Sweet Sixteen

Sam JavaHappy birthday to my brother and me!

I don’t know the exact date of our birth, but this is close enough. We were abandoned as kittens, left in a cardboard box in the parking lot of the Calgary zoo. A kindhearted couple found a box with four cats; a mother and three kittens. Two of them were me and my brother, and the third was a black and white kitten. It ran away and the couple let the mother cat go so that she could find the kitten and take care of it. I’ll always wonder what happened to them.

My person fell in love with Java and me from the first moment she saw us at the home of her friend, who’d heard about the kittens from the colleague who found them. He adopted us and took us to his place. My person walked into his home and my brother and I simultaneously jumped up on the back of his sofa, looked at her with a look that said, “We’re wild pouncing kittens so en garde” look, and scampered away.

We have moved across the country three times, and had a lot of adventures. We still sleep every night on either side of our person’s pillow, and I curl my paw possessively around her wrist.

So we have a lot to celebrate, and we’re doing just that, with bonito, catnip, new toys, and TLC.

We hope we’ll be around, celebrating for a few more years to come, so cheers, all!

 

Chasing the ball

Mannschaft

My person and I spent the last few weeks together having some quality Us Time, watching people chase a ball around and around on the screen.

I can really get into this, especially the goal tender part of it. You wait and watch the ball, and when it’s coming toward you, you catch it with unerring skill. I can do that.

My person is really into it too, although I doubt she could do actually do any of that stuff. Not that I’ve ever seen.

But she loves the German team. I was born during a World Cup year, 1998, but it wasn’t until 2002 that we started following the sport, and it’s been a minor obsession ever since.

Back then, we were impressed with the great goal tender Oliver Kahn.

And some of these guys look pretty cat-like. Especially Mesut Özil, who my person likes a lot too. He is very quiet, sort of lurking until just the right moment, and then is pure magic with the way he handles and passes the ball.

This is all stuff that’s basic Cat 101. And the winning goal from Mario Mario Götze – sehr katzenartigen, as our German teacher would say.

I do this sort of thing every day. But if it brings my person and me closer together, then I’m all for it. It should be more often than every four years. We’re already making plans for the 2016 Euro Cup.

 

 

Nice try


Cats recognise their owners’ voices but never evolved to care, says study

Stuff like this always makes me laugh. And there’s probably a study that says that cats don’t laugh.

I think this is my favourite part, “The study concludes by observing that “the behavioural aspect of cats that cause their owners to become attached to them are still undetermined.” I agree with the comment, “Speaking to the animals human companions directly about this, rather than observing the cats in this way, might have been a better study!”

The tiger and the turtle

The TigerNot quite summertime, but people, what a day! Balmy. And my person is up early and out doing things, even though it makes more sense to me to stay put and experience Mindfulness, and staying put is a major part of mindfulness, tip from me to you.

 

But I get to hear about her adventures when she gets back. First of all, it’s time for the Boules Roses in The Village, and who’s there but a great trad group, and this guy, who is doing some wicked street painting.

 

As soon as he realizes my person’s taking pictures of him, he turns around and says, “Oh, you want The Tiger”, and does a very credible cheesecake pose. Obviously a multi-facted artiste. And of course we want the tiger. Reading my mind.

 

Turtle

Here is some of what he’s painting. This is for Tourism Toronto. My person says that she grew up in Toronto and never once saw a sea turtle, but Toronto’s changed.

 

Ste-Catherine is looking, dare I say it, quite gay. Everybody’s out eating ice cream, carrying groceries home, and walking small dogs. It’s bustling but laid back. And soon it will be time for the fireworks, when my brother and I hide under the bed, but my person seems to enjoy them.

 

My person said she noticed that there is now a For Sale sign up at the neighbour’s house. I feel a bit concerned. Is he being deported back to his country?

 

 

Boules RosesThen my person ran into Genevieve, our beloved petsitter, and the dynamo behind Adoptez Un Chat Errant.

 

We wanted to know how the garage sale went, and Genevieve said she cleared about 5K. Well done and well deserved. I hope it goes a long way to helping with her costs. I haven’t forgotten that my brother, and little sister and my mom and I were abandoned in a cardboard box in the parking lot of the Calgary zoo, so we give heartfelt thanks to people kind enough to do the right thing by us.

 

And now, we’re having our first barbecue of the season. Chill and be well, all.

Much of a muchness

This is mine, thank you very much!

So much to do, and so little time. Isn’t that always the way!

First of all, apologies to people who’ve written me to ask if everything’s okay because I haven’t posted in a few weeks. I want to assure you that everything’s as right as rain, which there’s been no shortage of.
But it has been simply mad here, with helping my person. First of all, we got our garden planted, and it’s lovely. There’s even a new catnip plant, which Java and I licked down to a bare nub in a matter of minutes, so it’s sitting on a windowsill, recuperating. That was some good stuff, man.

I’ve been helping my person get ready for a few big gigs she had. The first was http://www.c2mtl.com/, “a business conference somewhere between genius and insanity”, and I can tell you that if there’s anybody that’s suited for this, it’s my person. She’s wicked creative.

She also did a Design Thinking workshop over a couple of days in-house where she works. So I really had to get up at all hours to give her a hand, paw, whatever, by laying my comforting furry cheek on her wrist as she did whatever the heck she does on the computer.

To me, none of this makes any sense, but I’ve made my peace with the world of humans, and their strange ways quite a while ago.

The silver lining is that after my person got up early and bolted out of the house after gulping espresso, we got visits from our beloved pet-sitter, Genevieve, who is the force behind Un Chat Errant.

We love Genevieve, even though I get a bit stressed, because Genevieve = my person goes away. This wasn’t the case this time, so that’s something I have to sort out, which means I have to sleep on it.

Anyway, I hope that this weekend people give with their hearts and their wallets at the garage sale, because Genevieve is an angel. And she’s not just our angel.

Garage sale for Adoptez un Chat Errant

Ain’t misbehavin’

I know you’re thinking, so, Sam, spring has sprung and you must want to get out and shake the litter off your paws and roam the ‘hood. But I’ve always been a homebody. Not because I don’t have great intellectual curiosity, but because I know that there’s no place like home. Bon fin de semaine, y’alls.