SYNTHESIS CAT

The Queen West Art Crawl put on an amazing fundraiser called SYNTHESIS last Friday, and OH BOY! there was one guest who was getting all my attention!

The gala was held at a beautiful ballet school (think black swan except with feminism and fun instead of psychosis and ultra violence) in Parkdale!  They have a resident feline ballerina who patrols the place to make sure there are no mice to trip up the little dancers.  Unfortunately for the event he had to be quarantined in a separate room, but as we prepared for the guests to arrive, I got a little one-on-one with him, as captured by my friend Eric "Red Hill" Akaoka - literally the best, nicest photographer in the world.  

OH SHEET!  Who's that tiny dancer?

Oh hey guys, it's just me, the little lionette who lives in the ballet school, protecting my charges from evil competitive mommies, rapey Austrian dance instructor dudes and faux lesbianism with Mila Kunis!

Then I got down on all fours (in formal attire! at a professional function!) for a little pat sesh and he was soooo loving!!!  Look at that mamma's boy face!  Purr purr.

Then he remembered he was a working cat, and on the clock!

Back to work!

Cats of New Orleans

I love Toronto, you know?  But there's one city that I love even more, and that's New Orleans!  I've only been once but I'm hoping to go back this year.  It's pretty much the best place that ever happened.  God bless NOLA.

My dear friend Tina recently went to the city that care forgot, and captured some gorgeous NOLA cats for me and you to love looking at!  

This selection of silvery sweet hearts live under the ferry terminal in New Orleans. This front-most one seems to be the leader of the pack.

It's hard out there for a wharf kitty, so it's nice that there's a cat lady/gentleman looking out for them and giving them giant bowls of dry food.  

As one New Orleanean said, "dans la nuit, tout les chats son gris"  Look at the twin loaves on the left!

Hope these guys are doing okay under the wharf.  It seems as though no one looks out for New Orleans, not even for their darling grey strays. 

Orange surprise!

This kitty is all shocked that photographer Margaret Kwan would dare set foot on his property and capture his likeness without an offering for his large urn collection!

On the other hand, this might just be an "I can haz cheezburger?" face.  They're similar expressions.

The Life of a Cat Blogger

I do a lot of staying in! It's just so cozy in my bedroom, the all too familiar sounds of gunfire, sex worker brawls and Parkdale's own "snot rocket" gently wafting in from the street to my ears like so much sea breeze, greeting me as I recline on my bed in a stained nightie, my computer ever-perched on my lap, burning my thighs.

Rising at 12:39 to begin my grueling day of cat blogging and debating all the reality tv shows I watch with my internet friends, I start my days off with a mug of chocolate ice cream, slam two diet cokes (not because i'm dieting but because i like the taste of chemical) and suck back a Podium Blue Large King ("the cheapest smoke off the Reserve!").

Some days I'll make the arduous trek to King's Milk, the convenience store with a cat in it at the end of my driveway, to get high sodium snacks or Podiums.  Sometimes I'll see the store cat, Nabi!  Sometimes I'll see another cat and wonder what it's story is and if it will let me pet it.  I don't have a camera, so I can't share these special cats with you, and I can't prove that I use my legs.  It's true, most days I stay in bed.

After dusk, my shoulders hypoflexin', my legs threatening to go back to their old restlessness syndrome from lack of exercise and vitamins, and my mind, workin' hard (or hardly workin') from til 6 pm, and then it's ME time, baby.

I choose to treat myself by closing my bed room door against the incessant ramblings of my live-in caretaker, holing up with a bag of Cheesies and a Harry Potter Audiobook, then crackin out the paint by numbers 3 Lion kit til all heck breaks loose!  I eventually find myself getting too worked up over Harry being a whiny dumb ass, so I take a couple doctor prescribed vitamins and drift off to sleep at the same time as gettin' my solitaire game up (I'm at a 42 win percentage!).  I wake up suddenly at 4am, covered with angry red wrinkles from my solitaire night terrors and solitaire sleep apnea, and go get some compulsive nocturnal binging in.  Returning to bed I get all anxious about whether I'll get enough sleep for another big work day in bed and negotiate with myself about setting the alarm for 9 minutes later.

Here are some of the paint by numbers I've done in 2011!

Here be the one I'm working on now, you can even see my painting hand in action!

We got a wild one!

Mother-of-Pearl eyes.

                               I hope that love and magic will always surround you.

           Perfect set of haunting eyes and a velveteen nose bewitch Dundas and Lansdowne.

Depicted by my friend Emily.

My fellow cat-whisperer

God Bless the Innanet for connecting me with the inimitable Margaret Kwan, fellow cat-whisperer and Torontophile, whose beautiful blog, thirtyonekm, documents her work, life and inspirations in this fair city.

Lucky for us, Margaret travels Toronto over, making feline friends and snapping pics of her encounters with these beatific beasts.  Wait til you guys get a load of these guys.

So proud!  Margaret caught this guy protecting his Toronto bins as though they contained the Mummy-soul of the late, great King Tutankhamun himself!  I hope I have some little Cat God to protect me when I finally make my journey to the paradisaical underworld.

Am I Rite?

Small Wild Cats Heal Wounds

Dearest readers, I'm sorry I've been remiss in writing.  I am busy, creatively blocked and sadly lacking in Parkdale cat pictures.

Last night I had a dream that a lion cub and mother came into my father's mansion on the hill.  In that instance I was afraid of the cats, but in the following instances these cats are making everything better by existing.

Would that face hurt a soul?

Oh hey guys, it's me, an Andean Mountain Cat.  I'm just clinging to this rocky surface, giving a steady glare to the wild.  I survive on my wits, claws, and fluffy raccoon tail that helps me look bigger to prey (but little do they know I'm very petite)!  And my paws are so fluffed out it's not even funny.

I am the classically glamorous Margay.  Look at the eye-liner!  Eat your heart out, Gaga!

The Pallas' Cat has always been my favorite small wild cat.  They have extremely expressive faces that make them look like they're always saying "who... me???" and the picture above convinces me that the Gods have magic and poetry at their fingertips. 

Two Libyan Cats in Palestine!  Honestly, what can I say here?  These sweeties look like cartoon cats!  Look at the smile and close-set eyes on the left most angel! And look at the expressive paw ("hey!") on the righter one!  If these two sibs can't bring peace to the middle east i don't know what can.

The smallest cat species in the world, weighing between 2.4 and 3.5 pounds, the rusty-spotted cat (i could have thought of a better name) lives in forests, grasslands and rocky areas of India and Sri Lanka.  The rusty-spotted cat has a reputation for being very ferocious and has been known to attack much larger prey. Watch out!

Look at the expression on this beautiful Asiatic Golden Cat!  He's like "take my wife.... please!"

Oh Pampas Cat - you're wild and free like me!!!

Black footed cat, from Southern Africa

I wish the Toronto Government would finally overturn Prop 9 so I could at last get married to this beautiful Pallas Cat!

Thank you so much Amy Egerdeen for inspiring this post and giving me some beautiful subjects to make my day.

Cat Proximity Graph

Swiped from XKCD, a "webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language".

Molson and the Six-Pack Paws.

There's a beautifully special cat that I came across whilst perusing/stalking the neighbourhood cats on Facebook. MOLSON is amazing. Not only is he named after the fine makers of one of my most favorite beverages (Canadian is the best, you snobs!), but he also has another little trait that i love so dearly - polydactylism!

This pretty Parkdale chap is packing a lot of punch in those powerful paws. Six toes never looked so sweet. Let's take a look back at the development of this special sweetie.

Oooh the face that launched a thousand ships.  Love the eyebrows!

Glamor shot!

growing into a little gentleman.  sick paws, bro.

You could tell just from looking at him that Molson would be a literary fellow.  Proud face!

Molson's paws come in handy for holding open his tomes.

"OMG!  Rochester already has a wife and she's living in the attic?!?!? WTF!"

As a book-lover, Molson stands in protest against the lesser medium of TV.  Can't you just imagine him raising his little paws at a protest rally?

Thank you Parkdale Cat Mommy Liang. 

It's a good day.

Filled with love today. Makes me want to march.