Norsky and the cooker

 In recent weeks Norsky has completed his takeover of the cooker. Before this annexation there were indeed times and hours and nows and thens, you'd find him lying supine and spread eagle on the cooker, soundly asleep. But these days, he has turned the cooker into his sole base of operations. Why that is so, is hard to fathom. Your guess is as good as mine. But there is no question about it, it's a fait accompli!

Oftentimes, when he's lying on the cooker, he keeps activating the beeping sound, a kind of gentle alarm, designed to drive you away from the cooker. But Norsky seems to relish in his beeping powers, time and again he beeps, and the beeps keep on coming in a steady flow.
He has yet to put the heating plates on. It's probably only a question of when not if.

I have tried to remove him from the cooker time and again. It works, but only till the next time around.

As of late, I've tired of intervening. If  Norsky so wishes, he can burn down the house. Go you a head, wee bugger, make my day!

Definition of dog food

Something a cat would never touch.

From "The Gift"

"He wanted to tell her that her pale yellow dress with bluish tulips was beautiful, that the parting of her frizzled hair and the quivering bags of her cheeks endowed her with a George-Sandesque regality; that her dining-room was the height of perfection; but he limited himself to a beaming smile and nearly tripped over the tiger stripes which had not kept up with the cat as it jumped aside;"

Norsky's licking festival

After a few days' thoroughly enjoyable stay in North Zealand, the lion's share of which was spent im Schoss der Familie, we had the good fortune of getting back home to North Jutland in time for supper, even as railroad maintenance work was taking place on two different spots en route. Upon arrival to the affected locations, all passengers were politely and firmly asked to evacuate the train and move into a capacious tourist bus parked in front of the train station. The personnel helped guide us in place and stash the luggage in the belly of the bus, below deck. These transitions were performed so smoothly that the inconvenience involved was negligible. Hardly worth mentioning, in fact.
Back home, only two of the cats formed the welcoming committee. We were starting to get a bit edgy. Where are the other three and are they all in good health? Then another joined in from the garden and a forth could be discerned peering in through the fence. That was Wimbelina! Initially, she wasn't in the mood and stayed away. After another hour, she joined the crew and started socializing and rolling around on the ground to her hearts content.
Only much later did Norsky show up. It was a huge relief to see him again. He gave his usual loud growl and trotted to the food bowl to see what's new on the menu. After that he got some cuddles and gave in return a taste of his prolific tongue work. Man, does that cat like to lick! He gave us an overhaul bottom up like some dedicated pedicurist cum manicurist and we could skip the bath when he was done.
O, Norsky, Norsky, Norsky, there ain't neyone like ya on earth nor in the sky, nor in the goddamn frigging universe.

Door mat dormant Joely Pants

Door mat dormant Joely pants was prostrated heavily on a tea towel placed on the table next to an obsolete printer. He was having his afternoon catnap.

When was it? Hard to be precise. It happened over and over again for so many times, and each time was very akin to all the others. It therefor became nearly impossible to tell the different occasions apart.

And so he became a legend, doing what he was really good at for at least 10,000 hours, as predicted by Malcolm Gladwell.

Door mat dormant Joely pant is currently prostrated heavily on a tea towel placed on the table next to an obsolete printer.

Unless he suddenly becomes fitful and bangs down the pen holder, causing big commotion and trepidation (mainly to himself) this occasion will be no different from all the previous ones. It will collapse in memory into a single grand event. An event destined to be celebrated  and reenacted by future generations of big docile felines for as long as there are tea towels and tables and obsolete printers around.

On flat caps and cat flaps

These days we are rapidly closing in on the summer solstice. It's just around the corner in fact. We are celebrating it tomorrow evening by erecting a tall bonfire and burning our favorite hex at the stake. It's an old venerable tradition in this part of the world. Until some german dude not long ago spoiled the party by claiming there's no logical connection between a sunken ship in the Baltic sea and the weird old lady selling eggs and potatoes from her patio. We don't wish to argue with him, but his assertion seems bold and totally out of sync with our traditional ways of preying, persecuting and executing.
Anyways, on account of the warm summer days recently, we've kept the terrace door open during the entire day. This way the cats come in and out of the garden without needing to push open their cat flap. It's a small improvement admittedly, but one that may make a difference to the felines involved. It's hard to ascertain though, since comments have been scant.
The hipsters are long gone, we are told, and so are the flat caps that good people used to wear on the left bank while painting yet another masterpiece. But cat flaps remain useful as soon as the weather turns and the sky falls.These warm days are just a brief intermezzo between two dark ages. Enjoy them whilst you can!
   

The catified home

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul 

Jean Cocteau

To elaborate on mister Jean Cocteau's sharp observation, it could be maintained that a home with cats is indeed visibly metamorphosed by its feline lodgers. If you will recall how in the novel Great Expectations the old Miss Havisham's house has been spiderized and dustified by the sheer passage of time, you surely can appreciate what happens to a home with cats after a while - the home simply catifies... It starts growing fur, talons and teeth, two pointed ears and a big tail, roving in the dark every night with burning yellow eyes and chasing away the neighboring catified homes.

Well, that might be a slight exaggeration. 

The truth of the matter is, a home with cats will catify at an alarming rate, unless you do something about it. A catified home's defining feature is cat hairs on every surface, be it the floor, the carpets, chairs and tables, books on the shelves, curtains and electronic devices; nooks crannies and cavities, them all puffed up with hair like a cushion with feathers. A catified home will in addition contain different kinds of cat remnants and residues such as dried out puke cakes, old corpses of rodents and birds in various stages of decollation and decay, vestiges of vintage pee spray on the floors and walls and many other wee surprises. So it is really up to you how much you enjoy the visible soul of your home, monsieur Cocteau.
You know what - just leave it to the maid.     

  

Cat Poem by danish poet Søren Ulrik Thomsen

16 years ago I was handed a cardboard box
with an amber coloured cat
that is lying again in a same such box
with which I'm cycling through town
on my way to a garden in Brønshøj
where I'd have to bury this animal
never to be re-encountered

according to dogma
because it didn't possess a soul.
What was it then that I read
in her green eyes
when they looked and looked into mine
as if she too
had a query to me?
While not fooling myself into believing
I'm getting closer to the answer
in writing these lines
if perhaps because I hope
they will be read
also at the point in time where I shan't be seeing Kiss again.

Wimbelina's left side canine

She can be as soft and dainty a feminine feline as she wanna be, but she can't hide away from the facts: Basically, she's just a carnivore, designed to hunt and tear into the flesh of smaller beings with her razor sharp teeth.

We suspect this subject is not the most widely discussed, nor the most appealing to all you cat lovers out there. It may even appear atrocious to some of you. Granted that might be the case, standing here today in front of you, on this day of redemption, we bring you all a message of hope and consolation: Cats are indeed armed with sharp teeth, and according to the second amendment, they are in their good right to carry them around!

Wimbelina is of course fully aware of her constitutional rights, so you are not likely to catch her off guard or unarmed. She may go to sleep, is true, and quite often at that, but she will never descend to the nether echelons of The Glasgow Coma Scale. Invariably she will retain a level of alertness to whatever might come. And when she does hear a sudden sound, she flaps open one of her ears and half a sleepy, greenish eye in order to make a quick risk assessment, before drifting back into
her happy hunting dream.

And she is always armed to her teeth...with her teeth...,and due to some dental anomaly, whenever her chin is pointing upwards, you can discern her left canine tooth protruding sweetly like a miniature elephant tooth.

One feels like touching this minuscule piece of ivory very gently, so adorable it is.

Dangerous liaisons and the law of the lion

"The cat is not obliged to live according to the laws of the lion." Spinoza

This evening things got dangerously out of hand between Joely Pants and me. He is such a big lump of a cat, it's overly tempting to give him a rough treatment while cuddling him. Usually, I manage to get away with it, and away from Joely Pants just in the nick of time, before he starts getting a temper tantrum due to over stimulation. Today however, I trespassed the thin red line between a docile, thoroughly domesticated and cuddly cat and a fierce feline from the savanna. My sin was one stroke too many, an infringement that unleashed an instantaneous metamorphosis of a big cat into a small lion. Before I knew it, the darned, magnificent beast delivered a solid bite to my left hand while swiping my arm with his paw, leaving behind a fine specimen of a bloody Adidas logo as a souvenir.

After that, things went immediately back to normal. Joely Pants forgot all about this incident and crept back into his cosy anti aggressive and deceptive persona, and if you ask him, nothing ever happened. I too, chose to follow for once the moral teachings of the New Testament and refrained from exercising the good old law of talion (lex talionis), also known as the law of the lion.

Status as we speak: Joely Pants is deeply asleep on the table curled up between a printer and a sub woofer. Moi, not half a meter away from him, jotting down these words. And there's no more war, no more bloodshed.

Cats in the cradle

I've known this tune for years but only a few days ago, did I pause to listen to the lyrics. I just love the line Cats in the cradle and a silver spoon, Little boy blue and the man on the moon. Don't you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s5r2spPJ8g

The Catfish