Here are my collection of links with cats, specially saved to blog today. And before you run away complaining "Oh no, cat pictures!", take a look on the images and their descriptions. They have cats, of course, but they aren't all just about cats.
The toy above, called Gato, was designed by Israel Chavira. This cat loves honey, probably cause his bee body type. A silly curiosity: the Spanish word "Gato" means cat, chat, Katze, katt, gàtto, and it has the same writing for Portuguese, gato.
ONLY by dealing patiently and kindly with a cat, particularly during its early life, may you develop the sort of animal everyone wants as a companion and pet. Unlike dogs, cats will respond only to kindness. Punish them and they grow surly and spiteful. I speak from rich experience, having bred fully 10,000 cats during the last quarter of a century.
The old idea was that every animal should be punished when caught in a wrongful act, but cats do not understand the meaning of a whipping. They are weak-willed and easily tempted and must, therefore, be guided in paths of righteousness.
Before all those stupid mania of LOLcats (I'm tired of them), there was The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, a comic strip created and illustrated by the cartoonist Aloysius "Gorilla" Koford, according to Adam Koford his grandson. From 1912-1913 he produced a comic strip which was featured in 17 newspapers, including the Philadephia Star-Democrat, the Tampa Telegraph, and the Santa Fe Good-Newser. It featured the exploits of one Meowlin Q. Kitteh (a sort of cat hobo-raconteur) and his young hapless kitten friend, Pip. Adam is sharing those "treasures" (the comics are brilliant), and until now there are 340 images on the Flickr set. BTW, there is something on those comics that reminds me Krazy Kat. (via Will You Look At That)
iCat is a research platform for studying human-robot interaction topics. The robot is 38 cm tall and is equipped with 13 servos that control different parts of the face, such as the eyebrows, eyes, eyelids, mouth and head position. With this setup iCat can generate many different facial expressions - happy, surprise, angry, sad - that are needed to create social human-robot interaction dialogues.
A camera installed in iCat's head can be used for different computer vision capabilities, such as recognizing objects and faces.
The giant Plant Cup designed by Gitta Gschwendtner, was available at YouSayTomayto for $338.00. You can't buy it for now, however, you can take a look on set of pictures Plant Cup, with more demonstrations of its uses by Eek, the grey cat, and Miss Moneypenny. Grey cats rock.
Garfield is damn cool. I always loved this Jim Davis comic, since I was a child. Probably because I always had lived with cats. Cats can be very affectionate in one moment, and totally selfish two minutes after. Seriously? I don't care, they still much better than human beings. If you are not cat lover, the chances of you like and understand Garfiled are low. And ask to somebody else to explain why it's funny won't convince you.
The Garfield Variations presents works of anonymous "artist" who enjoy this character and pay a homage sending images of Garfield variations. Don't expect find some ouvres d'art, just go to have fun. If you think you can make a better Garfield, submit your own creation to the site. (via Yahoo! Picks)
The Canadian artist Jeff de Boeris a Calgary-based multi-media artist with an international reputation for producing some of the world's most original and well-crafted works of art. He creates some incredible metal sculptures, figurative and abstract, suits of armour for cats and mice, armour ties and sword-handled briefcases, rocket lamps and pop culture ray guns. (via Cynical-C)
Posted by Bibi on September 24, 2007 02:16 PM in Cats, Sculpture||
The Whiskas® product line Oh so... was released with a brilliant campaign created by the agency TBWA London. The print ads for Oh so... products are beautifuly clean, composed by coloured infinite backgrounds and origamis of each variety of food: beef, lamb, pork, chicken and fish.
Maybe I'm wrong, since we don't have those new products here, but the TV ads for them don't follow the same line: there are no origamis. Check the TV commercials for Whiskas 'Oh So Fishy', Whiskas 'Oh So Meaty' and the Australian ads for them on the Australian Whiskas site. You will notice that even not using origamis like images of animals, the ads
still been cute, because that's the real strategy to sell cat products to their "owners". You know we aren't the real owners, don't you?
I grew up picturing death as the Grim Reaper, the skeletal figure carrying a large scythe. Even though I studied in catholic schools, I've never believed their philosophy that death is an angel of God and there is a better place after the death. Death is the end. I like the idea of reincarnation but I don't believe in it, but if I did believe in it my friends very well know that I would like to return as a cat.
Ingmar Bergman took me to a new fantastic dimension of death with his masterpiece The Seventh Seal. Since then, the grim reaper, played by Bengt Ekerot in the film, is a nice and strange man that plays chess, that still carries a scythe. In that cause I would be... damned (I can't use any "f word" here), because I'm a terrible chess player. In this new representation of death, the death itself was much more human than the catholic teachings would have it. He/she had intelligence, sense of humor - even if a bit strange - and it was almost understanding of our shortcomings, but still implacable. Remember: the grim reaper cheats and always win.
Neil Gaiman showed me another version of death, as a cool pretty girl with a Gothic style, who everybody loves.His death "looks like rock star Nico in 1968, with the perfect cheekbones and perfect face she has on the cover of her Chelsea Girl album." His death always try to be nice, but keep doing her work. Interesting vision, but I keep the Bergman's portray of death as my favourite.
When Oscar the Cat visits residents of the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, the staff jumps into action -- Oscar can sense within hours when someone is about to die.
In his two years living in Steere's end-stage dementia unit, Oscar has been at the bedside of more than 25 residents shortly before they died, according to Dr. David Dosa of Brown University in Providence.
After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.
The fury grim reaper is the cutest representation I ever seen. That's the perfect image of death for me. However, I don't want he visiting me for now. The story about Oscar the cat was originally published at The New England Journal of Medicine by David M. Dosa, and it's in everywhere now, including Scientific American and BBC (video). My favourite part is:
Making his way back up the hallway, Oscar arrives at Room 313. The door is open, and he proceeds inside. Mrs. K. is resting peacefully in her bed, her breathing steady but shallow. [...]
One hour passes. Oscar waits. A nurse walks into the room to check on her patient. She pauses to note Oscar's presence. Concerned, she hurriedly leaves the room and returns to her desk.[..]
The priest is called to deliver last rites. And still, Oscar has not budged, instead purring and gently nuzzling Mrs. K. A young grandson asks his mother, "What is the cat doing here?" The mother, fighting back tears, tells him, "He is here to help Grandma get to heaven." Thirty minutes later, Mrs. K. takes her last earthly breath.
Oh, what a lazy day is Sunday. I always heard that people love Sunday, but I never was a huge fan of it. It isn't a productive day for me and it goes too fast. On Sundays I have a strange feeling that I'm late for everything, even it been the first day of the week. Strangely, it's also one of those days I don't know what to do and I feel lost if I don't go out. Sunday turned into the day to go to a restaurant, or go to the cinema, or to an exhibition, or if I stay at home, it's the day to read a (whole) book or be hypnotised by TV.
That's why I love internet: you can stay at home in a grey Sunday and do something more productive. Try a new recipe, watch a feature film or a funny animation, play a silly game, answer all those boring e-mails, discover a new book to read, chat with distance friends, search for a new hobby or find some cool stuff to keep your hands busy. And that's my point for this Sunday: keep your hands busy with the following links of papercraft. Check the printer and the scissors and go to them.
The little fellow above is Walter Kitty is a character from the book The Secret Life of Walter Kitty written by Barbara Jean Hicks. It was created by the writer and illustrator Dan Santat, who also illustrated the book and it's perfect for all kind of cat person, even the allergic, in his works. (via Paper Forest)
For the group who prefers dogs, Ben The illustrator released a second series of Speakerdog Paper Toys. The series 2 was created by 21 wonderful illustrators, graphic designers and graffiti artists. Twenty one lovely models to empty your printer cartridges. BTW, the series 1 still available at Ben's site. (via Urban Retro Lifestyle)
The company Furni has a free cardboard cutout toy in limited edition to download: Furni meet Bigchief. The little paper dude is a collaboration between Milan design company BigChief Design and Furni. It's a series limited to 5000 download, so be fast. Try also the BigChief - The original to download.
My last suggestion goes to the excellent French blog Agence eureka. It's full of beautiful vintage images, from film magazines to illustrations of children's books. If you have some time, make a deep search on the archives, where you will also find several of images of vintage toys to print, cut and play. Among those preciosities, the last one was a Maquette d'Epinal, a small circus to fold. But my favourite post of last times is about some lovely Japanese paperdolls, who points to three complete scanned cutout dressing books here, here and here.
It's Friday and it's thirteen! I'm going to make my contributions to Friday Cat Blogging and some horror. I hope you enjoy.
Jaakko, a The Groovy Age of Horror (NSFW) contributer, posted about Biglie Humane (The Human Balls), a fumetti with giant children who likes to play with tiny, compared, humans. Cool, but not the best part. Those kids have a giant kitty that likes to play, as all the other cats. In the place of insects or toys, the cats play with those tiny humans. If you saw any time a cat playing, you are able to imagine the lovely (horror) scenes.
PS.: My condolences for you kitty Jakko. Take care.
Here's a classic Japanese tale dating back to the Hizen daimyo of the Sengoku Era (1568-1615). It presents a Shinto perspective of the spiritual dimension of Nature itself, here depicted in the form of a large cat who not only consumes humans, but then supernaturally changes its form to become that human, after which it interacts and easily deceives everyone it encounters.
My last contribution to this Friday Cat Blogging is the remarkable image of the two angry - and cute - baby snow leopards at the Zoo Berlin, via The Pet Blog. Ten-week old snow leopards Lanak, left, and Askai hiss to photographers during their first appearance in the Berlin Zoo in Germany. And they are right about hiss to the photographers: flashes are annoying.
Via WikiHow I discovered how to make polymer clay cats and the fantastic universe of clay sculpture creatures of Fergus Ray Murray, aka Oolong. Thanks to him, now I'm with an irresistible wish to buy pots clay of clay to to make that clay cat. Maybe make a series of them, and shot my own claymation film. Or a clay dodo!
Many of his clay creations are cats, however, there are lots of other lovely creations: dogs, lizards, beavers, monsters, elephants, dragons, frogs, dinosaurs, turtles, lions, caterpillars, penguins, bats, fishes and other creatures - but no dodos. Murray has a great and remarkable style. Don't wait for the very detailed works of Aardman: his clay creations are simple, almost minimalistic and brilliant.
PS.: it's Friday... that's why there are so many cats in this post. Please, don't blame.
With her magic hands the Russian artist Natsha Fadeeva makes fabulous Handmade Stuffed Animals: cats, dogs, mice, bunnies, chickens, bears, sheep, goats, bears, foxes, pigs, hedgehogs and others. Her fluffy stuffed animals are knitted from mohair and the others are needle-felted. If you felt in love for than and want one, be patience while she works in other projects: sent a message and wait, there is a the long waiting list. Other of her works: watercolors, Cloth dolls and this marvellous Stuffed Dragon, . (via Children's Illustration)
PS.: this cat looks like a crossing between my cats Truffaut and Rousseau: orange and fluffy.
Cat to Exit: a crazy 3D animation feature by an orange cat the stole the fish of table of two old Japanese.
Chimpanzee Washing Cat: a vintage video of a Chimpanzee using a towel to clean a Siamese cat. If that was my Siamese cat, the monkey wouldn't survive so long.
Couscous the Cat: A sleazy cat on the prowl faces a new reality after he has been de-sexed.
From ExpertVillage, Cat Training & Obedience Techniques: twelve short videos with tips to try to train your cat. I watched all and discovered that the techniques just will work better if you start soon with your cat, as a kitty. This means that almost nothing can help me anymore.
NBC's Saturday Night Live: Laser Cats. There are two things that everyone loves, cats and lasers!
The Dirty Birdy: an annoying crazy bird, Purdy, fall in love for a blue cat, Fergurina, and do everything to get her attention. Non-sense funny animation with cartoon violence. (Uploaded by Nicosite)
Red Tango is a neat short animation with two cats dancing. Animation by Scotty Arsenault, to the site of his friend Cynthia Petrovic, that also directed it. BTW, don't miss her beautiful illustrations of cats.
Wiskas Russian Ad: a nice commercial of a cat walking in the snow. Just this.
Friday is allowed to post about cats: funny pictures, animations and other curious stuff. And big pictures of cats, and nothing more, for a huge group of cat lovers. I never planned to post big pictures of cats and nothing else on Fridays, because I'm afraid of some angry reactions of dog's lovers. My plan was use Fridays as an excuse to post some cool stuff of cats as theme.
Per example, cat furniture. Cat Castle - Modular Cat Playground (above) is funnier than most of inside toys for children. I don't have money or even space for something for that huge playgorund, but I'm sure my cats would love to explore it. If you have cats and love that, take a look at their Super Cat Hotel too. (via smidigt.se)
Or furniture with cats, and birds. The fabulous pieces above is a project by Ricardo Casas, Héctor Esrawe, Emiliano Godoy, Cecilia León de la Barra and Óscar Núñez. The blocks filled with cats and birds silhouettes are transformed in shelves, chairs and tables. (via Coisas)
The pieces suggest a continuous play between interaction and representation, where daily use generates a continuously changing story: a cat that reads Italo Calvino, a book filled with coins, a living room where birds come to eat the cake's crumbles.
A long long time ago, before the existence of the Internet as we know it today, there was the Usenet and living in it was the omniscient Oracle. Unfortunately I couldn't experience of this era of innocence, when everything was fantastic and it was much easier to teach people to be kind with each other on-line. At that time, I had no idea of how computers work.
Many years after all this period of happiness, around 1998, I received the answer to all my questions in an email. This wise message was the translation of probably the most brilliant answer that the Internet Oracle gave to the eternal question of the Buttered cat paradox. It was the translation of a question answered in 1993 for The Usenet Oracle:
Oh omnipotent oracle! If there were a single molecule from a forgotten oraclelean 10,000-year-old fart I would not be worthy to inhale it!
Timorously, I ask you:
If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will fall on the floor butter-side down. If a cat is dropped from a window or other high and towering place, it will land on it's feet. But what if you attach a buttered piece of bread, butter-side up to a cat's back and toss them both out the window? Will the cat land on it's feet? Or will the butter splat on the ground?
Mike
And in response, thus spake the Oracle:
Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be able to deduce the obvious result. The laws of butterology demand that the butter must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws of feline aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash it's furry back If the combined construct were to land, nature would have no way to resolve this paradox. Therefore it simply does not fall.
That's right you clever mortal (well, as clever as a mortal can get), you have discovered the secret of antigravity! A buttered cat will, when released, quickly move to a height where the forces of cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium. This equilibrium point can be modified by scraping off some of the butter, providing lift, or removing some of the cat's limbs, allowing descent.
Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this principle to drive their ships while within a planetary system. The loud humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of several hundred tabbies.
The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats manage to eat the bread off their backs they will instantly plummet. Of course the cats will land on their feet, but this usually doesn't do them much good, since right after they make their graceful landing several tons of
red-hot starship and pissed off aliens crash on top of them.
You owe the Oracle two slices of toast and a bag of kitty litter.
That was part of the final answer that I receive. The e-mail I received was more complex. It joined the theory above with the attraction of tomato sauce to white shirts and how space ships work. I'm not contesting the wisdom of the Oracle, I wouldn't do that, but this woman did it. Eliane, aka Elly, says in her post that the Oracle answer is nonsese. How? Well, she start her theory this way:
Let us assume a normal Einsteinian universe (although a Euclidean universe would serve our purposes just as well, the Einsteinian is both cheaper and drinks are readily available.)
To test BFAD, one must procure:
Bread
Butter (margarine, for some reason, will not work)
A cat
A strapping device.
Let us assume that all of these are readily available.
Attach the strapping device to the cat.
See?
No cat.
What has happened? We have run up against an a priori universal law. By a priori, we mean that it takes priority over either the Buttered Bread Principle or the Law of Feline Landings.
What happens is that the instant a strapping device and a cat occupy the same four dimensional space, the cat disappears. Now, this can easily be tested, and has been repeatedly. There are two schools of thought about this phenomenon.
The first holds that a cat and a strapping device are constituted out of different fundamental building blocks. According to this theory, a cat is constituted primarily of superquarks, (called meows by current theorists.) These superquarks demonstrate qualities that are both atomic (constituted as they are of groupings of normal quark particles) and feline (because these quarks exhibit characteristic of "charmed" or "lucky" particles.) Again, according to this theory, strapping materials are fashioned out of non-charmed particles. Bringing the two together causes one or the other to cancel out. One aspect of this theory that has not been sufficiently explained to date is the fact that it is always the cat, not the strapping device, that disappears.
And that's just the beginning. There are two other theories that she explains in her post Around 100 and an unusual CAT Theory BFAD. Scholars of this theory also quote the excellent Uncyclopedia article Murphy's law application for antigravitatory cats. As all the great scientific articles, it has equations, the demonstration of forces (as the image above) and visual demonstrations of the results. A precious article.
Based in all those facts, a cinema student called Kimberly Miner made a short animation film to explored the potential implications of the cat and buttered toast idea theory, but she used jelly in the place of butter - don't try this at home! Her film Perpetual Motion won the Student Academy Awards of 2003. This short animation that clearly demonstrates how effective is theory can be watch at YouTube or bellow.
As a good cat lover and a person that shares an apartment with three cats, I have to make a contribution to Friday Cat Blogging. But don't worry. I won't post any pictures of my cats (Melanie, Rousseau and Truffaut), not today. My contribution is The Private Life of a Cat, a short documentary directed by Alexander Hammid and Maya Deren in 1944.
The silent film is an intimate study of a female cat and the birth and maturation of her five kittens. I found this "little" masterpiece available at Internet Archive while I was searching for Deren's works. It's a bit different of her other visual experiments, but it keeps her touch. You can watch it at Google Video too (22 minutes)
I love cats, and cats in art, that's why I couldn't resist when I saw the series of funny cats of salty dough by the graphic artist Olga Griga. The main part is graphics, the purity of lines, the shapes light like the air, vivid movement characterizes all her works. And exactly another direction of her works as in material, either in the character is in her works of salty dough. She also has works of tapestry and knitting at textile section. BTW, I'm not so sure of how safe is her site, since there are many drawings of nudes. (via i-pets)
Posted by Bibi on January 3, 2007 03:25 AM in Art, Cats, Food, Food||
The American artist Amy Vangsgard makes wonderful works of clay illustration. She works in painted clay relief, using a polymer clay that is baked in the oven, then painted with acrylics. The illustrations are all so beautiful that I couldn't choose just one. This is one of the images of her portfolio that I loved. Cool, isn't? (via Pez)
And since it's Friday... Happy Friday Cat of Clay Illustration Blogging! Yes, I'm insane... but you already know it, no?
Happy Friday Flying Cat Blogging! Sorry, I couldn't lose the joke. Sandrine Pelletier is a Swiss artist that makes fantastic works of embroidery, tapestry and outlandish textiles. Do I need to say that, among her works, the one that I most liked is the Catwalk installation? (via wmmna)
Posted by Bibi on May 12, 2006 06:48 PM in Art, Cats||
I don't like to do this, but I didn't find the page of the original artist. This post has 5 cool (or bizarre?) images of cat women, dog man and dog woman. Yes, I know, sounds very strange, but I think that the image above has a good example of how weird they are. The blogger found the images on this Russian site (NSFW ads there!) where the images are a bit bigger. Does anyone know who is the artist that made those works? (via Unscathed Corpse)
Update: the artist that made the prosthetic make-up is Bill Turpin (at the Ads session) and the pictures were taken by Rankin (Advertising session). Both sites are highly recommended with great works, take a look. (Thanks Marnie and Suzanne for the links!)
Last year I saw many pictures that people call of "jumping cats". There were pictures on everywhere, including Flickr, but nobody was sure about the origin of the photos. Today a friend sent me a link to a photoset on Flickr called airborne cats with 144 pictures of those jumping cats. The user Junku is uploading those since July of 2004 and the last updated was in the end of March. Probably he is the author of most (or all) of those images that are all over the Internet. I just want to know what is the food that he gives to his cats: I want to give a bit of it to mine. (Thanks Taiza!)
PS.: it isn't the food, or not only the food, the reason why they jump is this toy. I need one of it.
written by Barbara Jean Hicks. It was created by the writer and illustrator Dan Santat, who also illustrated the book and it's perfect for all kind of cat person, even the allergic, in his works. (via 
