August 16

The Five Favorite Things is brought to you by the letters C, A, and T. We’re not sure what’s wrong with us exactly, but one day this week we went to a Humane Society store front at the mall. We thought we could handle it. We couldn’t have been more wrong. There was a whole passel of kittens racing around. Now we’ve spent the rest of the week pining for little gray tabbies who bat at your fingers with their giant paddle sized feet, and lazy black ones who peep at you with their little kitten voices when you make kissing noises at the glass. Mark our words, this will not end well. Here are five funny things about cats that kept us giggling and

doesn’t he look thrilled?

1. Deep sea kitties. The engine of a tuna boat exploded near Portland, OR sending the owners into the ocean. Fortunately, there was another boat nearby. Unfortunately, they jumped into the ocean leaving their two cats on the boat. We’re trying really hard not to think too unkindly about these people. After all it was a life for death situation, and we’re sure everyone was quite frantic, and it was difficult to think clearly. Still, we’d like it noted it’s not OK to leave your animal on a sinking boat. Things do end well, so don’t call PETA just yet. Once in the safety of the rescue boat, the owners saw both their cats, Topaz and Jasper, on the bow of the boat. We’re sure they wore matching expression that said in a distinctly feline way, “What the f**k?” Both cats jumped into the ocean and successfully swam the hundred yards to the rescue vessel. Once safely on shore, we suspect there was shunning from those cats no matter how many apologies were offered. Cats are epic grudge holders.

2. “New” kitty. There’s a new animal out there. Well, actually, it’s not a new animal just a smaller version of the one that was already out there. Meet the olinguito. It’s a smaller version of the olingo. There was one in the zoo here in the US and the poor thing was shuttled all over the place to other zoos where they were trying to get her knocked up. She refused. As it turns out, she wasn’t discerning, she simply prefered animals of her own species. Seems fair. Heck, she could have been a total tramp if you got her in there with a hot little olinguito of the male persuasion. They are described as, “a fuzz ball…kind of a cross between a teddy bear and a house cat.” You see where we’re going with this, don’t you? As soon as we get back from South America we’ll introduce you to our new “cat.”

3. Cat scientists. Those fabulous Brits have a database of British Felines. For the first time in history, cat hair helped convict a criminal. We knew there had to be a use for the stuff. Just like human hair the DNA of cat hair can be traced back to a very specific animal. The moral we’re taking away from this is not to molest the cat or nuzzle his belly just before you head of to manslaughter someone.

4. Kitties who can eat you. There’s been another mountain lion sighting in our area. Amylynn always gets super excited when ones of these shy kitties wanders out into the public. She’s never been lucky enough to see one herself, but if you ever meet My Honey you should ask him about his encounter. In this latest incident some hikers got totally freaked out when they felt like a mountain lion was threatening them. We think the kitty was just curious. We’d really like to touch a mountain lion, but the odds of us hiking in order to find one are slim to none. Shame really.

5. Glow in the dark. They make glow in the dark bunnies. They do this by combining rabbit DNA with jelly fish. We’ve seen enough bad sci fi movies that we know this could have gone horribly, horribly wrong. If those scientists have any brain at all they had to have been extremely nervous they first time they tried that scheme. Now that there are not in fact bunnies with too many legs or fuzzy jelly fish, we’d really like to try that with a kitty. How cute would a flourescent kitten be? Off the cute scale, that’s how cute. You could use them as night lights when you get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. They never let you go to the bathroom alone anyway.