Cat Talk!
News, stories and tips about cats and cat care. Let’s talk about cats!
May 30, 2019
We got Fred from the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, but he clearly has some American Curl in him. Just look at those ears! They’re going to stay that way!
May 30, 2019
Creme Puff (August 3, 1967 – August 6, 2005) was a domestic cat, owned by Jake Perry of Austin, Texas. She was the oldest cat ever recorded, according to the 2010 edition of Guinness World Records, when she died aged 38 years and 3 days. Perry had another cat, Granpa, who was claimed to have been born in Paris, Texas, in 1964 and died in 1998, aged 34 years and 2 months. Granpa was posthumously awarded 1999 Cat of the Year by Cats & Kittens magazine. Granpa was featured in an earlier edition of Guinness World Records. The co-authors of at least one book have pondered whether the longevity of Perry’s cats may have had something to do with an unusual diet of, among other things, turkey bacon and eggs, asparagus, broccoli, and coffee with heavy cream, concluding that Perry “must be doing something right.”
Yes, Snickers, CSBS’s official mascot and spokeskitty is now the face in the CSBS logo!
October 26, 2018
As expected from any kitty, Snickers took his time exploring and sniffing every square millimeter of our condo, his new home. He’s such a sweet boy. We are so lucky to have found him!
Snickers explores his new home! (video 1)
Snickers explores his new home! (video 2)
As I mentioned, the Animal Welfare League of Arlington is a wonderful shelter, and when we walked into the Cat Adoption area, Snickers was the first little guy we saw! Well, not so little really, as he is almost 11-years old!
As you know, our beloved Patrick passed away recently. We decided that we wanted to wait a little while before getting a new kitty. Well, we couldn’t help ourselves and decided to “just take a peek” at the local animal shelter, the Animal Welfare League of Arlington (a GREAT shelter, by the way). We saw this little face and my husband, Gregg, fell in love with him!
Cat Talk! will document the wonderful journey of making Snickers a part of our family!
October 16, 2018
March 29, 2018
- India “Willie” Bush, US President George W. Bush‘s cat, named for Rubén Sierra “El Indio”.
- Misty Malarky Ying Yang, a Siamese belonging to Amy Carter and former pet of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
- Puffins, US President Woodrow Wilson‘s cat
- Socks, a stray cat adopted by the family of President Bill Clinton, named by his daughter Chelsea.
- Shan, US President Gerald Ford‘s cat, named by his daughter Susan.
- Tabby and Dixie, Abraham Lincoln‘s cats. Lincoln once remarked that Dixie “is smarter than my whole cabinet.”[59]
- Tiger and Blacky, US President Calvin Coolidge‘s cats when he and his family lived in the White House. Coolidge was known for hiding the cats about the house, prior to and during his presidency, leaving his wife, Grace Coolidge, to find and rescue them.[60]
- Tom Kitten, US President John F. Kennedy‘s cat, and one of the 15 pets of the Kennedy family.
- Andy, one of nine cats belonging to actress Jenna Fischer[61]
- Baggage, a cat owned by British television presenter Gok Wan. Baggage was the inspiration for Gok’s TV series ‘Baggage’, first broadcast in the UK on the 21st of September 2012.[62] Has a limited following on Twitter and a fanpage on Facebook.[63][64]
- Bimbo, the cat belonging to Makarios III during his British-imposed time in exile in the Seychelles.[65]
- Catarina, Edgar Allan Poe‘s pet cat and the inspiration for his story The Black Cat.
- Cheddar, who belongs to the former Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper.[66]
- Choupette, the pet and muse of designer Karl Lagerfeld
- Delilah, belonging to the Queen frontman Freddie Mercury; Mercury paid tribute to Delilah, a female tortoiseshell cat, on the Queen album, Innuendo.
- F.D.C. Willard, the pen name of Chester, the cat of Jack H. Hetherington, who listed the cat as co-author of several physics papers from 1975 to 1980
- Foss, belonging to Edward Lear; subject of many drawings, some published in The Heraldic Blazon of Foss the Cat; inspired The Owl & the Pussycat; Lear buried Foss in his garden and died himself only two months later
- Jellylorum was T. S. Eliot‘s own cat, immortalized in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the basis for the musical Cats
- Jeoffry, the visionary poet Christopher Smart‘s cat, who is praised as “surpassing in beauty” in his owner’s poem Jubilate Agno (A Poem from Bedlam). (Jeoffry was Smart’s only companion during his confinement in an asylum in 1762–63.) The Jeoffry extract is set as a treble solo in the festival cantata, Rejoice in the Lamb Op 30, by Benjamin Britten.
- Khouli-Khan, the cat of Thomas Anson is memorialized by the neoclassical “Cat’s Monument” in the park at Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire, unless the cat in question is the first cat to circumnavigate the globe in the company of Admiral George Anson on HMS Centurion
- Kitty Purry, a Maine Coon belonging to singer Katy Perry
- Lily White, Marilyn Manson‘s danderless cat
- Logos, the cat of Jacques Derrida. Mentioned in Plato’s Pharmacy: “Logos, a living, animate creature, is thus also an organism that has been engendered. An organism: a differentiated body proper, with a center and extremities, joints, a head, and feet.”
- Lion, a cat who belonged to guitarist John Fahey, who later wrote a song about Lion called “Lion” in tribute.
- Macak, Nikola Tesla‘s cat.
- Mademoiselle Fifi, (aka Paree) the beloved pet cat of aviator John Moisant. Fifi often accompanied Moisant on his flights, and on August 23, 1910 Mademoiselle Fifi became the first cat to fly across the English Channel during the first aeroplane flight from London-to-Paris. Moisant was killed at New Orleans in December 1910, and a famous photo was published of Fifi attending Moisant’s funeral, draped in mourning cover.
- Meredith Grey and Olivia Benson , Scottish Folds belonging to Taylor Swift.[67]
- Minna Minna Mowbray, belonging to Michael Joseph; an entire chapter is dedicated to her in Cat’s Company 1946.
- Monkey, a cat belonging to singer Katy Perry. Was originally named Krusty when she was married to Russell Brand, as a combination of their names (Katy + Rusty). Was renamed Monkey after their divorce.
- Morrissey, a cat belonging to actor / comedian Russell Brand.
- Mouschi, the tabby cat who lived in the Secret Annexe of Anne Frank‘s family; it was actually Peter van Pels (aka Peter Van Daan)‘s cat.
- Mourka, belonging to George Balanchine and the subject of Mourka: the autobiography of a cat by Tanaquil LeClercq, Stein & Day, New York, 1964.
- Muezza, the cat of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
- Norton, a Scottish fold tabby belonging to Peter Gethers; memorialized in novels The Cat Who Went to Paris, A Cat Abroad & The Cat Who’ll Live Forever.
- Nothing, the cat of Jean-Paul Sartre.
- Ollie, a Siamese cat belonging to comedian Ricky Gervais and novelist Jane Fallon. Ollie was presented to Gervais in 2003 on the Friday Night with Jonathan Ross show.[68]She is named after Oliver Hardy and currently has more than 40,000 followers on Twitter.[69]
- Pixie, a Maine Coon belonging to well-known ailurophile Judge Richard Posner; described by Judge Posner in the Chicago Tribune as “the best cat [he’s] ever had.”
- Polar Bear, the white cat adopted by writer and animal activist Cleveland Amory, and featured in The Cat Who Came for Christmas, The Cat and the Curmudgeon and The Best Cat Ever
- Professor Meowingtons, PhD. the black and white overweight cat belonging to Canadian electronic musician Deadmau5. Meowingtons is featured on the cover of the Deadmau5 album Album Title Goes Here.
- Rupi, belonging to Jethro Tull leader Ian Anderson; inspired title song of his 2004 solo album Rupi’s Dance.
- Sadie, a Siamese belonging to James Mason; talked about in Mason’s The Cats in our Lives (1949).
- Shorty Blackwell, a cat that belonged to Micky Dolenz of The Monkees, and was the subject of a song written from the cat’s point of view, called Shorty Blackwell.[70]
- Snowball, the most famous of Ernest Hemingway‘s cats, who was polydactyl and lived with Hemingway at his house in Key West.
- Solomon, one of Lloyd Alexander‘s many cats, who inspired the premise of the book Time Cat: The Remarkable Journeys of Jason And Gareth.
- Sparta, also known as Mean Kitty, a cat belonging to YouTube personality Cory Williams.
- Sprite, belonging to Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes; she was used as inspiration for some of Hobbes’ physical features and behaviors, such as his habit of pouncing on Calvin.[71]
- Taffy, belonging to Christopher Morley. Thieving cat commemorated in Morley’s 1929 poem In Honor of Taffy Topaz.
- Ta-Miu, the cat of Crown Prince Thutmose. After her death she was mummified and buried in a decorated sarcophagus.[72]
- Timothy, a white cat belonging to Dorothy L. Sayers; mentioned in two poems: For Timothy and War Cat.
January 20, 2018
If cats seem ambivalent towards us, as the quotations from cat fan-sites indicate, then it may be a reflection of the wildly mixed feelings humans, too, have shown cats over the millennia.
The ancient Egyptian reverence for cats is well-known—and well-documented in the archaeological record: scientists found a cat cemetery in Beni-Hassan brimming with 300,000 cat mummies. Bastet, an Egyptian goddess of love, had the head of a cat, and to be convicted of killing a cat in Egypt often meant a death sentence for the offender. Ancient Romans held a similar—albeit tempered and secularized—reverence for cats, which were seen as a symbol of liberty. In the Far East, cats were valued for the protection they offered treasured manuscripts from rodents.
For some reason, however, cats came to be demonized in Europe during the Middle Ages. They were seen by many as being affiliated with witches and the devil, and many were killed in an effort to ward off evil (an action that scholars think ironically helped to spread the plague, which was carried by rats). Not until the 1600s did the public image of cats begin to rally in the West.
Nowadays, of course, cats are superstars: the protagonists of comic strips and television shows. By the mid-90s, cat services and products had become a billion-dollar industry. And yet, even in our popular culture, a bit of the age-old ambivalence remains. The cat doesn’t seem to be able to entirely shake its association with evil: After all, how often do you see a movie’s maniacal arch-villain, as he lounges in a comfy chair and plots the world’s destruction, stroke the head of a Golden Retriever
Thanks to David Zax, SMITHSONIAN.COM, June 30, 2007
January 4, 2018
All domestic cats descended from a Middle Eastern wildcat, Felis sylvestris (thus Sylvester the Cat!), which literally means “cat of the woods.” Cats were first domesticated in the Near East, and the process began up to 12,000 years ago. While 12,000 years ago might seem a bold estimate, it actually is a perfectly logical one, since that is precisely when the first agricultural societies began to flourish in the Middle East’s Fertile Crescent. When humans were predominantly hunters, dogs were of great use, and thus were domesticated long before cats. Cats, on the other hand, only became useful to people when we began to settle down, till the earth and—crucially—store surplus crops. With grain stores came mice, and when the first wild cats wandered into town, the stage was set for what the Science study authors call “one of the more successful ‘biological experiments’ ever undertaken.” The cats were delighted by the abundance of prey in the storehouses; people were delighted by the pest control.
Thanks to David Zax, SMITHSONIAN.COM, June 30, 2007
December 16, 2017
December 16, 2017
Try floating some ice cubes in your cat’s water. They like the cold, fresh feel of the water and love to poke at the cubes! I think moving water makes it seem more like running water as well.
Cat Sitting by Susan
Cat Sitting by Susan
