Monday, April 10, 2017

Bentley's fame continues to grow






The other day I sent an email to a well-known cat website based in the UK (Pictures of Cats), asking them about something I've always wanted to know about Bentley. To my surprise, the cat-master, Michael Broad, responded within hours and asked if he could use my email as an article, along with his comments.

So I asked Bentley about it.

Well. . .

He was a little hard to convince - his concern is palpable in the picture below. But once I described the lovely montage they made of his picture, he was won over. Or at least, I think he was won over (he didn't open his eyes).  Below is my original email and Michael's remarks. There have been some comments from readers as well, which you can find here:

http://pictures-of-cats.org/can-a-cat-lose-the-ability-to-purr.html




Can a cat lose the ability to purr?

By Margaret Gunning

Hello! I was delighted to find your cat site, which has more cat lore in it than anything I’ve seen. I look forward to further exploration.

Can a cat lose the ability to purr? I have a lovely cat named Bentley, and though he is affectionate and a lap-sitter, I have never heard him purr. I think I feel a small vibration when I am holding him, but maybe not. He very seldom meows (maybe a few times a week) and it’s very quiet. He does (fairly rarely) make other sounds, chattering when he sees a bird, grunting to get our attention, chirping (though he did more of that when we first got him).

About Bentley (I made an animation of him from a few photos, above): he is a reasonably large, three-year-old neutered male tabby. We adopted him from the SPCA when he was about a year old. I saw his mug shot on the web site and was very attracted to it, even though we had intended to get a kitten. They could not tell us much about him except that someone had found him wandering around injured and brought him in. He was quite thin and had puncture wounds on his shoulders, indicating a dog or coyote attack. It was quite bad, so he may have been picked up and thrashed. By the time we adopted him he was bald on top (shaved), but healed.



A thinner, more juvenile Bentley, soon to "fill out"
 from 10 to 14 1/2 pounds.


When I saw him, the connection was instant. He ran up to me and wanted to be picked up and just melted into my arms. This was our cat. His manners are impeccable (he has since been neutered) and the attachment to us is strong. I get a sense of him protecting us, which I haven’t had with other cats.

Though he is fairly bold and rarely hides, he does NOT want us to go out. He rubs all over our legs and on every wall and object, and squeezes into a box by the door looking adorable. Sometimes he even climbs into his cat carrier. By the time we go out the door he’s walking away to have a nap.

I have always wondered if this attack somehow damaged his vocal cords, or if he’s just naturally quiet. Maybe he never did purr? I do wonder about lingering trauma. Though he’s generally friendly, there are spaces around him (right in front or above him) that he is sensitive about and he will actually back up if you try to touch him. His favourite place to be scratched is between his shoulder blades (where he was attacked!)

He is in good health and gained 4 ½ pounds after we adopted him. (He’s not fat – just big-boned.) The vet has never seen a cat lose its purr, so I wondered if such a thing was possible. He is certainly a loyal, affectionate and grateful kitty.

If you have any thoughts, I’d be interested in hearing them. Thank you!

All the best,

Margaret Gunning




Comment from Michael.

Through building this website my thoughts on this are that individual domestic cats have a wide range of personal characteristics and one relates to their vocalisations. Individual cats make slightly different sounds and unusual sounds sometimes. And some cats are almost silent. They rarely meow and when they do it is a silent meow. There are also breed characteristics – vocal Siamese and silent meow British Shorthair. I believe that Bentley just has a very silent or non-vocal purr. I don’t think this has happened because of a lingering trauma. Domestic cats get over trauma well in my experience. They forget and move on.

That said I would welcome the thoughts of others in a comment. I am certainly not 10 sure that I am correct. Thanks Margaret for sharing your experience and asking. It is an interesting topic.




P. S. This is a fantastic site for cat lovers, full of information and discussion, and updating every few hours. I could not believe how quickly this man got back to me, and by the next day the piece had been published. Bentley is on Cloud 9 - or maybe it's Cloud Tuna Can. He doesn't really know the difference. 


Bentley plays with his pink thing!





Vancouver Cherry Blossoms





Sunday, April 9, 2017

randomgifs1


 
 












Alien Report!





"The Isolator is a bizarre helmet invented in 1925 that was used to help increase focus and concentration by rendering the wearer deaf, piping them full of oxygen, and limiting their vision to a tiny horizontal slit. The Isolator was invented by Hugo Gernsback, editor of Science and Invention magazine, member of “The American Physical Society,” and one of the pioneers of science fiction."





This post started out as a sort of "whuzzat?" feature, with all sorts of bizarre semi-recognizable images in it. Then I became bored. I've posted stuff on The Isolator before, and decided that since it was the only thing that interested me, I'd isolate my search.




When I first encountered this headgear from the Land of Strange, there was all of one photo of it, the black and white one at the top. This time, I wasn't exactly overwhelmed with results, but this nice color one popped up on a magazine cover. (Do you get a sort of Ripley's Believe It or Not feeling from this? Was it dreamed, or nightmared, or did it actually exist? I find it hard to believe that this had been a "thing", that someone took the time to build one and actually wear it.)





It looks like "a thing", but maybe this is just a prototype. I can't quite believe there's a human being in there. The "tube" looks like old-style electrical cord, in which case you'd do more than inhale and exhale. You'd probably be electrocuted.





Weirdness like this does something to your perspective. I have heard that there are levels of time and reality that exist parallel to each other, but that once in a while two streams bisect, or there is a shift, so that one is suddenly aware of another level. And it's not the same, not the same, not the same thing at all. One feels a sort of vertigo, a blurring-together of the known with the unknown. And you can't even tell anyone what you've experienced, because all you can do is exclaim to yourself and to the aching reaches of the Universe: 





This gets weirder. The Isolator, which to me looks like nothing more than a portable padded cell, is surprisingly similar to Kevin, the tall two-eyed minion from Despicable Me.


      
       
See the resemblance? But it's missing something. The Isolator doesn't look like hard plastic or metal or wood. I don't know what sort of material the guy used, but it looks like felt or something. It's sort of soft and felty, almost - squishy. Almost like. . . 





YES! 



Call it The Twinkilator. 


Twinkies are not to be messed with. They can be as forbidding and intergalactic-looking as that old head-widdly thing. As witness:




Twinkie the Kid!




And tell me honestly, doesn't this look like a Twinkie writing up a scientific report? Either that, or a slightly overdone corn dog.




I am not sure I want to elaborate further, for I have already reached a terrible conclusion. The Isolator isn't like a minion or a Twinkie or even a corn dog, because it ISN'T REAL: it doesn't exist, and maybe never existed! It's just some useless mad-scientist, drawing-board thing done on commission for that scientific magazine, which looks about as scientific as a Marvel Comic.


      .                                                                                                                                                                        
But then I found. . . this.

This looks real as fuck. It does. It just looks like a modern photograph of somebody WEARING one of those head-thingammies. It reminds me of some detective show, or Science Fiction Monster Theatre or something like that.

But as usual, I cannot find one scrap of information on this photo.      


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
And this! I mean, these are either cocktail napkins (?!) or invitations to some intergalactic social event, the Wedding of the Century.  I just do not get it.





It also looks a little bit like those Irish hats that leprechauns wear, except leprechaun hats don't have this big bloody wire hanging out of them or big holes that look like they're staring out of the depths of hell.





Could this be photoshopped? What else COULD it be? Are two time zones of reality overlapping again? Damn, I was hoping it had stopped.

There is so much information on the internet. There is so much misinformation on the internet. There is so much NO information on the internet, and it insults me, as if I'm "just supposed to know". I got that "just supposed to know" feeling when I tried to research this whole non-topic, finding stuff that got more incomprehensible (see above) by the minute. I'd write about how this has dogged and tortured me all my life, but I just don't want to go to the trouble to bring myself down for no reason.




This happens incessantly on Facebook, which I have nearly stopped using except to go on individual pages for videos and images. (Just the pictures, folks.) People "in-talk" all the time, chatting back and forth, NOT messaging as they are supposed to, at all, but gabbing on and on intimately in a language outsiders (their "friends") don't understand, full of obscure references. "Should I do it?" can be a whole post. The in-group soon answers, in droves, but very obscurely, already knowing what the question means but couching their answers in arcane language to increase the agony of the ostracized. No one is allowed to ask what it's about or you'll be looked at as if you are an embarrassment, like dog shit on the bottom of someone's shoe. The whole comfy little thrill of it comes from the ruthlessness of shutting out your friends, so that they cannot be a part of your thrilling little world.



                                       
BREAKTHROUGH, BREAKTHROUGH! I just couldn't leave it alone, that modern-looking photo, I had to find out where it came from. So I did a reverse-image search on it - which sometimes gives me the provenance of a photo, though usually not.

And here it is! It's from a TV show called Elementary, which is, I would imagine, about Sherlock Holmes, who is depicted in modern terms as a high-functioning autistic. I think that's a load of high-functioning horseshit, myself, but here's the gif anyway: it turned out kind of neat.
   


                             

I don't see this as looking quite like the fuzzy Twinkie of Hugo Gernsback's vision. It looks more like an industrial vacuum cleaner, or a garbage pail with holes in it. It must have been fun for the prop department to rig this up, though not much fun to have it on your head.