As El Supremo is not around, do you think we can risk a few silly moggy pictures again? This one combines an unhistorical moggy and a quote from the Bible.
Temperance Virgo Vestalis Maxima
Posts : 6895 Join date : 2011-12-30 Location : UK
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Fri Feb 22, 2013 6:55 am
I don't think we've had this picture: it's a coffin for a mummified cat. I like its round head/face - another Egyptian cat image which reminds me of a British Blue.
ferval Censura
Posts : 2602 Join date : 2011-12-27
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Fri Feb 22, 2013 8:43 am
Did you see the story about the man who found an odd shaped bundle in his attic and it turned out to be a mummified cat.
Rather spindly this one, it must be a Katie Kat.
Priscilla Censura
Posts : 2771 Join date : 2012-01-16
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Fri Feb 22, 2013 10:12 am
No one had better say that with the mouse away the cats can play.
Islanddawn Censura
Posts : 2163 Join date : 2012-01-05 Location : Greece
A Roman brick from Britain, complete with cat paw prints. There must have been quite a few other bricks that the cat walked across, whilst they lay wet and ready for the kiln, that day. But oddly, this particular one has been discovered at Fort Vancouver, USA.
Something I've only just discovered, even after all these years of living here (shame), is that Greece has it's own particular breed of cat named the Aegean, where it is native. Unlike most other cat breeds it is a variety that has developed naturally over time, rather than as a consequence of deliberate interference by humans.
Posts : 2163 Join date : 2012-01-05 Location : Greece
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Wed Aug 28, 2013 2:54 am
Black cat auditions, Hollywood 1961
Priscilla Censura
Posts : 2771 Join date : 2012-01-16
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Wed Aug 28, 2013 3:08 am
I think the regal one sitting up straight and no tight leash with the Queen mit her handbag is best.... surely not a corgi in drag, is it?
Islanddawn Censura
Posts : 2163 Join date : 2012-01-05 Location : Greece
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Wed Aug 28, 2013 3:46 am
Nah, the legs are too long! lol
Temperance Virgo Vestalis Maxima
Posts : 6895 Join date : 2011-12-30 Location : UK
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Wed Aug 28, 2013 5:39 am
Priscilla wrote:
I think the regal one sitting up straight and no tight leash with the Queen mit her handbag is best.... surely not a corgi in drag, is it?
Doesn't that lady look just like Her Madge, in younger, happier days?
Wonderful picture. The moggies are all remarkably sedate and well-behaved. Perhaps the one being hauled off (by its male owner, to the left) tried - unsuccessfully - to start a scrap.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he’s a good Cat.
Lovely poem Temp
Of course, my two don't beiieve in God .... but then they already know they're both Goddesses!
By the way: When I mentioned recently on another thread that my cats had caught an asp, you asked if I had a cat-flap. No thankfully not, at least not into the house. My cats don't usually come into the house proper: they're more like farm cats, very independent and not overly affectionate especially with strangers or guests. Their principal job, which they do very well, is to catch and dispatch unwanted rodents. They do always have access direct from the outside into the cellar where they have an old sofa next to the heating system and it's here that they sleep all year round, even in the harshest depths of winter. So as I say, thankfully they do not come into the house with their little presents, whether still alive or dead.
I do however have some friends near here who have a rather elderly cat, Dibbles, that suffered a stroke several years ago. Dibbles is still slightly paralysed on one side and has largely lost her sense of balance, but she still gamely totters about in her lopsided way. And she still insists on dragging into the house, through the cat-flap, live adders - big ones too - which she then leaves hissing and writhing on the living room floor! Miraculously she's never been bitten back (or maybe she's become immune, if that's possible) probably because she never plays with them ... she just leaves them as a gift for someone else to deal with .... and I can tell you they do take quite a bit of "dealing with"!
I'm not at all keen on snakes (just a slight under-statement!) and so frankly I'd be horrified if my two did anything like that.
I'm sure Jeoffry (or indeed Bosworth) would respect their opinions, MM, and would not try to convert them... (No doubt they would beat him up if he tried. )
Cats were considered heretical creatures according to an article by Irina Metzler (Heretical Cats: Animal Symbolism in Religious Discourse):
Heretical religious groups, such as the Cathars and Waldensians, were accused by Catholic churchmen of associating and even worshipping cats. When the Templars were put on trial in the early fourteenth-century, one of the accusations against them was allowing cats to be part of the services and even praying to the cats. Witches too, were said to be able to shape-shift into cats, which led to Pope Innocent VIII declaring in 1484 that “the cat was the devil’s favourite animal and idol of all witches.”
Interestingly, medieval Muslims favoured cats - seems the Prophet himself had been a cat-lover:
Moreover, medieval Muslims were very fond of cats. A few accounts from early Islam suggest that the Prophet Muhammad and other figures liked cats and treated them well. Perhaps the cleanliness of cats was highly appealing to Muslims. In medieval Middle Eastern cities you could even find charities that took care of streets cats. One European pilgrim who traveled to the Middle East even noted that among the differences between Muslims and Christians was that “They like cats, while we like dogs.”
I very much doubt that my cat would spraggle upon waggle on command, whatever that means, she will do nothing on command unless there's something, usually an Aldi's cat stick, in it for her. In fact I suspect that cats have domesticated us rather than the other way round. I read somewhere that cats, in the wild, rarely meow, it's something they've learned to do when issuing their commands to us, disguised as pleas.
Meles meles Censura
Posts : 5084 Join date : 2011-12-31 Location : Pyrénées-Orientales, France
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Wed Jan 08, 2014 12:15 am
I think there's a lot of truth in that ferval .... my two are generally silent when they're doing things either on their own or together (they're mother and daughter). They rarely meeow to the dog, since he isn't going to give them anything, and they never meeow to each other, except when play fighting or when one of them has caught something: then they make a very distinctive sound which I guess is either, "come here I've got us some food", or "whay hey! aren't I clever". They are only really vocal when I'm around and they want something from me whether it's food or just attention. So who is really in command?
Temperance Virgo Vestalis Maxima
Posts : 6895 Join date : 2011-12-30 Location : UK
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Wed Jan 08, 2014 1:24 am
ferval wrote:
I very much doubt that my cat would spraggle upon waggle on command, whatever that means, she will do nothing on command unless there's something, usually an Aldi's cat stick, in it for her. In fact I suspect that cats have domesticated us rather than the other way round. I read somewhere that cats, in the wild, rarely meow, it's something they've learned to do when issuing their commands to us, disguised as pleas.
No one seems to know what "spraggle upon waggle" means; but it is a lovely expression.
Cats don't love us at all, and we are fooling ourselves if we think they do: we are just meal tickets. Didn't the Horizon programme, The Secret Life of Cats, prove that? You posted the link to the sequel of Secret Life, ferval, which looked at this question, but the video unfortunately "doesn't exist" any more. I seem to remember the programme's researchers concluded that dogs really are devoted to their owners, whereas cats - even the best of them - think we are all idiots.
Is owning a serial killer pet really a moral dilemma for some people? (Even the saintly Jeoffry was a mouse-murderer, despite Smart's belief that his pet only tortured his victims before dispatching them just to give them a fair chance of escape.) According to this Guardian article some folk do worry:
Last edited by Temperance on Sat Jan 11, 2014 8:45 pm; edited 1 time in total
ferval Censura
Posts : 2602 Join date : 2011-12-27
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Wed Jan 08, 2014 2:09 am
That one is a bit of a moral maze if I'm honest. I dutifully hang up food for the birds, which keeps the local moggies amused, but I do so where the hooded claws can't get at them. My homicidal companion isn't as effective as she used to be, I've only had one very small mouse brought home in almost a year and since it appeared unharmed I was able to rescue and liberate it.
Islanddawn Censura
Posts : 2163 Join date : 2012-01-05 Location : Greece
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Wed Jan 08, 2014 3:04 am
A serial killer pet? Is that the new pc term for the perfectly natural behaviour of a carnivore? Dogs are also, and can quickly revert to hunting and killing given half the chance. In Australia the farmers around our town were always complaining about people who didn't keep their dogs locked in their yards, as packs of 'town' dogs on the loose would raid farms at night and have a wow of a time killing sheep, lambs and calfs, not necessarily to eat but just for the fun of it.
nordmann Nobiles Barbariæ
Posts : 7223 Join date : 2011-12-26
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Fri Jan 10, 2014 9:39 am
When cats can be convinced to abide by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules then their differences can be sorted out like gentlemen. I found this footage of Professor Welton and his pugilist pussies from 1894 while checking out some old Edison prints.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3310 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Referring back to the Christian Church in former times having taken a dim view of cats (I apologise if this was mentioned on an earlier variant of Moggy Thread) there is an old Irish poem said to have been written by a monk about his cat Pangur Ban. I heard that Irish children sometimes study this, though not having been to school in Ireland I can't vouchsafe for that fact. Of course if it was written before the Synod of Whitby the monk would have belonged to the old Celtic Church which had some differences to the mainstream Catholic Church. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangur_B%C3%A1n
Temperance Virgo Vestalis Maxima
Posts : 6895 Join date : 2011-12-30 Location : UK
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Sat Jan 11, 2014 8:41 pm
Thank you for that, LiR. I had never heard of Pangur Ban before I read your post: if he has been mentioned on one of the Moggy threads, I have missed it.
Here is Auden's translation of the poem:
Pangur, white Pangur, How happy we are Alone together, scholar and cat Each has his own work to do daily; For you it is hunting, for me study. Your shining eye watches the wall; My feeble eye is fixed on a book. You rejoice, when your claws entrap a mouse; I rejoice when my mind fathoms a problem. Pleased with his own art, neither hinders the other; Thus we live ever without tedium and envy.
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Sat Jan 11, 2014 8:49 pm
Here is the Robin Flower version (my favourite):
The scholar and his cat, Pangur Bán
(from the Irish by Robin Flower)
I and Pangur Ban my cat, 'Tis a like task we are at: Hunting mice is his delight, Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men 'Tis to sit with book and pen; Pangur bears me no ill-will, He too plies his simple skill.
'Tis a merry task to see At our tasks how glad are we, When at home we sit and find Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray In the hero Pangur's way; Oftentimes my keen thought set Takes a meaning in its net.
'Gainst the wall he sets his eye Full and fierce and sharp and sly; 'Gainst the wall of knowledge I All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den, O how glad is Pangur then! O what gladness do I prove When I solve the doubts I love!
So in peace our task we ply, Pangur Ban, my cat, and I; In our arts we find our bliss, I have mine and he has his.
Practice every day has made Pangur perfect in his trade; I get wisdom day and night Turning darkness into light.
Triceratops Censura
Posts : 4377 Join date : 2012-01-05
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Wed Jan 15, 2014 12:26 am
Some feline fury;
Priscilla Censura
Posts : 2771 Join date : 2012-01-16
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:16 am
It seems that the Cats Protection (league) is now Fat Cats Protection as many cutbacks might otherwise dent their £62 million reserved for maintaining staff and plush new offices. 13 centres to close - but not profitable shops and mailing constant demands for bequests and donations for suffering moggies' care in remote places. After this report the bequests might dry up - they have already lost millions invested in Iceland. Ah well, charity begins...... as in Alice Through the Cat Flat.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3310 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Sat Jan 18, 2014 12:29 am
I got my cat from the local branch of Cats Protection two years ago last October. I think that being in a provincial town the branch set-up is more basic. I did have a lady come round to see me at home - to check what the circumstances would be like for the cat I guess. Most of the local Cats Protection people seem to be volunteers. The lady who was the "foster mother" to my cat did have a part-time job but it was not with Cats Protection. I was asked for a £20 donation when I took on the cat - to be fair costs are rising and were 2 years ago and maybe they thought people who would be willing to pay £20 were more likely to be making a genuine commitment to the animal. I'm sure my cat doesn't think I did her a favour by taking her in though - she thinks gosh aren't I lucky to have her ......
Priscilla Censura
Posts : 2771 Join date : 2012-01-16
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Sat Jan 18, 2014 9:52 am
The local branches have to raise most of their own funding - and rely heavily on volunteers - many of whom are a tad fed up with news of £62 mil stashed away to keep the main offices going. Some cat-like tendencies seem to have rubbed off..... as you being a paid up cat saviour, LIR, will appreciate.
ferval Censura
Posts : 2602 Join date : 2011-12-27
Subject: Re: Moggy Thread 3 Mon Jan 20, 2014 4:04 am