Dusty and Tooty where are you?
Two victims of the Southampton cat-napper:
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Kitnapper, surely!
;-)
No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation.
-- Fran Lebowitz
The SOLE purpose of humans on earth is to provide, food, shelter, grooming, warmth, affection, snacks, rubs, scratches, and monetary support of our wills, whims, needs, fancies, lusts, and desires :)
Sybil, you are purrfectly right.
Sybil (2):
I entirely agree.
Sybil and Missy,
So it's nothing to do with having to shift all the topsoil to the seabed, after all?
It gets late early out there.
-- Yogi Berra
Tooty looks more like a guinea pig (not meaning to be offensive). I'd not heard about this, even though I come under the Southampton area for local news.
This used to be a problem some years ago, when fun fur was all the rage. I have a few thoughts on the matter which might sound un-PC if I expressed them, but which could nonetheless explain their disappearance. Cats are very vulnerable to predators of all kinds.
Purrrrrrrrrrrr!
I’ll stare at her with my slanty eyes.
She does not realise as I hypnotise.
She won’t know what’s happening
as I purr.
She is my slave now and in my
power.
I’ll scratch at her door
when she is in bed.
It’s time to get up now.
I want to be fed.
I’ll do her a favour
and sit on her lap.
She won’t want to move then
and I’ll have a nice nap.
If she’s reading the paper,
I know what is best.
I’ll sit in the middle
just as you guessed.
For she exists to worship me.
Let’s get it straight in the hierarchy.
She is a mere human after all,
to be at my mercy
and my beck and call.
Maybe the missing kits are being held ??
Only the fittest survive. The vanquished acknowledge their unworthiness by
placing a classified ad with the ritual phrase "must sell -- best offer,"
and thereafter dwell in infamy, relegated to discussing gas mileage and lawn
food. But if successful, you join the elite sodality that spends hours
unpurifying the dialect of the tribe with arcane talk of bits and bytes, RAMS
and ROMS, hard disks and baud rates. Are you obnoxious, obsessed? It's a
modest price to pay. For you have tapped into the same awesome primal power
that produces credit-card billing errors and lost plane reservations. Hail,
postindustrial warrior, subduer of Bounceoids, pride of the cosmos, keeper of
the silicone creed: Computo, ergo sum. The force is with you -- at 110 volts.
May your RAMS be fruitful and multiply.
-- Curt Suplee, "Smithsonian", 4/83
To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to remain within: that is the question:
Whether 'tis better for a cat to suffer
The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
That Nature rains on those who roam abroad,
Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet,
And so by dozing melt the solid hours
That clog the clock's bright gears with sullen time
And stall the dinner bell. To sit, to stare
Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state
A wish to venture forth without delay,
Then when the portal's opened up, to stand
As if transfixed by doubt. To prowl; to sleep;
To choose not knowing when we may once more
Our readmittance gain: aye, there's the hairball;
For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob,
Or work a lock or slip a window-catch,
And going out and coming in were made
As simple as the breaking of a bowl,
What cat would bear the household's petty plagues,
The cook's well-practiced kicks, the butler's broom,
The infant's careless pokes, the tickled ears,
The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks
That fur is heir to, when, of his own free will,
He might his exodus or entrance make
With a mere mitten? Who would spaniels fear,
Or strays trespassing from a neighbor's yard,
But that the dread of our unheeded cries
And scratches at a barricaded door
No claw can open up, dispels our nerve
And makes us rather bear our humans' faults
Than run away to unguessed miseries?
Thus caution doth make house cats of us all;
And thus the bristling hair of resolution
Is softened up with the pale brush of thought,
And since our choices hinge on weighty things,
We pause upon the threshold of decision.
Please can we have a lot of Alan Coren on the programme tonight? A man of supreme intelligent wit, superb manners, split-second timing.
I only know his radio work and yet I will miss him dreadfully. There is no doubt a radio studio above where he and Linda Smith will be at home, analysing what goes on down here. I wish we could get that on DAB...
Alan Coren's greatest contribution to this world?
Victoria, of course.
Aren't I kind to allow you to live in my house?
Aren't I gracious to grant you the use of my chair?
Aren't I fabulous when I bring you a dead mouse?
Aren't I utterly and totally beyond compare?
And don't you admire the virtues you see
In marvellous, lovely, magnificent
Me --- ow, me-e-e-e-ee-ow, me-ow, me-e-e-ow?
Maybe it's like those bees that disappeared from hives.
R. Whiting (12): Coincidentally there was a Richard Whiting in my class at school...
I just hope that anyone who lives twenty-five miles from that place and happens to encounter a cat they don't know is on-the-ball and gives it shelter, and then gets in touch with the bereaved.
Great thread!
I agree with Sybil, except that she forgot to mention the emptying and refilling of the tray (should they choose to use it).
Love the poetry, btw. Who wrote the Hamlet parody?
Frances, cat-lover, currently putting up (with) a large, smelly, noisy, slavish, can't-use-tray, willy-licking, up-jumping creature.
(Stands by to be vilified)
Also Alan Coren fan.
We had a similar situation over here in Milton Keynes where cats were being poisoned with radiator coolant and the poor things were dropping like flies.
I'd like to get hold of this southampton cat napper, drive him out 25 miles into the countryside and bury him in a shallow grave with a cat scratching post firmly implanted in his rear end!!!
I
Great thread!
I agree with Sybil, except that she forgot to mention the emptying and refilling of the tray (should they choose to use it).
Love the poetry, btw. Who wrote the Hamlet parody?
Frances, cat-lover, currently putting up (with) a large, smelly, noisy, slavish, can't-use-tray, willy-licking, up-jumping creature.
(Stands by to be vilified)
Also Alan Coren fan. Next week's News Quix will be replaced by a tribute.
3rd attempt @ 1328
Sod PC, this selfish scumbag removing or killing cats is the sort of person I want to be in an offshore camp having electrodes strapped to his tentacles every day of his life, for the rest of his worthless existence. But knowing my wishes are unlikely to come true, please can someone identify this individual and shame them on national news.
Is this the level to which PM has descended ?
Give us real news, not crap about missing kids and missing cats.
Sod PC, this selfish scumbag removing or killing cats is the sort of person I want to be in an offshore camp having electrodes strapped to his tentacles every day of his life, for the rest of his worthless existence. But knowing my wishes are unlikely to come true, please can someone identify this individual and shame them on national news.
I am sick to death of selfish cat owners telling me it's my problem that I object to having to clear up their cat's excrement before I can mow my lawn, weed my plants or let children play in the garden.
Listening on PM to the cat owner whose cat had been taken I was appalled that she thought that having her animal's excrement fouling other people's gardens was fine. And then she pointed out that there were deterrents that could be bought to discourage cats from gardens - is she going to buy them for her neighbours? Why should they pay out their money and spend their time deterring animals which other people choose to have.
I wasn't surprised by her comments however because 99% of cat owners show the same shocking arrogance. Dog owners can be prosecuted if they leave their dog's excrement on pavements and other people's gardens - it's about time that cat owners were treated in the same way.
The person who relocated these cats has no doubt been driven to this act by the smug superiority of cat owners who believe that non-cat owners are in the wrong for not wanting disease ridden and stinking cat excrement in their gardens.
I will support the cat-napper wholeheartedly until cat owners start taking responsibility for their own animals' mess. Sadly I expect it to be a long wait.
I am sick to death of selfish cat owners telling me it’s my problem that I object to having to clear up their cat’s excrement before I can mow my lawn, weed my plants or let children play in the garden.
Listening on PM to the cat owner whose cat had been taken I was appalled that she thought that having her animal’s excrement fouling other people’s gardens was fine. And then she pointed out that there were deterrents that could be bought to discourage cats from gardens - is she going to buy them for her neighbours? Why should they pay out their money and spend their time deterring animals which other people choose to have.
I wasn’t surprised by her comments however because 99% of cat owners show the same shocking arrogance. Dog owners can be prosecuted if they leave their dog’s excrement on pavements and other people’s gardens - it’s about time that cat owners were treated in the same way.
The person who relocated these cats has no doubt been driven to this act by the smug superiority of cat owners who believe that non-cat owners are in the wrong for not wanting disease ridden and stinking cat excrement in their gardens.
I will support the cat-napper wholeheartedly until cat owners start taking responsibility for their own animals’ mess. Sadly I expect it to be a long wait.
Windermere Assassin@18
I agree entirely with your general drift...
However, it would surely be wasteful to risk the ruin of any sort of "scratching-post" by insertion into such a person's rear-end.
What, I wonder, would a scratching post have to have done to deserve that?
Instead, I would, with some reluctance and apologies to my own two-wheeler, suggest the offending rump be used as a bicycle-wheel stand...
Every post I have tried to put up today has got 502ed initially. This one went out first at about 2.30 this afternoon.
For the vengeful on this thread, there is a passage in a Robert Heinlein book called *To Sail Beyond The Sunset*, in which the heroine has been told she has to kill someone random, and has said that she would only do this to someone who abandons kittens. It's near the beginning of Chapter 24, and I think you might like the suggestions there.
I was told that there was a ring of people who stole pet cats in Bristol and used them in the 'training' of fighting dogs. For such people I feel that the only appropriate fate woud be that they should be slowly torn to death by hungry pit-bull terriers. Ideally they should be made to watch whilst this is done to others, first, so that they know what to expect and suffer agonising fear as well as physical horror.
I suppose I'm not a very pleasant person, but it seems to me to be what they deserve.
Chris,
There's also a cat in Heinlein's "Door into Summer", one of his good ones.
xx
ed
Ed, Petronius the Arbiter was in the first science fiction book I ever read (if you exclude the bible). Pixel is a mere sequel as far as I am concerned. :-) He lacks gravitas.
Ed, Petronius the Arbiter was in the first science fiction book I ever read (if you exclude the bible). Pixel is a mere sequel as far as I am concerned. :-) He lacks gravitas.