuring correctly, they would annoy us at night trying to get food. So we bought one of these Petmate automatic feeders from Amazon for about $45.
Originally I set it up with 2 feedings at 1/2 cup each, but after two months they hadn’t lost any weight, and were still kind of bugging us. So I now have it set at 3 feedings 5am, 1pm, 9pm with 1/4 cup each. They stopped bugging us so much now, and are losing weight.
Colonel Danite
Typical fat white cat. Probably clinging to his catnip and rubber mouse.
Laura W
I am glad that he is a Tunchish Van because I was afraid we were about to call him a fat hermaphrodite.
gbear
That cost $4000.
tripletee
@jake 4 that 1:
Now I know who he reminds me of – in that second picture, give him a shotgun and shitty aim and he’ s Dick Cheney.
And he’s not fat, he’s too big to fail.
The Other Steve
We use this container we bought at Petsmart…
It has a locking lid, and they’ve knocked it over but haven’t gotten into it yet. :-)
Our issue… we have to make sure there aren’t any boxes of crackers or anything like that on the kitchen countertops. I’ve woken up to boxes of Ritz crackers spread across the floor.
If the cats can knock it down, the dog will get to it and tear the box apart. They work as a team. :-)
Laura W
Do you know if they get up at 5am and go wait for it?
I’ve heard of cats that do.
I’ve got two hyperthyroids that need to free feed all day to keep weight on. And then there’s 2-yr-old Annie. She must weigh 12lbs at least by now. Doubled her weight in her first year here. (She was a very undernourished outside stray who’d just had kittens, in her defense.) I can’t keep her from food due to the seniors, so if you stand above her you see her belly bulging out on both sides. The first time I really noticed I freaked out and started feeling her for a tumor mass. I like to reach under her and swish her belly fat around for fun.
I think she’s stabilizing now. Probably be giving her insulin shots in a few damn years.
Sootytern
Hmmm. Now there’s a cat I wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. I think he should be smuggled into the White House, he looks like he could clean out the "mice" there in no time.
John Cole
Look, he is a little pudgy, but I can still lift him without grunting.
KRK
Aw, other than the coloring Tunch is just like I pictured, contemptuous expression and all.
If TMYK’s Klinefelter’s theory is true, that could also explain some of Tunch’s…solidity. Klinefelter human males can tend to be heavy. Or it could be a trick of the light. My cat was called a "chunkmeister" based on his photo, but he’s just a big tom.
greynoldsct00
Thanks! This is very interesting. My friend has a female white cat with black ears and tail, I think must be a van too.
Genine
Like owner, like cat.
The Moar You Know
@Laura W: A Klinefelter’s male is not a hermaphrodite.
The only way to know what he really is would be to find a genetics lab, get a sample (always an easy thing with regard to cats, I’m sure), and analyze it. And we all have lives to lead, so that won’t happen.
gbear
@The Moar You Know:
Yep. Both my cats are torts. The first thing my vet did when I brought one of them in for her first checkup was check to see if she was male. That was the first I knew that torts are almost all girls. Torts are a dime a dozen around here, and I always wonder how there can be so many of them when they’re all girls. Must have good genes…
Davebo
Of Tunchic but.. for reasons I’ll never understand I decided to check up on the gang at noquarterusa.net
Wow, just wow…. They are still at it and apparently really believe that Hillary will pull it out with write ins.
Laura W
Joke.
It was a cat snark joke.
greynoldsct00
You mean to say he’s using Palin’s colorist?
jake 4 that 1
gbear & tripletee will have to split the win on this thread.
tripletee
Actually he doesn’t look all that fat to me – more like a typical tom who got pudgy after being neutered. Frankly, I’d turn to food for comfort after that too.
We have a tabby that’s just as big, if not bigger. If I could find my old Salacious Crumb action figure, we could reenact the Jabba’s palace scene in Return of the Jedi.
Dreggas
I need to get pics up of my two terrorists cats.
The first is bill, was a rescue kitten who came labelled "B-ILL", so we kept the name. Literally nursed him back from the brink of death three times and when we got him he just fit in the palm of my hand. His mother had herpes and when he was born the herpes got into his eyes and tear ducts scarring them up so every now and then I have to clean his eyes and they are permanently scarred over. He can see but his depth perception is all jacked up. Further, whenever he is focusing on something, to him, it appears to bounce up and down so his head bobs up and down with it. The ex’s dachshund also broke a piece of the cartilege in his ear so it’s all shrivelled. Needless to say the bloom county references apply.
The other is another rescue, Fortuna. She was found in the parking garage at my work, abandoned, when she was about six weeks old. She had a bad respiratory infection but once that was cleared up she was fine (and once she figured out what cat food was). She’s about 4 months now and her and Bill are best friends. It’s funny to watch her since she likes to climb on bill and lay there bathing his head and face for him.
redbeardjim
Point of clarification — "tortoiseshell" markings doesn’t mean having splashes of orange/red — it’s having those, *along with* splashes of black/brown. That (along with "calico", which is the same thing with splashes of white as well) is what’s only seen in female (or XXY male) cats.
redbeardjim
@gbear:
Tortoiseshell isn’t really a breed, just a color pattern.
(Parenthetical Love)
That statement is full of win( I’m so stealing that).
I’ve got to get a hold of a camera so I can take a pic of my Bear.
RoonieRoo, dontcha know
Great expression on Tunch. We had two fatties in our house. Tried pretty much every diet method possible and we just could not get the girls to their correct weight.
Then the food scare happened and we made the leap to raw feeding. Now we have svelt, healthy kitties and a vet that is thrilled to pieces. Our vet was iffy on the raw feeding until I found another vet in California that was very knowledgeable on raw and did some consultations to help us put together a raw plan that covered all the nutrition bases. Once the girls dropped their extra weight my vet was sold.
Michael D.
Jesus Christ on a bike. did that cat swallow a fucking basketball???
tripletee
@(Parenthetical Love):
Full disclosure: wish I could take credit for it, but I stole it from occasional commenter Steve M on a different forum.
The Moar You Know
@redbeardjim:
Yep. The wikipedia article I cited earlier was a pretty good one for Wikipedia, and they’ve got some cute kitties as examples. The one I hadn’t seen before was the Siamese tortie.
My 11 year old, Trillian, is a mostly white tortie (I think they call this ‘harlequin’). Not quite a van, which is all white save for the head & tail.
Capelza Gradenko
Koo, my libertarian cat says, "Hello Big Boy…..meow".
Actually she’s on the window ledge doing her usual damnedest to knock whatever vase is on it over…just to make me crazy. She knows it annoys me to no end..hence it is a duty for her to do it.
She’s a big (I mean tall and rangy, especially for a female) white with black splotches on her back and face, and a black tail with a white tip.
At least she grew out of swinging from the back of my computer chair like Tarzan.
I'mRubberYou'reGlue
How much does he weigh? I have one here that weighs 23 lbs.
John Cole
@I’mRubberYou’reGlue: 18 lbs.
Notorious P.A.T.
No wonder you used to be a Republican–you like fatcats. har har har.
redbeardjim
We had a cat once that weighed around 18-20 lbs. He wasn’t really fat, though — just *big*. Like someone had taken a regular-sized, slightly overweight cat and run him through a copy machine set at 150%.
Funniest part was that we got him as a seriously tiny kitten from a shelter, and the shelter folks though he was going to end up kind of runty.
Krista
Bill
I have seen it before, and never recognized it until it was too late.
It is the gaze of pure ‘slee-vil’; through and through!
Quickly now, hide the children, and all else you hold dear.
I'mRubberYou'reGlue
That’s a big cat. So you know as I do, these big cats just have a sort of quiet confidence about them, they just walk in and take over, whether it’s people or other cats.
Mine just walks up and lays down on my keyboard and waits to have her back scratched.
Other cats? She just walks up to them and puts her face in their face and says, "Want to be friends? Or, I could slap your head off, whichever you prefer." No hissing or posturing. The cat is actually very docile.
I’ll get off my butt one of these days and send a picture.
grisjuan
This little rubber brush gets cat hair off furniture faster than vacuuming. It’s $5.49 at Amazon: link (I just got one as a gift recently and really like it).
gbear
I checked that out now that I’m home. My two kitties look like this one but with a lot more black.
John has a picture of them. Everyone should beg him to put their picture up…
gbear
If you’ve got rubber gloves (the housework kind) around the house, those work well too.
jake 4 that 1
@gbear: Hee. My cats’ mom was a Tortishell. One beast is orange tabby with a few white blotches the other is black and white. Based on their behavior I’m guessing dad was part demon, part Swiss mountain yodeler.
Josh Hueco
I don’t think anyone’s asked yet, so why the name Tunch?
MazeDancer
@Soylent Green – Loved to see the Kliban reference. B. Kliban, gone way too soon at 55, in 1990.
If you’ve never seen the frequently mistaken for a meatloaf cartoon, here’s a site that’s appropriated it: http://www.webpak.net/~heartctr/cats/cats.html
gbear
When I was talking to the vet about some of my older cat’s habits, the vet told me that all Torts were ‘queen bitches’. This was said by a female vet in an all-female clinic where one of the assistants has her arms totally tattooed with kitties. I love the place, and I found out that her take on Torts is completely accurate.
Having two Torts is even more interesting in that they don’t particularly like sharing ownership of their human. There’s a lot of butting in front of each other here.
Lynn
He is too cute. And, I feel better. I thought our cats were fat. I have suffered through endless jokes from friends, who now call our cats "puppy cats" because of their size.
Tunch is welcomed to visit us. He would feel right at home, although there may be food fights…But, as he is "Joe the cat," I believe he can take care of himself.
Thanks for the picture. I have wondered what he looked like.
MMM
Tunch is fatter than the cat in the newspaper, and I am not talking about Garfield.
MMM
Tunch is just big boned….
His head does not even fit on my computer screen.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Aww. That looks like really, really soft fur.
Fergus the Burmese (who thinks he’s a Rottweiler) is only 13 pounds, but he says he could take Tunch. I’m not so sure, because Tunch looks like the most confident bouncer at the biker bar. But Fergus did manage, as a wee kitten of less than a pound, to tussle a full grown tabby to a standstill.
(I think her vestigial maternal instincts handicapped her from delivering the full-scale smackdown he completely deserved even at that age. The first time he invaded her space, she jumped, SCREAMED, then hissed and ran away. She wanted to reduce him to paté, but most well-socialized cats won’t take apart kittens, even the ones who are begging for it.)
Birdzilla
We used to have a cat like that one he would often lay around the front pourch with the tip of his tougne sticking out
Phoenix Woman
Awwww. Tunchie kitty! He and Lady Lightfoot could take out entire Panzer divisions with their Gazes of Withering Scorn.