Die, cat-haters, die!

Oh, how very John Woo!!

For more cool or funny cat pics, you might want to check out this blog, Cats Me If You Can, which I came across on Blogspot!

101 uses for a dead cat-hater

You might have come across that book, 101 Uses For A Dead Cat, in which line drawings of cat stiffs are being used 'creatively'. [If I remember right, the tail of a cat in rigor mortis can be used to prise open stubborn lids of cans.]

How. Damned. Unfunny.

Taking a leaf from the newspapers for the second day in a row - The Straits Times seems full of cat stories these days - I can think of one very good reason now for a 'companion' book to be written: 101 Uses For A Dead Cat-Hater.

There's a report saying that a Malaysian man named Wong Geng Thong 'befriended' a stray cat at a coffee shop in Haig Road, then fed it some cat food he had in his van. How nice of him, you think?

Well, as moggies go, pet us overly much and we soon get feddup, right? Well, my moggie friend did just that. He [or she] scratched Wong, who got angry, picked the cat up and drove off to a deserted carpark off Old Airport Road. It was there that my friend paid for the scratch with his/her life.

What Wong did was unaccountably evil: He tied a wire noose around the moggie's neck and hung it till he/she passed out. Then he massaged the animal's chest till it revived before dangling it by the wire again. Of course, after x number of times, the cat could be revived no more.

[I wonder if the cat felt at all what was to follow.] Wong removed the noose, held the cat by its neck and bashed its body against the wall of the carpark.

A security camera, installed by residents in the area following a number of cat bodies found, was all this while whirring quietly, catching yet another piece of evidence to nail the man.

Now that the court hearing is over, everyone will be dismayed to find out that all Wong will get is two months in jail. The SPCA, 'with due respect to the court', is appealing against the leniency of the sentence, saying it sends out a wrong message - that the law tolerates animal abuse.

I wonder if Wong is in serious need of psychiatric treatment rather than a jail term, but that's another story. And certainly, even if I were human and in the power to recommend that, I don't think I would. Why should we show respect for his life or his rights when he has shown none for another's life and rights?

What I think should be done to him would be very well captured in a book titled 101 Uses For A Dead Cat-Hater. After all, I'm a decent artist, and I'm imaginative.

I should call my publisher tomorrow.

A new "I hate cats" campaign is coming

The newspapers have reported a case of a stray cat wandering into someone's flat and, upon being spotted, was chased out of the house by the owner.

The fleeing cat - must be with all claws flailing - managed to plant a deep gash on the face of a little girl, the owner's granddaughter, while making its escape.

The girl, aged only three, had to have a plastic surgeon fix up the deep cut with 15 stitches that run from her upper lip to her nose. The "first aid" cost her folks $3K, and she may bear a scar for life. [That's her wound in the pic.]

Cost aside, I can just see it coming - letters, coffeeshop talk about how cats really deserve to be reviled, hated. The dog camp is gonna tell the cat camp: "See, cats are evil!"

The newspaper report ends with the child's mom calling for a stop to the neighbourhood's practice of feeding stray cats. I'm personally with her on this. I posted an earlier blog against the blind feeding of stray moggies without the attendant responsibility of sterilising them first.

If people bother to sterilise the strays first, they can feed them all they want and rest assured the strays won't multiply and perpetuate the problem. [Look up my May 14, 2006 post in the archives headlined "Be still, a eunuch speaketh...".]

And feeding stray cats along an HDB corridor is just wrong. This will bring all the neighbourhood's cats around, and some wil inadvertently enter neighbours' homes. Not everybody likes cats, that much I know.

This being said, that stray cat was just doing what came naturally to it when it was scared out of its wits by an angry granny, stomping on the floor to shoo it out. How was my friend to know it had gone where it wasn't supposed to?

The little girl: Well, I feel sorry for her pain. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, namely, in the path of a fleeing claw-wielding furball.

Golf is evil

* Golf eats up large tracts of land which could otherwise be turned into parks for the enjoyment of far more people. [I'm a capitalist cat at heart, but I'm socialist when it comes to recreation.]

* Golf requires proper tending of the greens, which invariably involves using fertiliser, which leaches and poisons the ground water.

* Golf is boring - to watch and to play. Thwackkk! walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. Thwackkk!, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. And they call this a sport??? I'd lump it with computer games and darts - requiring some strategy, but little or no physical prowess. "Sport" my ass.

* Golf comes packaged with snob appeal - the cost of a set of clubs, club membership, green fees and ridiculously ugly clothes (loud checks, nondescript pastel polo tees and shoes with those tongues with the zig-zag edges, I rest my case) ... all this probably makes status-conscious Singaporeans want to play it more, and be seen playing the game.

Golf. is. evil.

A new cat in the family

Meet Tasha, who is the new cat in my human's sister's home. Tasha is a British shorthair silver tabby, a rare colour among British shorthairs. Lovely one, huh?

She's only seven months old, and about ready to be sterilised.

In the third picture, she's with Sarah, my human's niece. Tasha is showing herself to be a sweet girl, hardly sheds and loves to play.

My human's sister has adopted another cat - Minx, who is having problems adapting to her new home and refuses to come out of hiding (except to eat or use the litter box) ... hence the lack of pictures of Minx(ie). Any ideas on how to make her less terrified of her new home, anyone out there?

Give the gal some time, and I'll get some pix of her up here.

10 things humans (grossly) over-rate

... in my opinion, not in any particular order and good for the moment anyway:

VJs on MTV
Show me someone who gets wildly popular for no other reason than because he or she is a gawky young 'un who blathers on - without any particular linguistic or sartorial elegance - on TV, and I'll show you a poseur who has little reason to pose.

Anything "all natural"
Why do humans fall all over themselves to buy that shampoo that offers "all natural herbs" or for anything with "no artificial ingredients as if, by dint of being "natural", these products are "better"? Hey, people, that bunch of man-made chemotherapy chemicals probably saved your aunt from dying of cancer. And remember, Socrates drank hemlock - that's "all natural", isn't it?? - and DIED.

Exercise
My human [who, like all women, is not thin enough for herself] works up a sweat three times a week during her workouts, gets extremely hungry and eats more. Result: Weight gain. During World Cup month, she ditches exercise, feels less hungry and eats less. Result: Weight loss of 3kg. Go figure.

Facials
The "improvement" I see on human skin isn't worth the expense, period. Shops want you to cough up $1,000 for a package of 10 facials - OK, so they toss in one more "free" one. They rub gunk on you, use heat, use electricity, whatever, claiming it brings the "deep-seated dirt" to the surface of the skin - whereupon you get a breakout of zits. Keep the dirt down there, I say.

Designer anything
Have you seen how HIDEOUS some designer togs and bags are?? 'Nuff said. The person with better taste will ask for no more than a well-made product in a good colour and fit. No labels necessary.

The Pussycat Dolls
Skimpy costumes. Smouldering looks that are over the top. Packaged to death but with little real singing or song-writing talent. They do cover versions of 20-year-old songs, for heaven's sake. See their website.

Performance "art"
Sigh, "so much depends on this bunch of 26 dried leaves stuck to 7 milk bottles - three blue and four red - suspended in mid-air". The performance artist - artfully draped between milk bottle #5 and #7 - says sagely: "This all signifies the utter desolation of human hope in a world bereft of love." Yeah, right. Harharharharhar!

Changi Airport
Haven't you read, ad nauseum, of the number of awards this airport has won? Then again, haven't you also noticed that, every time you fly, you are given a departure gate that is 10km down the corridor covered in Gawd Ugly Carpet - and it happens to be a trip on which you have a heavy carry-on bag [and it is the peak hour so everyone is on the travellator and every push cart is used up]? Maybe, something about the design is not that good, hor?

Convergent gadgets
Those tech crazies are so darn proud of their handphone that can make and receive calls, send and receive SMS and MMS, do video calls, play MP3 music, take pictures and video clips, play chess, and even predict your ovulation period. I think we are this close to cellphones that can feed the dog and tell your fortune too, dammit. Unfortunately, a camera built to be a camera takes better pictures than a cellphone camera. So I'd keep all my toys separate, thank you.

OK, so there are only 9 things I can think of at the moment for this list. I lied.