Angela and Alice dropped me home after bookclub on Wednesday night, and as I got out of the car I heard a cat miaowing and miaowing. I looked around under the bushes and saw a little tabby kitten in considerable distress. I hadn't seen him around before.
I coaxed him out from his hiding-place and picked him up. Poor little thing. He seemed very happy to see me, so I carried him up the path and before I knew it I was taking him into the house. He was far too young to be left out all alone at night.
We went into the laundry and I gave him some of Winnie and Bailey's food, which he devoured with great enthusiasm. It looked as though he hadn't eaten for a while, although he was in very good condition (perhaps a little thin, but his coat was lovely and his paws weren't at all damaged).
After he'd finished his dinner I took him into the living room to show him to Winnie and Bailey, who were both sitting on the sofa looking extremely unimpressed by our new visitor. I decided to put him down after a while, but Bailey immediately jumped down and began stalking him, so I picked him up again. This wasn't going to be easy.
Eventually I decided to put him in the cat basket, and took him with me into my office while I checked Pets on the Net to see if anyone had lost him. No joy. Winnie and Bailey were hovering around, and every time they came near him he hissed and growled - as did they. He was safe in the basket, but he really didn't like them being near him.
After a while it occurred to me that I could let him explore one room, and lock the other cats out so he'd be safe, so I set up food, water and a litter tray in the drawing room and took him in there. He was so sweet. He had a great time exploring, checking out the furniture and looking out of the window, all the while purring like a crazy thing. His purr was bigger than he was!
Every so often he'd come back to me and nuzzle against my velvet coat, and then he'd go back into the basket and curl up and purr and purr and purr. I fell in love instantly.
I decided he should definitely stay the night, and in the morning I'd canvass the neighbours and see if I could find out who he belonged to.
On Thursday I took a bunch of photos of him and then doorknocked in the neighbourhood, looking for his owners. There were lots of kids home for the school holidays - and if anyone knows the location of a wee kitten it's kids - but no-one knew whose he was. So strange. I rang the local vet to see if anyone was looking for him, but no-one was. They suggested I bring him in to see if he was microchipped, so after a fruitless search for his family amongst my neigbours we went for a drive to the vet.
No microchip, but they offered to take care of him until his family came to claim him. After Winnie and Bailey's complete lack of enthusiasm I reluctantly decided this was probably the best option, so I left him in their capable hands. That evening I put his photo and description on Pets on the Net, and called the vet to see if anyone had called about him, but no-one had.
Since then I've called them every day to see how he's doing, and I popped in for a visit yesterday. Yesterday I also went round the neighbourhoood pasting up FOUND - TABBY KITTEN notices. I figure if anyone's lost him they'll be out looking and a poster is a good way to get their attention.
It's so weird. He's the sweetest, friendliest little kitten in the world (the vet reckons he's between 3 and 4 months old). He's in good condition so I don't think he's wandered far from home. He loves people and has obviously been well taken care of so far - so where is his family and why aren't they looking for him?
If he was mine I'd be completely frantic by now. It's Sunday night and he's been away from home since Wednesday at least. Maybe his family's on holiday and they've got a catsitter feeding him and they haven't realised he's missing (although if he's an only cat you would have thought by now they'd have figured out he's not eating his food).
Or maybe there's a flatmate who's supposed to be keeping an eye on him and they just don't care much whether he's around or not. Or maybe (for whatever crazy reason) he was abandoned by his owners near my house and they simply don't want him any more.
Thank God I found him. Imagine how frightened and cold and lonely he'd be if I hadn't.
If I could, I'd adopt him if his owners don't come forward. But that's not really a possibility - Winnie and Bailey would be most put out and it wouldn't be fair on any of them.
Fortunately, he's such a darling that more than one of the vet staff has their eye on him - and I don't think he's going to have any trouble finding a new home.
Technorati tags: found kitten, tabby kitten, lost pets, Pets on the Net, Kelburn Vet, cats, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The sweetest little kitten
Friday, August 08, 2008
Singing puppies to sleep...
OK here's this week's "too cute for words" segment:
Awwwwwwwwwwwww
Technorati tags: puppies, YouTube, singing puppies to sleep, cute, lullaby, baby animal, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Phew! Charlie's OK!
I have a bunch of favourite websites I visit on a regular basis - Daily Kos for American lefty politics, Guardian Unlimited for world news, Public Address for erudite Kiwi discussions - and for fun I occasionally pop over to the very wonderful Dooce, who cracks me up on a regular basis.
It was Dooce who introduced me to my "awwwwwwww" factor favorite website - The Daily Coyote. It's the story of Shreve Stockton, her cat Eli, and the wild coyote Charlie, who was orphaned at the age of 10 days after both his parents were shot for killing sheep. Shreve adopted Charlie, and has been taking photos of him every day since then.
Charlie was born in April '07, and in September '07 Shreve began writing The Daily Coyote, chronicling Charlie's life from the day he came to live with her. For that reason, the blog has a 5-month time-lag - in other words, a post she publishes today actually happened 5 months ago. It's a feature which can have interesting (and unintended) consequences for her readers, especially those new to the blog, who haven't quite figured out the time-difference...
A couple of days ago, Shreve posted that Charlie was very ill with parvo. This is often a fatal disease in canines, and it's incredibly fortunate that Shreve realised immediately that something was wrong, and got help. If she'd waited a couple of days, it would have been too late and he would have died.
Now those of us who've been following Charlie's life for a while understand that there's a time delay, and that Charlie actually got parvo in September of last year - but that didn't help allay everyone's fears. What if Shreve had been inspired last September to begin writing The Daily Coyote as a result of Charlie getting parvo and dying? How would we know? Oh nooooooooooooo!
Some of the blog's more observant readers had figured out that Charlie must still be alive because there's a photo of him, nearly full-grown, romping around in the snow (which was presumably taken some time after September in the winter of 07/08) - but the link to the photo's pretty small, and not that noticeable, so most people didn't figure that one out...
It was fascinating to read the comments on the blog during that time. It was this crazy mixture of "OMG! I hope he gets well soon!" from those who didn't understand the time lag, "OMG! What if he died in September and we never knew!", from those who had got the time lag but hadn't seen the snow picture, and "OMG! Don't you people pay attention! Timelag-snow-picture-he's-ok-stop-freaking-out!", from those who'd figured it all out already.
In the end, Shreve just gave up trying to reassure the freaker-outers and posted this short and to-the-point missive...
Phew! Well that's OK then....
Funny how easy it is to get caught up in the life of someone (human or animal) living on the other side of the world, whom you will never meet, and who will never even know you exist. In a funny way, I find it rather reassuring.
Technorati tags: The Daily Coyote, Shreve Stockton, Charlie, Eli, coyote, wild, pet, cool websites, favourite websites, kewl websites, Daily Kos, Guardian Unlimited, Public Address, Dooce, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Friday, June 15, 2007
File this under "too cute for words"
Ah Connie! You restore my faith in... I don't know, you just restore my faith.
This is 6 year old Connie, singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow on ITV's talent show, Britain's Got Talent. I don't know about the rest of Britain (it's been a while since I lived there), but Connie certainly has talent to burn. The best smile ever and the most amazing voice you'll ever hear from a 6 year old. Stunning.
I bet you can't watch it without getting a little teary - and if you can tear yourself away from Connie for a second, check out the audience while she's singing. I don't think a single one of them took a single breath throughout her whole song. She had them, as they say, in the palm of her hand.
Technorati tags: Connie, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Britain's Got Talent, Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan, Amanda Holden, Ant, Dec, British television show, ITV, talent show, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
LOLCODE - O RLY?
For some reason this piece of LOLCODE just tickled me to pieces:
HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
I HAS A NUMBAR
GIMMEH NUMBAR
IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10 O RLY?
YA RLY
VISIBLE "BIG NUMBER!"
MEBBE IZ VAR LESSER THAN 10 O RLY?
YA RLY
VISIBLE "LITTLE NUMBER!"
NO WAI
VISIBLE "MUST BE 10!"
KTHX
KTHXBYE
I found it in the new LOLCODE wiki, where the LOLgeeks are busy creating and refining the newest and bestest coding language on teh internets, LOLCODE. The suggestion above is from the debate on the possible uses of O RLY?, and was suggested by Risser.
For a word geek such as myself (who also love teh kittehs AND codinz), dis r pretty awsum.Seems I'm not the only one who's fascinated by the development of a whole new language. Here are a bunch of kewl links to LOLCAT stuff, and associated linguistic musings. Plus a couple of gratuitous LOLCATs, because I just can't help myself.
- Cats Can Has Grammar
- Cute Overload
- I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?
- im in mai blog, postin’ bout cats: The Cuteness of Grammatical errors
- im in ur programmz, codin in ur dialect: LOLCode and Feline Dialectology
- LolCat Buildr
- LOLCODE
- LOLCODE T-shirts at CafePress
- LOLnats
- Slate - LOLCATS slideshow
- Wikipedia - Lolcats
Technorati tags: LOLCAT, LOLCODE, kitteh, O RLY?, Cute Overload, I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?, cute, linguistics, language, coding, cat, kitty, kitten, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Knut the polar bear has a BLOG?
Oh yes - he sure does! Gee I'm such a sucker for baby animals...
So they were talking on the news about how Knut the baby polar bear at Berlin Zoo (the one who was abandoned by his mum so the keepers moved in and took care of him instead) has his own blog - so went off and googled it - and here it is!
I came upon it via this page - so that's the one you can start on too - Papi komm´wir wollen spielen... Daddy come play with me...
Come on - you know you want to... there's video...
Too cute!
Technorati tags: Knut, polar bear, baby animal, eisbar, eisbarbaby, Berlin Zoo, video, blog, cute, YouTube.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Otters holding hands
Once in a while you come across something on YouTube that's so unbelievably CUTE, you just have to add it to your blog - in just the same way as hundreds, nay thousands of bloggers are also doing as we speak. I'm sorry! I just had to do it!
Vancouver Aquarium: two sea otters float around, napping, holding hands. Thanks a mill to MissD for linking to this at work today. Bet you can't get through it without melting into a puddle of AWWWWWW - and make sure you watch it to the end - because you don't want to miss the best (and sweetest) bit:
I'm with MissD - can I have two sea otters too please? And is this a form of muskrat love?
UPDATE 07/04/07: They featured this video on the news last night - it was the "cute bit of news so we finish on an upbeat note". How cool is that?
Technorati tags: otter, otters, sea otter, sea otters, Vancouver Aquarium, holding hands, cute, YouTube, Viral Video Chart, viral video.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Kittens and penguins stop traffic on Auckland motorways
Okay - a kitten and a penguin, but you get the general idea...
This is just too cute for words:
This is Lucky, a kitten rescued from the centre of a six-lane motorway in Auckland yesterday. Somehow, the poor pootie had managed to dodge the traffic and get to the centre median strip of the motorway - where he was spotted by many drivers, some of whom called police and the SPCA.
Two motorcycle cops were sent to rescue him - and they actually stopped the traffic in order to get to him. The poor wee kitty had been stuck out on the road for more than an hour by the time he was rescued. He's got a few cuts on his face from where stones flew up, grazed paws and he lost a few claws trying to cling to the road, but apart from that he's doing fine.
AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!
Here's the full story - Police close motorway to rescue kitten - there's a video there too.
Every time I think about it my stomach gets all clenched up in knots thinking how lucky he is to have survived, and how close he came to using up all nine lives in one go, and how incredible it is that he didn't rush out into the traffic again - and how wonderful it is that the police actually stopped the traffic on the whole motorway, just to rescue him. Wow. I love New Zealand!
And then today - it was a penguin's turn to stop traffic!
All day today motorists on the Auckland Harbour Bridge have been calling the motorway monitoring company to tell them that there was a penguin waddling across the bridge - and there was!
It took them all day to find it, but finally this afternoon as they were doing another check of the barrier, it popped its head up and they were able to rescue it. Apparently it walked from the Auckland side, almost to the top of the bridge. Wow. It's not a small bridge, either!
Here's the story - Penguin waddles up motorway and onto Auckland Harbour Bridge. I suspect it was actually a Little Blue Penuin, like the one in the picture above - rather than the slightly less common Emperor Penguin they've used to illustrate the story on the NZ Herald site. Snigger.
Technorati tags: kitten, penguin, Auckland, motorway, police, stop traffic, harbour bridge.
Monday, November 27, 2006
On guinea pigs and the sowing of wild oats
I had a guinea pig when I was a kid. Her name was Ginny and she lived to be nine years old, which is really impressive for a guinea pig. She was orange with a big white stripe right round her middle, and a white blaze down her nose.
Dad built her this amazing run in the garden, so she could play outside on nice days. It was basically a wide, shallow "box" with an open top, made from angle-iron and chicken wire. We'd place the run upside-down over a fresh patch of grass, clover and dandelions, pop Ginny inside, and she'd run around making tunnels through the greenery all day long.
When she was indoors she spent a lot of time running around in the laundry, which was where her cage was. We thought it was a bit mean leaving her cooped up for too long, so we'd regularly take her out of the cage and let her have a bit of an explore. There was usually a pile of straw out in case she needed a refuge, but she was such a confident little thing, she'd happily trot around the laundry for hours, squeaking happily to herself and talking to my mum or anyone else who happened to be in there.
Long before I learned about Pavlovian conditioning in my biology class I taught Ginny to respond to the clicking sound of the garden shears - because this sound meant fresh dandelion leaves and clover! Yummy! She would run around squeaking like crazy until I returned from the garden with her green salad. I can still do a very passable imitation of a hungry guinea pig!
I used to take her with me into the playroom to watch telly, and she'd sit on my shoulder and nibble gently on my ear. If she was especially happy (like when she was being stroked) she'd "purr" with pleasure - which I used to call "bubbling" because that's how it sounded. She was quite amazingly well house-trained. If she was sitting with me, rather than in her cage or somewhere she could go to the loo, she'd give a little wriggle to let me know it was time to "go". She knew that I knew that this was a signal to take her home, which I always did, so there were never any little accidents on the sofa (or my shoulder!). Very impressive!
I loved Ginny. She was my mate and she was well cool. I still have a great fondness for guinea pigs, so you can imagine how much I loved this little news article that one of my colleagues sent round the office today. Classic!
Click on the pic to see a larger version. Just as well the chicken-wire in Ginny's cage was a little bit more robust than in Sooty's!
I love the final paragraph - "He was absolutely shattered. We put him back in his cage and he slept for two days." Heh. Heh hehe hehehehehehe!
Technorati tags: guinea pig, Sooty, Ginny, pets, childhood.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Take me in, take me home
So in the midst of all my crazy political blogging I find I am completely, utterly and inordinately in love with Lonely No More from Clay's new album A Thousand Different Ways. His voice on that song just soars! It's the one that's most often in my head when I wake up in the morning, and likely as not it's stll in my head as I go to sleep at night. I crank it up on the stereo at work when everyone else has gone home, and sing along to my heart's content. It's utterly, utterly gorgeous.
If you can handle the sight of homeless puppies and kittens, there's a beautiful (and very sad) montage up on YouTube called Homeless Pets - Lonely No More - bring a hanky - it made me cry. I hope it encourages someone to adopt a homeless pet - and maybe buy a Clay CD while they are at it! Heh. Here it is....
And here are the lyrics:
Lonely No More
From the CD A Thousand Different Ways by Clay Aiken, 2006
Written by Andreas Carlsson, Samuel Waermo, Mimmi Waermo and Clay Aiken
Produced by Andreas Carlsson and Samuel Waermo
Another dream, another day
I've seen too many fade away
So if you wonder how to make it right
Give me everything, everything tonight
'cause I don't want to be lonely no more
I don't want to feel empty no more
Only you could unbreak this heartache I've carried around
Don't want to be lonely no more, no more
Take me in, take me home
I can't stand to be alone
Help me paint the picture of my life
Don't you disappear and leave me here tonight
'cause I don't want to be lonely no more
I don't want to feel empty no more
Only you could unbreak this heartache I've carried around
Don't want to be lonely no more, no more
Can't make no sense of life
No matter how I've tried
'cause something's missing in my heart
Tonight
I don't want to be lonely no more
I don't want to feel empty no more
Only you could unbreak this heartache I've carried around
Don't want to be lonely no more, no more
I don't want to be lonely no more
I don't want to feel empty no more
Only you could unbreak this heartache I've carried around
Don't want to be lonely no more, no more
No more
Technorati tags: Clay Aiken, Lonely No More, lyrics, A Thousand Different Ways, homeless pets, YouTube, album, music, new CD.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
A bunch of cool websites
Here are one or two websites I've recently discovered, that I think are pretty cool...
Enjoy!
Cats that look like Hitler - heh. Heh heh heh. Yup, this website is exactly what it sounds like - an ever-increasing collection of kitties who have at least a passing resemblance to Adolf. Does your cat (or, rather, kitler) have a tiny little toothbrush moustache going on? Better get down to Cats that look like Hitler and post a piccy!
There's more....
If the earth were a sandwich - remember how when you were a kid you'd imagine digging a giant hole which went right through the earth and ended up on the opposite side of the world? We used to say we'd end up in China. This site is powered by Google Maps and shows you exactly where you would end up if you dug that imaginary hole. I'd pop out in Spain, halfway between Valladolid and Salamanca. Who knew?
Identifont - wow - I cannot believe I've been a web designer for 10 years and only just discovered this site! Identifont allows you to identify pretty much any font by answering a series of multi-choice questions about the styling of the letters. You don't even have to have a whole alphabet - you can simply type in a phrase and the questions will be tailored to the letters you do have. Absolutely brilliant!
Internet Soul Portraits - can you identify these world-famous websites which have been stripped of all text and graphics? All that's left to help you is the layout and the background colours of each. Pretty cool. I spotted Google immediately, but some of the others were quite a challenge.
Pitchfork: Now That's What I Call New Pop! - and how did I ever miss this site? A music site with well-researched, well-written articles - including articles about the music I love and care about - and about which I can also express an intelligent opinion. In other words, in addition to the latest music news and reviews, there's plenty of stuff about music made before the mid-90s. Heh. I discovered this particular article when I was Googling for 80s bands the other day. It gave me inspiration about a few mp3s I need to add to my collection...
Technorati tags: cool websites, Cats that look like Hitler, If the earth were a sandwich, Identifont, Internet Soul Portraits, Pitchfork.
