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Today is National Cat Day! In celebration of this day and the four-legged, furry creatures it honors, I would like to introduce you to a famous cat; one who changed a man’s life and possibly a few classical music fans as well. Here is Ketzel, a cat who actually composed music. Enjoy! . Ketzel, the Cat …

Cat Writers' Association Muse Medallion Winner World's Best Litter-ary Award Winner Nebraska Golden Sower Award list 2012-13 Illinois Monarch K-3 Readers' Choice Award list 2012-13 NY State Charlotte Award list 2011-12 Delaware Diamond Award list 2011-12 Storytelling World Award Honor Title 2011 Bank Street Best Books for Children 2011 Wanda Gág Best Read Aloud Book Award 2011 Honor Book Society of School Librarians International Honor Book 2010 Smithsonian Notable Books for Children 2010 NSW Premier Reading Challenge Book (Australia) 1st grade Read-Aloud Choice, 25th Annual Read-Aloud Day, Bridgeport, CT

5 Stars Geronimo Stilton #11: We'll Always Have Paris Lewis Trondheim Nanette McGuinness Papercutz 56 Pages    Ages: 7 and up .......................... .................................... Back Cover:  Geronimo Stilton is the editor of the Rodent’s Gazette, the most famous paper on Mouse Island. In his free time he loves to tell fun, happy stories. In this adventure, Geronimo [...]

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This girl is reading the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act out loud. [Act of Law]

Why no smoking signs actually ENCOURAGE smokers to light up [Daily Mail]

Think there’s no point in keeping print books around? I respectfully disagree. [Unshelved]

Here are some kitties crashing into each other. [YouTube]

100,000 staples arranged over 40 hours and other awesome staple art [NextWeb]

What does your literary tote bag say about you? [Vol1Brooklyn]

QUIZ: Can you tell Arial from Helvetica? [Ironicsans]

INFOGRAPHIC: The hardest languages to learn [Column Five]

This article on “Asian-American overachievers” is certainly creating a stir. [NYMag]

Incredible photos of the Great Flood of 1927 [Buzzfeed]

Ever have one of those days where you just can't find happy?  I did.  And when that happens, the creative side of me shuts down.  It's a form of artist-block and it's very icky.  So after a day of mopey ickiness I decided I would force myself to draw myself happy as a form of therapy...here is what happened when pencil touched paper.

Oh how I love to force my kitties to love me.  And of course the wiener dogs always laugh because they know they're next!  So if you're having a gloomy icky day, draw yourself happy and see if it helps.
 

 Older men, younger women. This seems to be the norm, back in days of old when a farmer’s wife died, they took on a younger wife because they were able bodied and child bearing. The younger women could do what we now call “Multi-Tasking”. They would cook, clean, take care of the house, the garden, the yard, the animals, have children and raise them, and service their husband. For many years this was nothing that was frowned upon. Men did this thing all of the time for the benefit of the family. Children were taught to do everything both in and out of the farm. The more children you had, the more help you had. Large families were encouraged.

But Now…

 Old man step aside…Mama wants fresh meat!!! Older women have ditched their “Golf Bags” for the caddies. Gone are the days where older women would rather rock their grand kids to sleep in their rocking chairs. Now they want to go out with their grand kids and hang out with rockers. Gone are the days of identifying a grandma by her polyester pants and tissue tucked sweaters. Grandmas are sporting fake breast and bikinis. Now a days young women can’t hold a candle to grandma.

 This causes a problem. If grandma and grandpa aren’t together anymore, what do they do. Well, grandma’s on the prowl. She’s not looking for money because if she is smart, she got it in the divorce. She’s not looking to marry because if she does that, the money stops. She doesn’t want another old man, that’s why she divorced the one she had. She is looking for a fresh kill. A man who is young, dumb and full of…a head of hair. Grandma knows the game. She is wise and cunning. She knows that all young men want to do is find them a piece, do their business, and move onto the next. Frankly, that’s all grandma’s looking for too. She’s not interested in making breakfast in the morning, she’s done that for too many years. She does’t want to go through the trouble of changing her last name, she earned the one she’s got. She is interested in the thought of love, but only if he doesn’t have his heart set on shacking up in the house she got in the divorce. Grandmas are tired of being put out to pasture, but now that they own the farm they want to run around naked in the freaking corn field.a

Image via Wikipedia

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 Older men, younger women. This seems to be the norm, back in days of old when a farmer’s wife died, they took on a younger wife because they were able bodied and child bearing. The younger women could do what we now call “Multi-Tasking”. They would cook, clean, take care of the house, the garden, the yard, the animals, have children and raise them, and service their husband. For many years this was nothing that was frowned upon. Men did this thing all of the time for the benefit of the family. Children were taught to do everything both in and out of the farm. The more children you had, the more help you had. Large families were encouraged.

But Now…

 Old man step aside…Mama wants fresh meat!!! Older women have ditched their “Golf Bags” for the caddies. Gone are the days where older women would rather rock their grand kids to sleep in their rocking chairs. Now they want to go out with their grand kids and hang out with rockers. Gone are the days of identifying a grandma by her polyester pants and tissue tucked sweaters. Grandmas are sporting fake breast and bikinis. Now a days young women can’t hold a candle to grandma.

 This causes a problem. If grandma and grandpa aren’t together anymore, what do they do. Well, grandma’s on the prowl. She’s not looking for money because if she is smart, she got it in the divorce. She’s not looking to marry because if she does that, the money stops. She doesn’t want another old man, that’s why she divorced the one she had. She is looking for a fresh kill. A man who is young, dumb and full of…a head of hair. Grandma knows the game. She is wise and cunning. She knows that all young men want to do is find them a piece, do their business, and move onto the next. Frankly, that’s all grandma’s looking for too. She’s not interested in making breakfast in the morning, she’s done that for too many years. She does’t want to go through the trouble of changing her last name, she earned the one she’s got. She is interested in the thought of love, but only if he doesn’t have his heart set on shacking up in the house she got in the divorce. Grandmas are tired of being put out to pasture, but now that they own the farm they want to run around naked in the freaking corn field.a

Image via Wikipedia

nt a

Hello all,

It is with a heavy heart that I must post this exclusive interview I found on the news this mourning. I must warn you all it is very shocking, so be sure to be sitting when you watch!!!! You should also be warned that the video is a little shaky as the heroic interviewer did this interview during a full scale earthquake!!!!!



Shocking Exclusive News From "The Boys Rule Boys Read" Blog Investigative Team

Now I know this may come as a shock to you all that "Jedi Master Zack" is actually an evil Sith Lord. As for myself, I always had my suspicions. Now Darth Bill's perspective on baby animals is that they are need and should be taken care of and even loved. I guess this Sith just has a soft spot in his heart for puppies and kittens - plus they are potential sith in the making. Well we tells it like it is here. Shame on you Jedi Master Zack for your views on small animals and your unprovoked attacks on me):

Sad and Shaken,


Darth Bill



P.S. I want everyone out there in the land of Blog to know that I am taking the high road in not telling everyone that in some quarters "Jedi Master Zack" is also known as "Jedi Sweetie Zack." Oh I just told everyone didn't I. Tell you what, forget you ever heard me say it.


P.S.S. Yeah for Mr. Gaimen!!!!! Your books rock!!!!!

I wish I had time to do some new work that I could actually show. Stuff on the board for publishers is verboten until after its been printed. Which is forever away.

I did do this though.

Gregory Cat Mosaic
Watercolor and gouache on board
2.5 x 3.5 inches
$25.00



I'm doing a new section in my CafePress store with these mosaics, which should be ready to go in a couple of days.

The fires have calmed down around here a bit I guess, because the sky isn't quite as smoky and weird. There was some seriously icky air there for a week or so. And a reddish sky with a white sun ~ creepy.

I can't believe its July already. JULY. Half the year is over. Its definitely been a "year of the cats" for me so far, what with Wendell and his hospital stay, then Saachi joining the family, and now Chloe and her brood. I sure hope the second half isn't like the first, yikes!

I've started a new blog called Chloe's Cats to share pictures of the kitties with the hopes of getting them adopted. I'm also doing a new series of art ~ kitty mosaics ~ to raise money for their care until they do get adopted.
So from now on I think I'll post the kitty pictures over there, and just do artwork on here. Sound good?



Yes, this is for sale. Its 2.5 x 3.5 on board, and done in watercolors and gouache.
$35.00

Are you sick of hearing about the kittens yet?
They are just too cute for words. I'm adjusting. I'm a little tired. But have managed to get some art done in between stocking up on litter and food and cleaning litter boxes.
Here's your "awwww" for the day:

I think tltrent had a good idea, so here is the thread to post your YA LoLcats. I'll start it with her suggestion for my MoggetLOL:



And for fun, a bonus LOL with selimsa803's suggestion, which has nothing to do with YA lit:





Now, it's your turn! Make your own YA LOLcat and post it here in the comments or link to your own journal.

I took a picture of Mogget tonight that screams LOLcat to me.



But I'm having trouble coming up with a good caption. Here are my two options so far.





Suggestions for a better one?

I was just telling a friend last night that if my own cat could talk, especially when I first get home at night, it would consist mostly of recrimination for not feeding him fast enough.

Winchester, on the other hand, is writing a book.

Ellsworth's Journal gives me a giggle every time I read it, especially with the photo illustrations. :)

My cats get the crazies nightly. It's a cat thing.

I've always said that Tildrum was part dog. He loves to play fetch. He steals my ponytail holders, then brings them to me and sits waiting for me to throw them. He'll leap for them like a dog leaps for a frisbee. 

But I have never seen him chase his tail before. 

Oh, how I wish I had gotten a picture of that--better yet, video--because that was HILARIOUS.


Instead, just imagine this little guy...
 

...part Manx, part dog, and part monkey--that must be where he gets the long tail--jumping up onto his favorite chair and frantically circling in an attempt to get his tail. Perhaps a bug was involved--he's also my resident bug hunter--but I like to believe it was his dog DNA shining through.

So I had kind of lost faith in Lost. I didn't watch it for a long time. But people at work were talking about it as if it were getting interesting again, so a few weeks ago I caught up on all the episodes I could online, and I've been watching it with my roommates. And I think it's redeeming itself. Lots of good surprises, and they're actually tying up some loose ends, such as just what the Dharma initiative is (kind of, or at least, where they went). But man, today's episode? Creepy and kind of frightening. I hope it all comes together, but I have a feeling the last episode of the season (episodes? I don't know how many are left) will leave me hanging.

Went for a walk around Green Lake tonight with a friend, and it was *so* nice to get out in the sunshine! I've got so much to do before I leave town this weekend, but I feel so much better for taking a break.

Got a laser pointer yesterday as a cat toy. This has been recommended to me before, but I didn't know if my cats would really go for it. Surprisingly, Mogget, he of the "sniff, I've seen it all" personality, went wild over it. I'm afraid the batteries that came with it weren't very strong, though--it was going visibly weak after just a few hours' play (well, over the course of several hours, so it was actually not that many minutes, either). I think I might go grab a couple cheap watch batteries--the batteries that came with it might have been sitting around for too long and just gotten weak. But if only I'd thought to video his chasing it, because it was like he was a little kitten again. (He's only just under two years old now, but he stopped being kittenish when I got Tildrum, who had enough energy for both of them.)

Good amusements for an evening, I must say. :D Now I need some sleep.

My roommate apparently told another roommate that she thinks Tildrum is obese. Given that I'd just been noticing how much bigger Tildrum is than Mogget, this had me worried, because I had been thinking that perhaps Mogget wasn't eating enough but that Tildrum--slight chunk that he is--was just normal. (Mogget, when you get him wet, is smaller than Tildrum, which is surprising given that Mogget is 6 months older. But since they're both almost full-grown, I hope it's just that Mogget comes from smaller-cat genes.)

Anyway, so I've been researching Manx cats tonight, trying to be sure that Tildrum is indeed just matching breed characteristics--his mother was definitely at least part Manx, a little calico sweetheart, and he was the only full-tailed kitten in the three I saw. One was a stumpy and one didn't have a tail at all. In fact, I could have adopted his brother instead, who looked exactly like Mogget but with only a stumpy tail, but I figured that would be a little confusing.

(The picture is of Tildrum and his little family before I adopted him. His sister is on the right, the little calico--who had no tail. His brother is on the left, the little black one with a white patch. I'm almost postitive that he had more white on him when I saw him in person, which might mean I'm thinking of a different kitten altogether, which might be the little ears in the back. But I think those belong to the mama cat--she seems bigger than anyone else. Tildrum is the little black spot with copper eyes in the center. It's so hard photographing black cats. I rarely feel satisfied with anything I've taken of him lately.)

My discovery: Not only is Tildrum right on with Manx conformation--their longer hind legs and powerful jumping ability call for much more musclier, and therefore heavier, hindends--but I find out he totally would clean up in competition, if he had no tail. :) The breed requirements listed on that page are pretty much Tildrum to a T--minus the no-tail requirement. That especially includes the "surprisingly heavy when lifted." He's a dense little one.

Which of course makes me go back to wondering if Mogget is dense enough. But that's a research project for another day.

No fog came today, but I had plenty of little cat feet around.

This has made me giggle every time I've seen it for the last ... SIX years. That's how long it's been since I worked at the trade magazine in Chicago where this was in a trade publication the magazine received. That's how funny this ad is.

If you can't read the text under the photo, this is what it says:

That's right, you can reach 55,000 software developers with your advertising message and get a free cat to boot. We're talking genuine felines with shots, spayed, declawed--the whole nine yards.

Just call 800-GET-A-CAT and we'll ship immediately. Just let us know how to ship

______UPS
______UPS Blue Label
______Overnight
______Bulk Mail

Advertise today. (415) 397-1881. We're standing by ready to punch holes in boxes.

The 800-number is phony.

And when you call Carl at the 415-number also listed in the ad, he tells you he really doesn't have cats to give away.

The only giveaway is his pet cat Kazoo. In the ad, Kazoo is pictured twice, once sitting on top of a pedestal, and a second time, from the neck down, with a Federal Express and Special Delivery tag pasted on his stomach.

"It's just a joke," Landau says from his San Francisco office. "I wanted to get rid of my cat. That's all."

Thanks to davidlubar, who helped me get my new icon down to the right file size to upload to LJ. I have no idea why Photoshop was making it so large, but I have a great icon now however it happened!

Speaking of Mogget (the subject of my new icon), I've been unpacking and the cats have been wandering around the house. Like I said in my last post, Mogget has been wandering around outside my bedroom, which is good. Except... though he's gotten mostly used to Nikki, he doesn't quite like the other two roommates--he hasn't seen them often enough because they live upstairs.

So this afternoon I picked him up to show him where his food was (I'd just moved it from my bedroom out to the dining room), when one of the girls upstairs came down. In his fright, Mogget totally clawed me for the second time today. The first was ... I forget why. Some loud noise or something. Argh. Anyway, he's doing better, but my arms are feeling the worse for wear. At least he's out in the living room and dining room checking things out now!

I've organized so much today and I feel all proud of myself. But in all my organizing, my room looks the same. You know how that goes--you put ten boxes away, but then bring ten more out that need unpacking next? That's the stage I'm in. At least my closet is all organized, though--I can find my towels! I can find my food in the kitchen! It's amazing!

I'm trying to upload this picture as an LJ icon:



and I don't get what the big problem is. I keep getting an error message that tells me files can be no larger than 40k. No problem! This one's 30k, and only 99x100 pixels, so that's not a problem, either. Anyone know why it's doing this to me?

By the way, favorite picture of the night of impromtu kitten-picture taking:



As you can see, he's coming out now, and even getting comfortable on top the bed. He's even tentatively venturing out to say hi to my roommate, though only when she's not walking (these 100 year old hardwood floors creak really scarily) or talking (he's not used to other peoples' voices yet, I guess).

Recently I added National Geographic News to my LJ feeds, thinking to inform myself a little bit more about the world from time to time. I'm so glad I did, because I get to find out all sorts of interesting things. For example, did you know that there's a new breed of housecat called the toyger?



Isn't he so velvety? And just so pretty. The article reports, "Toyger creator Judy Sudgen said she hopes the playful pets will inspire more people to care about wild tiger conservation." 

Also, I learned that archaeologists have discovered a dinosaur that burrowed and took care of its young. Not as pretty as the kitty, but still very interesting. My mind has been broadened today.

This new move is freaking Mogget out. He hasn't come out from under the bed on his own in two days. 

Well, I take that back. At night, when the scary shadows are lessened by the darkness, he will come out if the bedroom door is closed. I'm keeping the litter box and the cat food in my room for now, because he's so scared of the ceiling fan in the dining room that he claws me to get away (which promptly reminded me to trip his claws!).

So, for your amusement, a record of the move, from the cat's point of view. Well, from my POV looking ON the cats, because the idea of a cat-cam, while funny, is kind of impractical.

Day 1: Imagine two cats surrounded by boxes, but none of it unpacked because the furniture hadn't arrived yet.  The cat carrier was a sanctuary they refused to leave:



Well, technically that's not true. I took him out of the crate when I first got to the house, thinking that the living room would be a good first room to get them used to, but Mogget went promptly under the couch, which is just high enough for him to get under, and then he gets stuck. So I took him back into my bedroom, and that's when he wouldn't come out of the cat carrier--nothing to run under. I slept on an air mattress the first night, so no bed to hide under yet.


Day 2: After the furniture is moved in, Tildrum decides to venture out into the other rooms of the house, though to get through the dining room he has an elaborate routine of slinking quickly across the dining room to the table and crossing the room under the table to avoid the scary ceiling fan. 

Apparently every room in this house has scary things on the ceiling. 



(My bedroom has a ceiling fixture that doesn't work, and the lamp casts strange shadows across the ceiling from the fixture, which also freaks them out. Both the apartments they lived with me in before didn't have anything hanging from the ceiling--you had to plug in lamps to the outlets tied to the switches, except for the dining room, which just had a light, not a ceiling fan. Not sure what's so scary, but there it is.)

Then he happily plays in the living room, hanging out on the couch for hours, even purring for my roommates. Mogget, however, trades the cat crate 




... for the safe place under the bed. Even when I move it, which makes for an interesting room-rearrangement scenario.


Day 3: Tildrum is still making friends, and not quite as freaked out by the ceiling fan, though he still slinks under the table half the time. He's ventured down to the basement with me several times (this is a good thing, because that's where the little box will end up--hopefully soon). 



Mogget has ventured out of the bedroom once or twice, but at any noise bolts right back under the bed.



Where he keeps constant vigilance from his place of safety.

Evening of Day 3: Tildrum rests on my legs as I write this, twitching in his dreamy sleep--his habit when he was a little kitten, and he often does it still when I've been gone for the weekend or he feels a little out of sorts. Kind of hard to let him stay there too long, because my legs fall asleep, but I'm glad to offer him a little comfort in a big change like this. Here's a picture from earlier this afternoon, of Tildrum in a similar situation--comfortable to nap on top of the bed:







Mogget is still under the bed.

I brought the new toy to work. :D

Pictures behind the cut. There's no real guessing involved--I'm sure you can figure out what the objects are--but I thought you'd get a kick out of them. One of the objects is from egg_fu. Can you guess which one? 

Tildrum:



...and Mogget: