Category: cats

Fearsome Beastie, we call her. We’re at Dark Odyssey starting today, the hotel version of the event we were at when we met Miss Aurora. She wasn’t doing a whole lot of this that day, but a whole lot of other DO campers were doing something close; I’m sure some would envy the length of her tongue, no?

She is just too cute, isn’t she? All fluffy & orange. & Then, if you try to touch her, she rips your hand off.

For those of you who don’t know it, this is a really defensive posture for a cat. Dogs do this when they want you to rub their bellies; cats do it so that they have all their claws & teeth ready for attack. When a cat puts her back to you, that’s a sign that she trusts you – not the other way around. In a sense, when you’ve “got a cat’s back” she’s got yours, as well.

Yet another way that people misinterpret cat behavior.

Since people have asked, here’s a picture of the young Hemingway in a dress with his pretty long hair. Note the caption.

& While we’re at it, & it’s Friday, here’s a photo of a “Hemingway cat,” otherwise known as a polydactyl cat. What you non-cat people might not know is that cats normally have five toes on their front paws, four on their back, so this kittoi has two extra toes!

There’s a bunch more at Wiki.

Our big Endymion, looking out at the world sideways.

Too beautiful for you, he seems to say.

& This, alas, is Gracie, the other of Betty’s parents’ cats. She doesn’t like the flash – thus the grumpy look – but otherwise is quite a sweet lap kitty.

Or maybe she’s pissed about Steve Stanton getting fired.

This is the cat who started it all, the boys’ Uncle George. No, they’re not actually related, but Betty’s parents had him, & we went to visit after me not having cats for a decade, & us having talked about it, & having recently been engaged, & since he was a Blue like the cat I grew up with, well, when I ran into the crazy cat lady who was giving away the boys on 7th Avenue South, the deed was done. So, thanks to George, we have Aeneas & Endymion, & George has been repaid for his feline fortuitousness with a wild North Carolina countryside.

The label’s a bit of a misnomer; she’s not very fragile, really, more like a hellion in orange.

Aeneas, crashed out on his papa’s chair. (You can decide which one of us is his papa.)

They get into the most unusual positions.