Kittens!

by hilzoy

Below the fold, to spare those with dialup.

OK: I started to take pictures of my cats, which I have been meaning to do for ages, and I had just gotten a few of Nils when, alas, the battery died. I did have one of Annika, but it's bad: I was sitting outside a few days ago with my camera, hoping that the -- woodchuck? groundhog? foot-long brownish-gray animal who had been squatting on his hind legs under the peach tree, concentrating very hard on eating a very red peach which he was holding in his front paws, would return, when Miss Annika came out from under the stairs, where she had been hiding. I tried to take a picture of her with no success: she only wanted to rub against my foot, and I only wanted to take a picture of her without my foot in it, so we were at cross purposes. Here's the best one I got, though:

Annika is a fraidycat: she is terrified of almost everything, and once, when my parents came to visit, spent the better part of a week hiding behind the dryer. She loves to torment Nils, though: she hides behind doors waiting for him to come by, and swipes him when he does; and she has figured out that she can stand to be closer to him than he can stand to be to her, and so she can e.g. get him off my lap by sitting as close as she dares, and then slowly forcing him onto the floor. When he actually goes for her, however, she runs away at amazing speeds, and hides under the bed. (The cat of ressentiment.)

She is also very, very fluffy.

Here is Nils:

He is looking at me very sternly because he does not seem to like the camera. He suspects the worst. He often does. His baseline assumption, as far as I can tell, is that the world is going to end and he is going to die at any moment; and this has only been slightly ameliorated by ten years of food and stroking and love. He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders: he is responsible for a very large territory, and he takes these responsibilities seriously. (My neighbors in California told me that he used to come by every morning at seven, put his paws against the front door so that he could look inside, make sure everything was just so, and proceed on his way.) It's a lot of responsibility for a small boy, and he feels it deeply. He hates to admit that he needs comfort and stroking (he's like an eleven year old boy in this respect), but he does. A lot.

He has spots, or 'elegant spots', as he thinks, but you can't see them.

They are both rescue cats: I got Nils at five weeks, and Annika at three.

Comments

[hilzoy]

They are, of course, not kittens, except to me.

[Catsy]

Eeeeeee! The cute, it burns!

[hilzoy]

Catsy -- yeah, and you can't even see Miss Annika's tail, which is like a feather boa, only furry, or her little white goatee...

[Jesurgislac]

Oh, they're beautiful.

[lily]

Lovely kitties. since my dog Charlie died, I have no furry ones in my life excpet my neighbor's cat, Hairy, who drinks coffee with me on the porch every morning at seven. I don't know what Hairy does with the rest of his day. He clearly has work somewhere because he is always on his way by seven thirty.

[Jay C.]

KITTENS?
KITTENS??????
KITTENS!!!!!!?????????

NO!
NO!

They are CATS!!!
CATS!!!!

And worse, they are CUTE cats at that!!!!!

Capable, beyond all reason, of eliciting the AWWW! reflex in susceptible humans! AWWW!
AAARRGHH! Curse you, hilzoy. curse you, AARRGHH! AARGH! AAAWWW, AWW, Cute Kitty, Cute....

[Chuchundra]

Chuch loves the kitties

[von]

Very, very cute, Hilzoy.

[rilkefan]

Who are their favorite philosophers?

[xanax]

Who are their favorite philosophers?

Surely hilzoy herself would rank #1 with her gatos don'tcha suppose rilkefan?...after all, to them she's Jesus, Buddha, Allah and the Divine Tunafish Temptress all rolled into one.

[hilzoy]

Actually, rilkefan: they don't have any. At any rate, they profess total bafflement when I try to read instead of stroking them, so I assume that philosophy, like blogging, is lost on them. They are, however, most aptly described by Nietzsche (Annika; see 'the weak'), and Rousseau (for the general hopelessness of it all.) If I had read enough Schopenhauer to say, maybe he would be even more apt.

xanax: ??

[xanax]

If your cats have a favorite philosopher other than you, hilzoy, they are indeed very special animals.

[carpeicthus]

Catblogging, woo: http://flickr.com/photos/carpeicthus/20044725/

[CaseyL]

Adorable! Oh, there is no such thing as "too much cat blogging."

Annika is the spitting image of a late, much beloved cat some friends of mine had. Her name was "Fridge," short for "Refrigerator Door Opening," and she was named that because (as my friend said) they wanted to name her for "something she responded to." Being a floofy cat, she looked heavy even when she wasn't. When she did have a (modest) weight problem, she looked huge.

[bob mcmanus]

Don't know who cat's philosopher would be, tho Schope is a good suggestion. Patron saint might be Sam Clemens, who could make cats laugh.

Puppies got another big possum today. As I studied the abandoned corpse(due to its failure to wriggle or squeal), I considered on animal rights and their value, thinking on the discussion at crooked timber. Do possums have conciousness? But they are very ugly, very stupid, and mighty slow.

So I bagged it and gave the dogs a treat.

[hilzoy]

Back when I had dogs, the various possums who lived near me took to crossing my yard on the telephone wire. When two met, trying to go in opposite directions at the same time, they would stare at one another, and then one would walk backwards to the nearest pole and step aside. Once there was a traffic jam when two families, with babies, were going in opposite directions. It was amusing.

But when the dogs were out and the possums came strolling along the phone wire, the dogs would bark, and the possums would freeze, and so the dogs would go on barking, and the possums would stay frozen, and who knows -- had I not taken the dogs inside, they might have stayed that way forever. At least, knowing both, I can't imagine that either would have given way.

[bob mcmanus]

And hilzoy, World as Will etc is considered one of the philosopher's books with most literary value, i.e., as philosophy goes it is beautifully written. Tho perhaps not the tightest, and not much obvious ethics. I kinda connected it to Orientalism. The ending passage felt obviously Buddhistic,IIRC and paraphrased:"And as the Will disappears, the World disappears with it, and one is left with reality:Nothing."

I read it during Nietzsche and Kierkeggaard, with obvious relevance. Tho I don't know if K read it. Holbo considers Schope important for Wittgenstein.

[rilkefan]

Flickr has searchable indices of interesting pictures, including kitten pics- e.g. this one.

[nadezhda]

My favorite photo-blogger -- who also happens to do fabulous shots of his kitten -- is obwi's very own commenter, cleek. This is an early "glamour shot" from a couple months back when she just arrived. But she's got lots of different personalities.

And if you like still lifes (fruits, veggies, flowers) and some pretty dramatic insect studies, you should definitely check out his blog. Truly talented.

[cleek]

i am humbled. :)