Friday, April 28, 2006

Cat toys


When I first came to live with my human, her husband - the one who loathes cats, remember? - bought me a "welcome" toy. It was more, I suspect, to please her than me.

It cost him about $18, this plastic bowl-like structure in lime green. It rocked about on its round bottom and had a rod sticking out of the flat top, to which was tied a piece of string, at the end of which was a feather.

I was supposed to swat it and go stir-crazy chasing the feather, which would dance as the bowl rocked. Cool enough for amusement, I guess - but it kept me occupied for all of less than half a day. It just collected dust thereafter.

Over the years, with a steady stream of her visitors falling prey to my obvious charms, I was to get a few more cat toys. A fake grey rat, a pink ball with a bell embedded in it...

But my all-time favourite toy [see two samples in picture above] really doesn't cost any money. It is simply a balled- up plastic bag, held in shape by a rubber band. I could play pawball for an hour straight with this thing - and my human's home with its smooth, white floors makes a perfect playing surface.

The ball goes far with each swat and I get my workout. It's like doing the "zooms" with a purpose. [You do know what the "zooms" are, right? It's when we cats just dash madly up and down the longest runway we can find in our homes with no particular object of the chase in mind.]

The crackling sound of the plastic just drives me crazy. It's better than catnip. Hearing the sound of those plastic bags being bunched up is enough to make me drop whatever I'm doing - be it eating, dozing, watching those *&^% birds or just "being". [Sometimes, when I think a pawball session is imminent, it's a false alarm. My human, going about housework, is simply fiddling with these bags to bag up her trash, not make me a pawball. Dang!]

The best play sessions have been the ones where my human joins in. She picks up the ball, tosses it and I go after it. Sometimes we race to get it.

Those days are past now. Am I a fool to hope they will return?

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

My kill, a gift

A sparrow flew into my human's living room through the balcony one day. Stupid bird that it was, it couldn't find the way out.

Such critters should be taken out of the animal kingdom's gene pool, right?

I - *sniff* - became the (self-appointed) hitman.

I watched. I swished my tail excitedly. I voiced my excitement in the series of un-meow-like clicks that all cat-owners know about.

I pounced - and missed - a few times. Then one swat of my right paw got him as he flew low for a second or two. I think I broke his wing, which bled a little. He fluttered along the floor, leaving little bloody marks.

I smacked him down one last time. [You can just picture me doing that, right? Me, the superior, flashing vision of white fur, moving with lightning speed?] I saw the whites of his beady little eyes as the light faded out of them.

No mercy at King Nookie's paws. Mua hah hah hah! I was triumphant.

This would show all of those friends of my human who laugh at me, call me fat, call me spoilt and a poor hunter because I had food fed to me every day. This would show 'em. We never really lose it, our wild side.

Actually, my first thought was to make a gift of my kill to my human. She deserved this tribute.

This wasn't my first kill. I presented her a lizard a few years ago, laying it at my feet, as I sat up very straight and looked up at her for approval. She praised me then, even though she screwed up her face in unmistakeable disgust as she picked it up.

What can I say? Humans just don't quite get it, right?

Anyway, I picked up the sparrow in my mouth and set him down in my food bowl. My human would be bound to see it there, since she cleaned it out every morning before giving me my fresh Science Diet kibble. [I'm smart, I am.]

I watched as she approached the food bowl - and yelped.

She recovered really quickly though, and picked up the bird gingerly with a kitchen towel. She came to me and knelt down, holding the bird in one hand. With her free hand, she stroked me and said soothingly: "Good cat, Nookie! Thank you for the present."

I was bursting with pride.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

A cat called China


This one's for you, China, wherever you may be.

He began life as a bedraggled kitten in the early 90s, scouring the tough streets of Chinatown - hence his name. He was picked up and adopted by a couple who were in the area for dinner one night. The woman, Auntie A, was my human's sister.

The dark grey-brown tabby was brought home to their cosy sixth-floor apartment in Newton, where he grew up to be a really handsome cat. He often looked like he was pursing his lips. Everything about his face was sharp-featured, and he had a long, completely perfect tail [unlike me and most of Singapore's "drain cats", who have a kink].

China was there as the couple did up their home. He was there when they welcomed their first baby. He moved with them when they put up the Newton apartment for rent and went to live in a highrise just off Orchard Road.

Most of us would have heard of horror stories about cats [or pet dogs] who, in a fit of jealousy upon the arrival of a baby, would bite or otherwise hurt the child. Not China. He watched silently - he didn't meow much - with his liquid hazel eyes as the couple grew into their roles as parents.

China never lacked for attention though, despite the new baby being around. He was Family, and much loved for his quiet ways.

And as the couple's little girl grew into a toddler, she would treat China as a miniature horse, or pull his tail. But China never retaliated, the gentleman that he was. He was also popular with the little girl's granddad, who would often bring him dried scallops as snacks. [Hey, they are Cantonese. Of course they always have a stock of these morsels at home for chucking into soups.]

One day, at the ripe old age of 15, China walked out the front door of his 10th floor home into the lift landing ... and never came back. The door to the fire-escape staircase was open that day and he must have gone downstairs that way, or gotten lost in one of the lower floors.

Auntie A was and still is really upset. It has been almost three months and she has stopped hoping he would pad back through their front door.

She checked with the development's security guard-cum-car-washer, who confirmed that he had carried a cat matching China's description to the ground floor after some neighbours had alerted him to a collar-less cat wandering on their floor.

That probably set the stage for China to get lost, Auntie A reckoned, in tears. How was he to find his way home when left in the grounds of the housing estate? He's old, unused to having to fend for himself, though he seemed otherwise healthy. [Fine, so he sometimes limped a bit, but he was old...]

Maybe he knew it was "time"? Some frantic online searches were done into cats and their impending death. It wasn't conclusive, but there is anecdotal evidence that some cats do hide or go away when they think their time has come.

Maybe it was so for China. Rest in peace, ol' boy, if you have gone to play among the Big Catnip In The Sky. [But if you haven't, maybe St Francis of Assisi will bring you home soon to that 10th-floor apartment off Orchard Road. It still is your home.]

Monday, April 17, 2006

Names for pets


Meet Mummy, one of my room-mates. She is so-called because she has borne two little ones. I wonder what she was called before she became a mom??

This brings me to the subject of pet names. I think that pets - cats or dogs - should have names that aren't human names. Call me anal, but it has to be. We are different species.

I always do a double take when I hear of pets that have been given human names like Mary or Wong Kim Cheong. Don't you find that weird?

This is why through history, dogs have commonly been called Rover, Spot, or (less imaginative) names like Blackie, Brownie or Snowy (often used also for rabbits, gerbils, hamsters or guinea pigs also).

My human has heard of someone's cat named Katmandu. Quite creative, huh? My own name, suggested by my human's husband, has never - and I hope never - been used on a human. It incorporates a pun. [See my first post in this blog.]

I was called something else before when I first lived with my male owner, but I don't remember what it was now. When I was rescued by Auntie J, she named me Arkle, after my somewhat spastic meow. I do sound like "Arrr, arrr" though I'm also capable of a full-throated cat's meow, like the best of them.

My human and her husband thought Arkle a dumb name, so began calling me Nookie and after a while, that stuck. I answer to that now.

Her sister had a cat too, a tabby named China, after having been rescued from a Chinatown street. But China is gone now, either lost or dead. More on him in another post soon...

My human's own previous cat - yeah, I wasn't her first - used to be called TC. The name would unfailingly raise the question, "Oh, what does it stand for - Top Cat?", to which my human would put on a deadpan face and reply: "No. It stands for The Cat".

TC, a beautiful persian-tabby mix in silver grey, is dead now. He died at age four of some acute stomach infection that left him bleeding internally. Till today, my human says the vet did wrong by just treating the symptoms - pumping poor TC with antibiotics, putting him on a drip...

What about tests? Why not do some tests to find out why he's so sick, my human asked the vet, to which he confessed he didn't know what he was dealing with, so he "didn't know" which test would be relevant.

This blog has been named Top Cat - what people often thought he was called - in his memory. He really was one.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Dogs



I know that we cats are supposed to be traditional enemies of dogs and all that.

But really, I don't have strong feelings for or against them. My human suspects that it is because I have never had real encounters with dogs and so haven't gotten down to working myself up into a furball over them.

Before I came to live with her - from the time I was born till the time I was nearly a year old - I was living with a bachelor in a highrise on the edge of Marine Parade. I think it was Lagoon View or Laguna Park or something like that. I don't think dogs figured in my life then. Maybe I didn't even know what a dog was.

One day, the guy moved away - just like that. He took away all his things, but I guess I didn't figure in his future plans, whatever they may have been.

I wandered around the lobby of his floor for I-don't-know how long. There were three other flats on that floor, but the families there ignored me. Then a lady by the name of Auntie J came to "rescue" me. She lived in one of the neighbouring blocks and had cats of her own. So I went to live with her. I didn't know then that she wasn't intending to keep me.

Before I knew it, she had found someone from her office - she was a journalist - to take me in. Her colleague, also a journalist, was my human. So that's how I came to live in the East Coast with her and her husband.

They were busy people who worked long hours. They had no other pets - let alone dogs, who, I understand, are wheedling, needy critters who smell after four days without a bath.

My human kept me as an indoor cat, so her front door was shut all the time to stop me running away - not that this was bad, because I came to take their 900-sq-ft apartment as my kingdom, my world.

There used to be a dog living on the top [fourth] floor of the block. Bud, his name was, and he was a collie. His nail would click all the way downstairs from his home upstairs as he went on his daily walk, and then click all the way up after.

I would put my nose at the crack at the foot of my human's front door each time he passed by, so I know exactly how he smelled, even if I didn't know how he looked.

Then came The Day I Went Face To Face with him. The front door was open and my human was at the metal gate, saying "hi" to Bud and his owner. I stood at my human's feet and stared. And stared.

He was a massive blob of brown-and-white long fur and he had a really pointy face softened by the bangs that hung on either side of it. He stared back. He didn't bark and I didn't raise my hackles. Neither of us knew what to do. Maybe it was his first meeting with an un-dog.

Now that I live with Auntie S, I know Lucky and Godbless [that's them in the pictures in this post, Lucky is the black one] as the Animals Who Live Beyond The Door. They hang around Auntie S' living room and even watch TV. They are the welcome party for visitors. They bark when visitors show up, but it's more a welcome bark than a "Keep Away" one.

They seem to get along with Auntie S' cats, which holds out hope for cat-dog peace. That's why I think the movie The Truth About Cats And Dogs is unnecessarily pessimistic.

I really don't mind them, these un-cats.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

My roomies



Time for a little information about some of my roomies:

  • Mummy: She's so-named because two of the cats in this room are her babies. I haven't yet found out which ones!


  • Cutie: She is the pretty grey cat who is really affectionate, even with humans she's just met. [That's her in the top picture.] She often parks her petite frame on the second rung of the ladder of the bunk bed. Quite a vantage position, really, because that puts her more in the line of sight of the humans who come into the room, unlike the rest of us who hang out at floor level.

  • Candy: She's the tortoiseshell cat, mostly white, with blobs of black and tan. She likes hanging out on the ledge just facing the garden. [That's her in the bottom picture.]


  • Buster: He's the silent, the El Moroso. He looks old, and sits there staring most of the time, a bit of his tongue sticking out of his lip. He came back from the vet this week because he had a bad tooth, which infected his gums. When I first moved in, he looked unkempt. Auntie S said he wasn't grooming himself any more, which puzzled me. Since he got back from the vet, he has looked cleaner, because Auntie S cleaned him up some. But he still doesn't bother to groom himself. It's like he's given up on life. I hope to talk to him soon.


  • Name unknown [but I'll find out soon]: The room's biggest ginger cat. I think he might be bigger than I am. [Ulp.]


  • Name unknown: A Siamese, also rather heftily built. This fella likes to hang out by the bedroom door. Maybe he's planning to bolt the moment someone comes through the door!


  • Name unknown: Black-and-white tom, another of the room's big cats. He looks like he's wearing a super-hero's cape and headpiece in black, heh!

    There are also Animals Who Live Beyond The Door, who we boarders in the room seldom see. These are Auntie S' own pets. I hear them, and smell them. From overhearing what Auntie S told my human during one of her visits, I can fathom they are [and this list is not exhaustive]:

  • Leo: Auntie S' prize-winning tabby. All the ribbons pinned on one of the cupboards in Auntie S' living room are Leo's. He's a silver-grey tabby with beautiful stripes and the most bewitching eyes.


  • Godbless: She's the brown mongrel.


  • Lucky: That's the black mongrel.


  • Godbless and Lucky are two really sunny dogs. They come up and greet visitors with smiling faces and wagging tails. I guess this means they aren't guard dogs!

    Monday, April 10, 2006

    I was a cat with a manicure


    For a short period late last year till earlier this year, all my front claws were coloured green and red - in keeping with the Christmas season.

    Don't laugh. I've had enough laughter at my expense already, from my human as well as her friends who came to visit. It seemed highly amusing to them to see my coloured claws.

    No nail polish was involved. The "manicure", courtesy of Softpaws, actually involves my wearing vinyl nail caps, all in the name of limiting my destruction of my human's furniture. [You can just make out the green tips on my front paws in the picture above. The nail caps were red with green tips.]

    My human learned about Softpaws online and ordered two sets - one in green and red for the Christmas season and the other in her favourite colour, purple - on discovering that I had begun to destroy her new furniture. [As you may figure out, they didn't quite work, which is why she still ended having to give me up to Auntie S.]

    After the Softpaws arrived in the mail, she eagerly tore open the packaging, read the instructions, and then summoned me. OK, I fell for it. She shook my can of snacks and I came running. Call me a sucker.

    She held me down, trimmed each of my front claws slightly, stopping to give me a crunchy snack every few minutes. Then I watched as she put glue - yes, glue - into each nail cap before gingerly attaching it to each of my 10 front claws. My rear claws were left untouched because I don't use them for destroying her furniture.

    When she was done with all 10, she gave me a few more of those crunchy snacks after checking that the glue had taken hold.

    It felt weird and smelled weirder. I took a few tentative steps, treading gingerly, all the while feeling something on my claws that weren't part of my anatomy.

    I licked them and then used my teeth to try yanking them off, but it was no use. It was something I was going to have to get used to, I guess.

    I did get used to them. They weren't supposed to stop me doing my usual cat thing, like scrabbling about in the litter tray, or even stropping. The difference was that when I scratched any of her furniture, it didn't leave any puncture marks.

    It seemed to be a solution, right? Well, not completely.

    She was supposed to have checked my claws periodically to see if any of the nail caps needed replacing - and they would need replacing, either because I had succeeded in biting them off, or because she hadn't applied enough glue, or simply because my claws had grown out. When claw falls, nail cap falls with it.

    So yes, this meant that if she weren't vigilant enough, I could still do damage with the odd exposed claw here and there. This is why, although Softpaws is a good product, it wasn't a water-tight solution.

    Since moving in with Auntie S, my nails have grown out and all the nail caps have fallen off. Sigh. If I had a choice between wearing those ridiculous coloured nail caps [and staying on with my human] and doing without them while staying with these 22 cats in Auntie S's home, I'd go with the manicured look.

    It is a small-scale change that I could live with. Now, I have to get used to a whole new environment, which is pretty tough. You know how we cats are such creatures of habit.

    Sunday, April 09, 2006

    Dealing with change


    I used to be the only cat in my human's house. Now, I share a bedroom with - get this - 22 other cats. Talk of having to adapt to a change.

    It's not as cramped as you think. One of the bedroom walls has a hole in it at floor-level, meant for an airconditioner. [You can see the hole on the extreme right edge in the picture.] The hole gives me and my 22 roomies an access route to a garden outside. Most of us spend the morning basking out in the garden, which is rather nice. It is fenced in and has an awning. It is bright but it keeps us dry if it rains.

    At night, when the temperature drops, most of us head back into the bedroom.

    I used to be able to go where I pleased in my human's home, except for the two bedrooms. I would walk all over the place, and even sneak into the bedrooms whenever she wasn't looking, or when she had forgotten to shut the bedroom door before going out.

    Now that I share this bedroom with 22 other cats, each with his or her own smell and story, I can't mark where I please. Until I suss out the dynamics in play among them here, I don't think I'll do much yet. But one thing is clear though: I'm one of the biggest moggies in this room, so none of them had better mess with me.

    For now, when I wake up in the mornings, I head up to the upper bunk of the double-decker bed in the room. It's so I can escape the smell at floor level. The air is fresher 2 metres off the ground. Heck, with 23 of us in there having slept through the night, it can, of course, get downright funky. And half of us do use the row of litter pans there in the mornings, so until B [Auntie S' maid] comes in to clean the pans and feed us in the mid-morning, it's a whole bad-air zone.

    Sometimes, when I wake up, I forget momentarily where I am. [So shoot me. For almost nine years, I woke up in the comfort of my own basket and would be fed kibble about an hour later, after I got my eyes and ears cleaned.] Then the smell hits me.
    Sometimes, those roomies get too close for comfort. I tell them off with a growl and hiss that I'm not ready to be that chummy yet.

    It's a funny thing, Change. The thought of impending change is sometimes more daunting than the change itself. It might even be better to be surprised with change than to be told in advance of its arrival. Advance warning just gives room for worry.

    ...that is, if it's an unpleasant change. Nice changes just breed anticipation. Then again, we aren't talking of a nice change in my case, are we? In my case, I didn't have much of a warning. She just talked to me, gave me my snacks and put me in the carrier and drove me out here.

    Getting into the car is always bad news to me. It can mean either of two things: Going to the vet, or going to the Pet Hotel. Both occasions freak me out.

    Of course, on Feb 7, 2006, I found out the third meaning of being bundled into my purple pet carrier and being put into the car. I was to be dumped in a new place. Ten minutes into the drive, I stopped meowing and went quiet. It was when a bad, bad feeling came over me.

    The feeling was fear... fear that it wasn't the vet or the Pet Hotel. No matter how bad those two other types of outings were, they always ended with me being brought back home. Not this time.

    I reckon I have another five years or so of life. Is this where it's all going to end? Or maybe my human might come and bring me home again one day? As long as she comes to visit without lugging a pet carrier, I know it's not going to happen. So it looks like I'll just have to adapt, find a new routine, set up a new paradigm. [Wow, I used that word. I'm so with-it in management-speak.]

    Saturday, April 08, 2006

    Me and the Christmas tree of 2005
    (already brown, post-Christmas)

    Friday, April 07, 2006

    I was dumped

    My cat blog looks fine!

    Hmm. I think I'll upload a pic of me soon. All of you out there - especially the cat lovers - would be wanting to know what I look like, right? The reason I can't do it now is that I'm clogging from this PC and that's not where my pics are stored.

    My pics are all in a Mac in another place. Uh huh, yes, I am in the Mac camp, most definitely. User-friendly and beautiful machines to boot. There's no way to advertise one's uber cool status faster than to use a Mac. [OK, I hear all you PC-philes swearing never to return to this clog already. Go if you have to. No skin off my pink, heart-shaped nose!]

    In my last post, I promised to tell why I no longer live with my human. It's a sad story and I know she's pretty broken up about it and still thinks of me often. I know for a fact that she has pinned up six pics of me at her cubicle at her work place and has a picture of me on her computer desktop...

    I came to live with her and her husband in their East Coast apartment in mid-1998. From the start, the situation didn't look good. She wanted a cat. Her husband was [and still is] a dog person. But he said OK to her anyway.

    She took real good care of me: I got my yearly shots at the vet, and was brought there each time I fell ill. I was fed Science Diet premium cat kibble, and yummy tinned food on Saturday mornings. She cleaned my eyes and ears every morning with damp tissue and talked to me.

    In return, I hammed it up for the guests who came by for their fabulous dinner parties. [Her husband cooks really well.] I was a real centre of attraction with young and old alike. I was variously described as "big", "muscular", "fat", "aggressive", "psycho" ... and "pretty". [Me, a big boy, "pretty"? I object!]

    In July 2005, my human and her husband decided to get their home remodelled. This entailed moving out - all the three of us. They went to live with his mom [a non-cat person] in Telok Blangah, and I became a boarder with Auntie S in Punggol for those three months because my human didn't want to "impose" on her mom-in-law with a huge, scratching, fur-shedding critter.

    Living in Punggol with Auntie S was fine, because I knew my human would come back for me. She always came back to get me, even back when she used to put me at the Pet Hotel in Pasir Ris whenever she went on short holidays with her husband.

    When the work was all done, she came to get me in October, as I expected. But what I wasn't prepared for was The Change. What had they done to my world?? I was terrified.

    The floor was white and shiny. The walls were all white. The cabinets were now all in dark brown wood. Some walls I remembered brushing against were gone. And this was just the shell of the house.

    The Change affected the furniture as well: Where was that wonderful cane set where I used to strop my claws? In its place, there was this hideous scarlet sofa, all fabric, no hard bits to give some resistence when my claws itched to be stropped off. The dining room chairs were now in this smelly black leather, eeewwww.

    I spent a good part of the following two months trying to make sense of it all - the new colours, the new textures, and worst of all, the new smells - wood, leather, aluminium strips, glue, paint.

    Were they doing this to traumatise me? Why weren't THEY traumatised?? How could they accept such change?

    Hold it. They were not just accepting of the change. They seemed to revel in it, and were proud of it. They hosted more of their fabulous parties and more humans came by. All of them cooed at how wonderful the place now looked. My human gave running commentaries about what was done, and her continuing battles with the interior designer to unf*** some of his shoddy work.

    Me, I wasn't happy. I stropped my claws on that red monster sofa. Hey, I found out the fabric had some give. Little threads came loose and did fine to relieve my itchy claws. I also left some of my Eau de Moggie marks at the corners.

    And, bad as the black leather smelled, I made a wonderful discovery one day when I deigned to leap onto it. I dug my claws in and pulled. And pulled. And pulled. Soon, there were long scratches on it and bits of green sponge filling were spilling out. And my overgrown nails flaked off. Sweet relief.

    She noticed my artwork soon enough and became angry, very angry.

    I. have. to. leave. my. mark. somehow. It's a cat thing. All this new, unmarked furniture was just calling out to me. WHY couldn't my human see this? She yelled at me and spat out something that sounded like "BAD CAT!" She wasn't happy, that much I knew. I could tell it from the tone she used as she shouted at me.

    Her husband was also saying things about me in my direction. He wasn't happy either, and it was also clear from his tone of voice. In my seven years under their roof, he and I had just steered clear of each other. He never petted me [except when he was a little high on beer], but never hit me either. I knew he was just tolerating me for her sake.

    She even smacked me on my rump one day, but I don't know why.

    The furniture became more "me". But somehow, in their terms, they called it "getting worse". Things came to a head. I know my human had a few discussions with her husband, and that he said the decision about what to do was up to her.

    One quiet Saturday afternoon, she fed me my usual tinned food and told me tearfully that she had to give me up. She explained that she had thought about it, and that this wasn't just her home. It was his too. Already, he had put up with seven years of:
    • scattered litter,
    • my fur flying all over the place and sticking on clothes,
    • bedroom doors needing to be kept shut in order to keep me and my fur out,
    • the smell from my litter box (despite an industrial strength litter),
    • brown stains on corners of walls - my "dhoby marks",
    • occasional pee accidents,
    • puddles of vomit, usually after I scarf down my food in the best Homer Simpson tradition.

    The damaged furniture was the last straw. Did I know the new furniture was a gift from her mom-in-law, she asked me. They were only four months old and they looked like shit, she sighed. She said she couldn't go about repairing it if I was going to be around. She held my face and asked me: "Why can't you stop doing this? Why?"

    She took some pics of me, put me in my pet carrier and drove me to Auntie S's in Punggol. So that's where I live now.

    Auntie S has cats too, some of which have pretty sad stories of homelessness and abuse. These cats are now up for adoption.

    Me, I' m not for adoption. I've just become a long-term boarder. I still belong to her. She comes to visit, but I don't think she will come to bring me home any more. I think I heard her negotiating with Auntie S about how much she had to pay every month to keep me here.

    I'm angry that she has dumped me here. The last time she came to visit, I refused to take my favourite cat snacks from her hand and walked away from her to show her I was hurt.

    She came again to visit this week, and I was so happy to see her, I went up to her and purred, hurt feelings quite forgotten.

    I could see she was happy to see me. She hugged me - I hate this, can't she ever remember? - but I could see it in her eyes she was sorry and feeling guilty she had to make me adapt all over again to a new place at my old age.

    But this is how it is going to be. Top Cat checking out for now.

    Dog blogs, my paw. Here's my cat blog!

    Did you guys read last Sunday's newspaper [Sunday Times, April 2]? There was a feature there about dog blogs, or dlogs, started by their humans.

    It got me thinking - what about cat blogs?? Maybe they are out there, who knows. It's just that SunTimes is so pro-dog that they probably didn't think to go out to look for them. [For a start, check out About.com's aggregator of cat blogs here - and I'm sure this is not an exhaustive list.]

    In any case, I'm starting my cat blog here and now, so there is at least mine to count.

    Let me introduce myself: I'm what vets call a DSH, or Domestic Short-Hair. Some mean humans call me "pariah cat", "longkang cat" or "ordinary" cat. [The Cat Welfare Society has a tee shirt which declares "There are no ordinary cats", so so true. Each of us is really special!]

    Top Cat is what I'm calling my blog, though my humans named me Nookie. [Cat = Pussy = Nookie, geddit? If you don't, never mind. Think of it as a regular name.]

    I'm an old boy, almost nine. When my human got me in mid-1998, she brought me to the vet first thing to have me checked. The vet peeled back my lips, looked at my teeth and pronounced me a fit and healthy cat, "aged about one year". So I reckon I must have been born around mid-1997.

    Actually, I'm speaking to you now from my new home. I'm no longer living with my human, but that story can be for another day. I'll just get this maiden entry uploaded first to see how my blog looks like, and check back with you on another day.