Cat Drag Race

Astonishing power

Cat mime

 Black and white kitty does that mime bit.

Right up my alley(cat)

Colorado-based artist Arna Miller uses vintage style packaging, advertising, and illustrations as inspiration for her goofy creations. The serious historical aesthetic and matter-of-fact text subtly ridiculous, finding humor in imagining animals experiencing human emotions, ambitions, and failures.

In a statement on her website, Miller describes her guiding principles as an artist: “My aim is to create narrative illustrations that depict magical moments…I often use text to tell part of the story, but like to leave most of the narrative up to the viewer. My guiding rule—which I sometimes break—is Possible, but Not Likely. For example, it’s possible for a vole to sit on a cigarette box and float down a river, but it is not likely. On the other hand, dinosaurs didn’t have laptops and headphones, so I would not draw that.”

The matchbox series “Strike Your Fancy,” which Miller made in collaboration with her husband Ravi Zupa, shows cats staying out late and making dicey decisions.

Cat, I'm a kittycat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bentley sleeps with his eyes open

Much as I love cats, there is something primitive, almost reptilian about their eyes. When Bentley is at a certain stage of sleep, his eyes are slits with the pupils rolled down (not up), with a glazed look. Sometimes his eyes are wide open like that. It's disturbing. I think predators have to be ready every second for the next kill, and thus don't even have to open their eyes to wake up.

Kitty, get DOWN!

Subtitled: "You think YOUR cat is bad."

Tortie talks!

Cat wrap: Bentley on a roll

It's been a while since I posted a Bentley video, so here is one. Like most cats, he does all sorts of funny, sweet, droll - oh, SCREW that! He is the only cat who does the fun, the pleasurable, the joyfully antic things that he does, warming our hearts and making our lives just a tad more meaningful. 

For Bentley came along when there was a cat-shaped hole in my heart, and I didn't even know it. Not until that particular puzzle-piece clicked into place did I realize how incomplete I had been.

Bentley does not meow. Bentley does not purr. He is nearly silent. Bentley will bite you as soon as lick you. Bentley has huge eyes that sometimes seem predatory, sometimes frightened, or that glimmer enigmatically. He sneaks up on you with great stealth. He is exceptionally beautiful. We think so.

Bill callls him "chum", "our boy", and (when he has been bad) "ya bum". I call him "pudsy", "pud-pud" and "pudster", or "Bentleykins". Bentley takes care of us. He is sleek and beautiful and warms my lap. He runs to the door to greet us when we've been out. The only time we've been away from him for any length of time, when we went to Hawaii earlier in the year, he stopped eating and nearly had a nervous breakdown.

So there, dog people, those who say a cat can't be attached to you in the same way. No, it's not the same way at all! Bentley is attached to us in a Bentley way.

Comfy, cozy cat

Cats are either double-jointed, or have such flexible bodies that their bones turn into water in a state of total relaxation. Bentley has assumed most of these positions at one time or another. I don't have too many of these, because I usually take action/beauty shots, but here are a few.

Cat in cherry tree

(Something tells me that these might not all be the same cat. But perhaps it's the same tree?)

Bentley: white toots

Making biscuits

Kitty shows me his butt!

When a cat shows you his butt, it's supposed to be an honour (kind of like dropping a dead bird at your feet). Here, Bentley takes it a little too far with the head-butts, flinging himself at me in a way which is highly unusual for him. He can be a tad aloof and will not receive affection unless he is in the mood. In other words, he is a cat.

This video is a tad dark, but I'm using the YouTube editing program which is a bit primitive. If you lighten things up too much, they turn orange and pixilated. 

The last time Bentley did something like this was at the vet's. He stood there on the table and rammed his head under my arm like an ostrich. He has limits. Boarding him while we went to Hawaii was downright traumatic, and he barely ate (and wouldn't even drink, being incredibly stubborn). I guess here he has forgiven me at last. 

Flying kitten picture!

When my cat is sad

Grimalkin is his name

Grimalkin

My cat is such a mouser (oh dear me!)
He catches more than Towser
He sneaks along the floor, you know
And hides behind the door, and so
Grimalkin is his name!

A mouse comes up a-creeping (oh dear me!)
He thinks the cat is sleeping
He's snoring surely, but you know
His left eye isn't shut, and so
He's watching all the same!

Purr-haps you've guessed what followed (oh dear me!)
That little mouse was swallowed
I'll tell you now what happened then
Grimalkin took a nap and then
Poor Towser got the blame!

A grimalkin (also called a greymalkin) is an archaic term for a cat. The term stems from "grey" (the colour) plus "malkin", an archaic term with several meanings (a cat, a low class woman, a weakling, a mop or a name) derived from a hypocoristic form of the female name Maud. Scottish legend makes reference to the grimalkin as a faery cat that dwells in the highlands.

Nostradamus the French prophet & astrologer, 1503-1566, had a cat named Grimalkin.

A cat named Grimalkin in William Shakespeare‘s 1606 play MacBeth helped the three blind witches look into Macbeth’s future.

During the early modern period, the name grimalkin – and cats in general – became associated with the devil and witchcraft. Women tried as witches in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were often accused of having a familiar, frequently a grimalkin. A noted example is the familiar of one of the three witches in Macbeth. - Wikipedia

I first saw the name Grimalkin in a favorite childhood book of mine, King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry. This is a heavily fictionalized story about the Godolphin Arabian, one of the founding sires of the Thoroughbred breed. A fabulously prized Arab stallion named Sham is shipped to England from Arabia, a gift from some sultan-or-other - oh, let's get to the good part, shall we? Like most fairy tale characters, Sham loses his royal status and must endure many trials (not unlike Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, which Marguerite Henry no doubt read many times), including toiling as a humble cart-horse under the whip. Luckily the Earl of Godolphin intervenes in time, knowing a good piece of horseflesh when he sees one. In a wildly-unrealistic scene, Sham and Lady Roxana, an immaculate white mare primed to breed with the evil stallion Hobgoblin, break away from their handlers and elope. The Thoroughbred breed results. 

Grimalkin is a supporting character who isn't even in the book for very long, but like most cats, he makes the best of his part and gladly accompanies Agba (the little Arab horseboy) and Sham into exile, making the best of things at Wicken Fen. The brilliant illustrator Wesley Dennis had a talent, if not genius, for conveying motion, the fluid natural movements of dogs and horses and even cats. His subjects always seemed just about to do something: Dennis knew what, and conveyed it without even having to show it. 

The legendary horse-artist sketched this wee sleekit feline in the most fey, ghostlike poses, using just a few strokes of the pencil. Usually he was perched on the back or neck or rump of the hero, like so:

The song is something I learned in school, and it popped into my head today in the way long-forgotten songs suddenly will. I couldn't find one thing about it on the internet, which is rare - until I found some obscure message board from 2001 that quoted the lyrics, mostly correctly. This is the only place I've seen Towser as a dog name - usually it's Bowser, though who knows where THAT one got started. 

The complicated, twisting, braided strands of the name Grimalkin are about as weirdly mystical as anything I've seen lately. The different meanings of the word "malkin" (a cat, a low class woman, a weakling, a mop or a name) sound kind of like my autobiography. A faery cat that dwells in the Highlands, witches, familiars, Macbeth, being burned at the stake - how mystical is that? But all cats are magic. They wave their tails and walk by their wild lonesome and care not a fig what we think about them - never have, and never will.