confessions of a catster

today i officially became a crazy cat lady (just in case there was any doubt). i started a catster page for tigerlily and wrote e-vites to other cats so she can have "kitty friends". oh, and i entered a couple of pics in the world's coolest dog & cat show, where you can vote for your favorite pets (or enter them in the competition). not much more than a month ago i would have found this behavior completely absurd and humiliating. i still think it's ridiculous, but i'm doing it anyway...and it is fun. hence the crazy cat lady confession.meanwhile, tigerlily is on an all chicken diet from the vet's latest recommendation. it tastes considerably better than the actual medicine we had been giving her for a while, in fact, she loves it. so since i am cooking up boneless, skinless chicken thighs and shredding them up for her i figured i should get an extra show of cuteness for my efforts. the lily-kins did not disappoint; the standing kitten bit just kills me.

teh daily kitten

did i just say "teh"? what is happening to me?
tigerlily was posted on the daily kitten today and says hello to her new friends (she's checkin' ya out above). i gotta go to work tomorrow morning, er later this morning, so this is just a quick hello and thanks to the good peoples at the daily kitten. grazie mille (say it with an italian accent and it always sounds sexy) and a million thanks to all those non-europhiles. meow!

waterlily

this was tigerlily's entertainment for a while this evening. and wikipedia's listing on bengal cats had some particularly relevant information (excerpt below). the bit about vocalization is very true, as is the game-playing, although i haven't gotten her to play fetch yet (okay, i haven't even tried), but we do a good game of "chase" up and down the hallway. we take turns between chaser and chasee, then she meows at me when i decide i'm done but she isn't. we also do a bit of "hide and seek", but that mostly involves me hiding and then jumping out at her when she comes to find me. i love getting her tail all puffed up--she usually rears back on her hind legs and then jumps around in a circle to entice a chase. she's a total love, but she always wants to be the center of attention. demanding and affectionate.

"Bengal cats can take a great deal of interest in running water and often don't mind getting wet. Most Bengal owners have stories about their cat's affection for running water or even jumping in a sink or tub. Additionally, Bengal cats are very high-energy, intelligent, and curious, and so are particularly interactive with their human housemates, wanting to be in the middle of whatever the human is engaged in, and often following the human around the house as household chores are performed. Bengal cats have been known to play games with their owners, such as "fetch" and "hide-and-seek." As their activity and play requirements are high, this is not a cat best left to its own devices for long periods of time, as they can be quite mischievous and destructive when bored. If an owner is likely to spend much of the day away from the cat, having another high-energy feline companion to occupy your Bengal is an excellent idea. Bengals tend to vocalize to communicate with their humans, and are quite capable of jealousy and spitefulness if they feel that another feline is getting more attention, or if they are being ignored. The other side of this coin is that they are also very affectionate towards and playful with their humans."

a lily and a dahlia

my friend jessy gave me a beautiful dahlia last weekend. i wanted to get a few pictures of before it completely faded. lily liked it too (i think she enjoys being a constant distraction).

the images are either fuzzy (out of focus) or blurry (movement), but she's a cat. you get the idea. i'll pretend i like them this way. i do think the blur works pretty nicely in the last one (mostly because it is actually in focus).

weekend stalking

i spent as much of the weekend (that's sunday-monday to me) as possible alternately playing with and stalking my cat (with my camera). here are some of the good ones:


another appearance of the tigerlily smile ^. i luf her. she makes me talk like an idiot.

tigerlily's sleepy dance

okay, bear with me here. i know nothing about making or editing videos, but i have a "movie" setting on my digital camera. the lighting was terrible, the resolution gruesome--basically everything about the video is shitty--except for a ridiculously cute sleepy kitten. this video was shot just a few days after we got her, so it is close to a month old, but i didn't want to upload it without trying to fix it. the fixing process is a bit more complicated than i was expecting. if i wait to try to get it looking good, nobody will ever see the damn thing, which would be a shame. it makes me smile every time i watch it. who knows, i might even clean it up at some point. so here it is in all of its hideous, dark, pixilated glory.

oh yeah, and for some reason, which i have yet to understand, the audio is out of sync. i'll work on it. i swear.

the sunday kitten

here are some sunday morning kitten pics for ya:

a sweet/guilty little face. this one could go either direction--guilty like an orchid-eater, or sweet like "thanks mom, for getting up early to make me breakfast and play with me".

some toys i fell in love with in prague. i pretended (for a little while) that i was actually going to give them to my nieces, but they were really for me. karl still thinks i'm crazy."may i have this dance? no? okay, fine. i'll settle for trying to bite your face off."

pretty spots. me-wow. [did anyone else play animal crossing? with the kitten that said "me-wow" all the time? yes, i know it's ridiculous. i played it about (4? wow, yeah) 4 years ago in the fall. until the part with the f*ing snow-man. and i've gotten an itch to play it every fall since then. wierd. i am also ready for a new halo release, but we'd have to get a new x-box to play it. karl said he doesn't want a new x-box, which means he won't get one for a couple more months.]
i've been sitting here drinking coffee and eating hit cookies, my balanced and complete breakfast (riiight). at noon. whatever, it's sunday--enjoy!

princess and the pea

cinnamon blond wildcat seeks the royal treatment
snuggles given at my discretion
my pillow must be regularly fluffed
princess? where? i don't see any princess.

how can anyone say no to that little face (and those folded paws)? it's so hard! tigerlily is getting bigger--i think she is going on four pounds now, she was about two pounds when we got her. 100% more kitty, now available 24 hours a day! (and, if you can do a margaret cho voice: pussy play ping-pong!!). wow, my rug is filthy...i think that is mostly catnip from lily's new scratching box. we vacuumed last weekend, *cough* honestly. lil' miss thang is probably gonna wake me up in about five hours. so, um, goodnight.

kitten huffing

i can't help it that my cat smiles--there are never too many kitty smiles. i just thought i'd share a darling little feature of hers and the pink muzzle-puff area with tiny whisker freckles. what more could i ask for? (hm, maybe no dingle-berry on my comforter tomorrow morning).
also, i just learned there is a term for one of my favorite new passtimes, kitten huffing.

lily-kins

lil' miss naughty-pants at work:
what's that?

chomp!

my work here is done.

smitten kitten

according to cute overload my newfound purpose in life is to share pictures of my wonderful little kitten. considering that i had about 17,000 hits (my brain is still exploding over that one) in the last couple of days--less than 48 hours--i will keep posting photos of tigerlily. i get my best pictures of her on the weekends, after i wear her out a bit. i tried to take some tonight after work, but they were nearly all blurry fuzz-butt shots (after work the lighting options are either too dark or too flashy). the next thing i need to figure out is posting some little videos. cute overload has a tremendous readership and i hope to keep a few people interested. i am also happy to share some of what i have been learning about bengal cats and answer any questions i can. the oregon area breeder that i got tigerlily from is sno pride and came highly recommended by a friend of mine who owns a bengal. sno pride posts pictures of available kittens on their site; i would also suggest taking a look at bengal cat rescue, here is the chapter closest to me
california bengal cat rescue. there are some beautiful older kitties that really need good homes. i had some specific reasons for wanting a kitten, as well as a bengal, and the couple of months that we spent researching and deciding payed off very nicely. she is a total handful (i wish i could stay home and play with her all day)--i can't even imagine what it is like to raise a child. i am totally in love with this cat, she is, er, redonkulous.

some cute paw action from the tigerlily

shazam, part deux!!

so...the explosion in hits that i was experiencing last night was actually due to CUTE OVERLOAD! i sent meg my pics over a week ago and i thought she hated me and my little kitty too. then i checked the site again last night and tigerlily made it!! yippee! i depend on cute overload for small doses of pure joy and apparently a lot of other people do too--i got about 7,000 hits in the last 24 hours. i'll keep posting pictures, i'm glad to be able to share her. thank you so much!!

almost fa-mouse

tigerlily made it onto the infinite cat project today. thanks for the suggestion lisa! also a thank you to mike who runs the whole site and posted my cutie's picture. please visit and click on the links!

a nerd is born

nerd-in-training

what's up tigerlily?

we got her, we named her and have fallen head-over-heels in love with tigerlily. lily, lil' bit; here she is:

salty dog and other tasty licks

damn that thing is cute, i can't get over it (see the 'lil pink tongue?). we've only got one day and 400 bucks to go. i can't wait. tonight we bought some fancy-pants kitten chow and toys and a collar-- she's already spoiled.

karl said we can't name her untill we have her--we've almost made it. he didn't go for black joe as the new name for der uber kitten either. we have to pay homage to red dog in some other way, no more cat/dog name switcheroos. i am somewhat at a loss for names at the moment anyhow, but i'm sure we will come up with something good. and by good i don't mean one of those whacked-out show cat/breeder names. moonlit memories, champagne dream, silver damsel. who the hell makes up that wierd shit? oh wait, i did, but for demonstrative purposes only.


we love you red dog. hugs and misses.

Roseburg and bengal kittens

okay, i'm exhausted and i need to go to bed so i can be sane at work tomorrow. but i will post a few images from my weekend in roseburg and my potential kitten, with more information to follow.

a couple of the bengal girl kittens i am looking at...and my mom's adorable little airstream trailer that we camped in for the night.

Lost in the Supermarket

as there are a million and three other things i should be doing at the moment, i decided to make a blog. i am giving in. but i will try to make it interesting and not lose interest/laze-out immediately. i started to make one last night, well after midnight and was quickly stymied by the naming of the blog. this evening i figured something out based on the same way i name everything else: go to the songs. if i'm making art, i'm listening to music and the lyrics always snake their way into titles; it is the same idea here. the best choices are always the story-tellers: elvis costello, nick cave, david byrne/talking heads, the clash/joe strummer, the coup, the pixies and so on. direct lifts as well as permutations: visible shivers (running down my spine), red right hand, highway of fire/sugar on my tongue, i wasn't born so much as i fell out/lost in the supermarket, bullets and love, tromp le monde. it is an exquisite corpse of the poetic variety.

and i love the clash. some years ago, while speaking of impossibilities, i told karl (boyfriend, then & now) that i would have been willing to have a love child with joe strummer. he said he would give his left nut for the pixies to get back together. we were both kidding, on the square. a little while later joe strummer passed away and the pixies got hungry. which is for the better, i'm going to have a kitten instead of a child and karl's testicles are fully intact.