Category: Pets and other friends

Cat Answers (In Translation)

Human: *Wakes up, listens* “Cat, what are you doing?”

Cat: “Cat things.”

Cat: “Why do you ask?”

Cat: “Nothing. No Reason. I never laid a claw on that rug, I mean…meow?”

Cat: “Screw you thumb-monkey!”

Cat: “I am doing the traditional dance of my people and you’re oppressing me!”

Cat: *ominous silence*

Cat: “If I tell you I’m going to have to kill you. Do you still want to know?”

Cat: “Whose asking, copper?”

Cat: “I’m afraid fluffy is not at home right now, if you’d like to leave a message please fuck off after the ‘meow.'”

Cat: “Teaching this bat how to sing.”

Cat: “Have you ever really looked at your jingle ball?”

Cat: “Duuuuuude, I totally found the catnip.” *giggles*

Cat: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

Farewell Princess

Last night a grand dame of the cat world left us. Princess was the cat of my friend Neil Gaiman. She was a once-wild, wonderful, fierce, old lady with a mean streak a mile wide and fur like white silk. She sent more than one person to the hospital, and spilled my blood on at least one memorable occasion. She was beautiful and tough and more than half a creature of faery. She was also my friend—I visited her nearly daily while borrowing Neil’s running paths—and I loved her dearly. I will miss her, as I know Neil will, along with a whole lot of other people. She touched many lives in her twenty-two-plus years. Because I haven’t the heart for words right now, here are some of my favorite pictures of her (a few have captions because they insisted on it, but most don’t):

This is the very first picture I ever took of her in January of 2011

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She loved to drink out of the tap, and insisted that the humans oblige her

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She wasn’t often cuddly, but was very fierce about it when she was

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This is my favorite shot of her

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Because some pictures must be shared

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She started drinking out of my glass when she was too tired to go down to the sink

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Simply beautiful

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She was so fierce

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Pretty sure she was trying to figure out how she’d reach the gas pedal

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With her long time housemate Coconut

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Sleeping in the library

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Claiming me for her own

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And this is the last picture I took of her—napping on my lap shortly before leaving us

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Goodbye Princess, you had a hell of run

 

That’s Snow Dragon, It’s a Madcap Adventure!

Matt Kuchta and I have a now well established madness to our methods. It starts out with a suggestion for some sort of thing we can build or break or film or make.

For example, Matt says: “Hey, Kelly let’s build a white elephant in Neil Gaiman’s backyard.”

The next thing that happens is escalation. I go out to the yard and look around and think: hey, look at that giant mound. Then I come back with: “Screw elephants, let’s make a dragon, a really really big dragon!”

Now in the real world the next thing that happens would be someone talking us down. But here in the Land of Hijinks, the next question is generally: “When can we start?” Or, “Who’s crazy enough to help?” Or, “High speed, time lapse, or stop motion?” Or, “I wonder what sort of pictures we could take with the finished product…”

Then you get things like this:

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Photo: Kelly McCullough

Which looks like this from above (230 feet from nose to tail tip):

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Photo: Kelly McCullough

And like this, with yours truly in the Vallejoesque role of the slave girl being rescued by the heroic barbarian…or something like that:

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Photo Matthew A Kuchta

Or the filmic version of the construction (Video link for those who can’t see the embed):


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Building the Snow Dragon from Matt Kuchta on Vimeo.

So, that’s how things happen here in the Barony of Madcap in the Land of Hijinks.

More of Matt’s marvelous photos of the process can be found at his Flickr set.

With many thank yous to our enablers and volunteers, in this case: Todd Zimmerman, Ethan Zimmerman, Mandy Little, and Laura McCullough. And to Neil Gaiman for supplying the snow and the setting, and to Woodsman Hans for help on the snowblower front.

 

Friday Cat Blogging

Dude, pass the ‘nip.

How about if I pass out insteazzzzzzzzzz…

Why did no one offer us the ‘nip? We are not amused.

You ever get the feeling everyone else is at party you weren’t invited to?

All the time, dude, all the time.

Is my head wet, or is that just you?

 

 

Snow-Motion Science

First, this awesomeness is a thing:

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Now, let me explain. This weekend my friend Kyle Cassidy was in town for the 50th birthday of another friend, the Fabulous Lorraine Garland. Kyle is a fantastic professional photographer and always up for doing cool and silly stuff involving pictures. I’ve been wanting to get him together with my photographer/geologist friend and frequent co-conspiritor Matt Kuchta for ages. I figured this was a perfect time, and since both of them had been hoping to meet at some point too, it was a low risk, low effort plan.

With some back and forth on twitter it was decided to go with high speed video madness rather than straight up photography—Matt and another friend, Todd Zimmerman, both work in my wife’s physics department and have been doing some amazing work with an incredible high-speed video camera that the department bought for the doing of SCIENCE. Kyle’s really liked what he’s seen on that front and wanted to check out the cool toy. Add in another friend, Dill Hero, husband of yet another friend, Joan of Dark—both also up for Fablor’s birthday—some quick thinking, and Castle Gaiman as a backdrop and you get SCIENCE + ART + SILLINESS with Matt and Todd behind the camera, and Kyle, Dill, and me in front of it.

The end result is Snow-Motion Science*


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*Linked for those who can’t see the embedded video.

Cabal Pictures 2010-2011

Cabal was my friend Neil Gaiman’s dog. Cabal was also my friend, and we shared a

lot of adventures over the last few years. He died yesterday. I will miss him dearly.

I took a ton of pictures of Cabal because he was beautiful and a great heart and because

I knew that Neil would be happier on the road if he could see Cabal happy too and that’s

what you do for friends. I’m putting some of my favorites here. This is part one of three.

Part 2 and Part 3