 The
Cat's Meow
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| Issue 2, vol 6 | The Cat Gets A Paint Job For Chinese New Year |
February 18, 2007 |
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Painted Cats?
Perhaps you've received an email that starts "The book these came from said some of the paint jobs cost $15,000 and had to be repeated every 3 months as the cat's hair grows out. Must be nice to have $60,000 a year just to keep your cat painted!" It may have included pictures like the one above.... Don't call PETA! Don't turn green with envy at the folks who can afford such extravagant expenditures! It's all a hoax, according to Snopes.com. The cats are from two books, Why Cats Paint: A Theory of Feline Aesthetics and Why Paint Cats: The Ethics of Feline Aesthetics by Burton Silver and Heather Busch.
Read the whole, interesting story about the creation of these feline works of art here. There are lots more pictures, too!
Photos and quoted text from the editor's personal email. Images ©Heather Busch.
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Happy Chinese New Year
In our spare time, we sometimes go browsing at eBay, looking for "maneki neko", the Japanese Lucky Cat. Recently, we found the Lucky Cat featured in decorations used to welcome the Chinese New Year. We made one to share with you. This is the Year of the Fire Boar. The decoration invites "prosperity" into your home. We'll have more about the Japanese Lucky Cat in a future issue.
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Barbwire Cats |
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Part Two: Ra-oula’s Story (continued from Part One: Clayton's Story) In 1941 The Great Attack came to Barbwire, California. This attack was a boundless ocean of rats and Barbwire was going to need every single kitty-cat it could get its hands on! Before the Rat-War, there had never been any cats in Barbwire. Now, not only were they here, they were genuine, honest-to-goodness celebrities ... Installment 10 My name is Ra-oula. Everybody calls me Lupe, Clay’s little white cat. But my secret name, the name left for me by the Elders, is Ra-oula, which in Furless, means White Angel. I have knowledge of things that I have never seen. I know many things that I have never learned, and I have seen places that I have never been. know two different kinds of things; things that I have learned during my own life, and things remembered, gathered together, and left for me by my Kind. If I learn anything new, and if it’s important enough, it will be added to The Memory of my Kind. But after so many thousands of generations, most of us living today will not leave anything new. We share our close-world with the Furless Ones. They do have a little fur, but compared to us, they are furless. They are noisy and clumsy, but some, like MY Furless-one, are wonderful. Their ways are very different from ours, but we get used to that. We have to; the survival of our Kind might depend on it. Like us, they are all different from each other. Some are mean, some nice. Some are playful, some serious. And, like us, they can change from one aura to another, very quickly. Fearful one moment, brave the next. Sad one moment, happy the next, and so on. Their Elder-marks differ too; some have very light skins, some have very dark skins, but most are shades between. Their eyes are Sky, Earth, or Tree, and also shades between. When I was little, before I received The Memory, I had never met another of my Kind; so naturally, I believed that I was one of the Furless Ones. I watched my Furless One very, very closely, to learn the things I would need to know when I got big. Now I know how to do all the things that he knows how to do, but I cannot do them. And that is as it should be, because, as I later learned from The Memory, there are many things that I can do, that he cannot. He can learn only the things that he is taught in his own lifetime. But I know everything ever learned by all of my Kind. All of their knowledge lives within me, in every cell of my body. When I was very young, and The Memory first spoke to me, I would not listen. At first, I refused to listen because I was afraid of it, then because I was confused, and then, worst of all, because I was too proud. I thought I knew everything already. But as time passed I saw that were so many things I did not know; what was it like outside my house? Where did the birds go, when they flew out of sight? Who were the others who looked like me, that I oftentimes saw outside my favorite window? How does my Furless One, so loud and slow, catch all the food that he brings home? But most especially I wondered; if I am not of his Kind, then what am I? So many questions kept biting at me. Soon the joy of life was gone. I no longer had any purpose. I was sad, but didn’t know why. I was lost, but didn’t know where. I was dying, but didn’t know when. I was angry, but didn’t know at whom. I was afraid, but didn’t know of what. And I needed help, but didn’t know how it would ever come. I longed for The Memory to come back and give me a second chance. When The Memory finally did return for me, it was gently laughing. "Ra-oula, are you ready yet?" Oh yes, I was ready. "Ra-oula," it scolded me, "the greatest obstacle to learning is knowing. Now, Ra-oula… REMEMBER!" In a blink, I found myself outside, in an endless place. All around me were trees and sky, and everywhere I looked, there were Others, Others of every Kind. There were tall Kinds, fat Kinds, slow Kinds and fast. There were crawling Kinds, climbing Kinds, swimming and jumping Kinds. There were Kinds that were in big groups of their own Kind, and Kinds that walked alone. There were Kinds that lived under the ground, and my old acquaintances, the birds, who lived in the sky. I was not alone. There were others of my Kind. We lived in small groups. We hunted day and night. We ate only if the hunt went well. I saw new ones of my Kind being born, and saw some carried off by huge birds or others. I was a father of my Kind, and then I was a mother. I was a little-one, playing with my brothers and sisters, how we loved each other. I was a hunter. I was catching an animal to eat. I was caught and eaten by another. I saw the big water dry up. We all had to walk for days and days. Many of us died along the way. We finally came to a place with more water. My, how we drank then! We survived. The Memory is showing me everything so fast. It is all flying by me, through me, into me. As it rushes on, it answers all of my questions, even ones that I have never asked. At last I know what I am; I am........Rawrhah-pdddrrup! . In Furless, it means CAT. (Continued in the next issue of The Cat's Meow) David Perry lives in the High Desert of southern California
with his two cats, Psycho and Lupe. His first novel "WHISPERING CATS" is due out mid-year 2007. |
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