Feline GPS?

I am so totally stealing this from Badtux. This is Maru. If you've never encountered him 'til now, he lives in Japan and has his own blog, along with oodles of YouTube videos.

Watch closely and tell me if you see any holes in that bag. I couldn't see any. Which leads me to conclude that Maru is navigating via feline GPS. Pretty cool.

In Which I Apologize to the Wombat

Wombat photo by Flickr user Fifila, used under a Creative Commons license.

Following up on yesterday's post about the disappearance of the beaver, I was asked (offline) why I omitted the wombat from my list of alternative critters that could metaphorically refer to ladyparts. Since I can't see any reason to discriminate, I hereby apologize to wombats everywhere.

A quick Google search turns up a link between wombats and femininity that I had sadly ignored - until now. There's a WOMBAT mailing list - WOMen of Beauty And Temptation - for discussion of women and sexuality. It's limited to bisexual women, so I'm not eligible to join, more's the pity. There's WOMBATS - WOmen's Mountain Bike and Tea Society - for gals "with a passion for pedaling in the dirt." I like a nice smooth road, so I don't qualify for that group, either. But still! Two whole data points!

I dunno. The wombat is definitely as cute as the beaver, so why not? Also, it's a marsupial, which is just unspeakably cool. What that does to the metaphor ... I'd rather not speculate. You get into weird anatomy very quickly. (Actually, the space just behind the uterus and vagina is called the pouch of Douglas, so maybe the marsupial connection isn't all wrong?)

Then again, neither beaver nor wombat is as pettable - or intelligent - as the pussycat. So I think I'm gonna stay with the kitty as my metaphorical animal of choice.

Caturday, Philip Glass Style

I don't know how I missed this. Apparently over 12 million viewers have seen Nora the Piano Cat, and yet - despite my 100% Felinity rating - I was totally ignorant of her existence, until now.

Just in case you missed her, too, here's Nora performing what seems to be an original composition. I'm guessing Philip Glass was one of her formative influences.

Things Could Be Worse; I Could Be This Cat

For those of you who are kindly checking in to check on me: I'm hanging in there, feeling mentally a little clearer than yesterday and emotionally a whole lot stronger. For part of the day I was feeling downright ornery. I'm frustrated to be in a holding pattern but I'll see my regular doctor tomorrow to discuss what's next.

In the meantime, here's something Badtux posted over the weekend that's been excellent medicine with no untoward side effects - except for my kids making me play it over and over and over. (And I laughed every time. I'm a little simpleminded these days.)

The End of Our Long National Hairball

Hairball kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

Poor Grey Kitty suffered horribly from hairballs. (No, that's not her in the pic above; she was much prettier, even while yakking.) She'd groom herself neurotically and then try to hack up a ball of hair the size of a small kitten. No sooner had she eliminated one hairball than the next one would be queued up, ready to go. She'd sprint furious circles around the house, growling and yowling, until finally she'd cough one up. Preferably at 4 a.m. Preferably on the carpet. Groom, rinse, and repeat.

The past eight years haven't been all that different. It's been just one hairball after another. We've had the Enron debacle, 9/11 and "My Pet Goat," Katrina, "Misssion Accomplished" in Iraq and Afghanistan, collapse of the rule of law, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression. (I'm sure I've missed a few, so check out Jeff Fecke's depressingly dead-to-rights countdown of the ten worst Bush moments, starting here.)

We too have spent the past eight years running in circles, making no headway on climate change, oil dependency, and our crumbling health-care system. The Bush regime has been utterly indigestible. It's made us sick - at least at heart - and too often, literally. Unlike the feline version, which only rarely prove fatal, the Bush hairballs have been lethal.

We'll be cleaning up the mess on the carpet for years to come.

Grey Kitty, in Memoriam

Seven years ago today I lost Grey Kitty, patron cat of this blog. She was 15 3/4 years old and had been sick with apparent lymphoma for several months. One unfortunate thing about adopting a stray is that her birthdate remains a secret (best guess: somewhere in early April 1985) and so the only solid date for commemoration is the day of her death. It makes me sad to think of those last weeks, so instead I'll just post a picture of her taken in her prime, circa 1997.

Grey Kitty was sweet, bitchy, affectionate, neurotic, snuggly, funny, clumsy, and very very prone to hairballs. In other words - a truly excellent cat.

Not on My Wish List: Hello Kitty Undies

While shopping for my niece online, I came across a product I really, really don't need for Christmas. This would be the perfect present for a frenemy to buy me if they want to make sure my partner keeps a chaste distance from me in the year 2009.

Never mind that I'm a cat lover. Hello Kitty is not a cat; she is a marketing juggernaut with only a passing resemblance to actual felines. I think she's freaky looking, with those blank, fixed eyes and that pink bow that looks like it's surgically attached to her head.

As if the front view weren't alarming enough, the panties feature Hello Kitty peering up from one butt cheek.
On a more serious note, I think this product creeps me out because it so industriously blurs the line between childhood and adult sexuality. I feel similarly about schoolgirl fetishes, which I think eroticize immature girls, even if it's a fifty-year-old woman sexing herself up in knee socks and a plaid skirt. Making adult women "sexy" in a child's costume is just the reverse of turning little girls into sex objects. (Remember those Hooters shirts for toddler girls?)

I'm generally pretty non-judgmental about people's kinks. Most of 'em don't bother me even if they don't do anything for me. But I see the eroticization of fake little-girliness as in a wholly different category than, say, a fursuit fetish. (Go google that yourself if you really must know.)

Farewell to Socks the Cat

This picture of Socks in his salad - um, catnip - days is ubiquitous on the web, but I swiped it from Chaos in the House of Cat.

I think it probably dates me that I remember when Socks the Cat moved into the White House. Back then, he'd just outgrown kittenhood. Now comes the sad news that Socks is sick with cancer and not expected to live much longer.

He apparently enjoyed good health through last spring, when U.S. News reported that he was "still purring" at age 18. He had a thyroid condition that caused his fur to look a bit mangy, but otherwise he was okay. He must be 19 now. That's a pretty good run for a cat.

I'm sad about this. It's not just Socks; I rage, rage against death no matter where it strikes. Sure, it's the circle of life and all that, but I don't have to like it. Then, too, I'm always saddened when a beloved animal dies, even if it wasn't my beloved animal.

But Socks was also a symbol of an era, wasn't he? It was always clear that Bill Clinton had more of a connection with their dog, Buddy. I honestly couldn't picture him appreciating a cat's less-obsequious affections. Still, Socks brought a dose of feline grace into an administration that had lots of graceless moments.

What I really don't understand: Why, upon leaving the White House, did the Clintons hand Socks off to Clinton's former secretary, Betty Currie? I could not do that with a beloved animal. I left GK with my mom for some months when I first headed off to Germany, but once I had a stable living situation I dragged her across the pond. Maybe the Clintons felt they traveled too much and once Chelsea was grown, Socks wouldn't have a steady companion. Both Bill and Hillary were allergic (though this was oddly not an issue during their White House years). Socks and the Clinton's dog, Buddy, allegedly clashed. But still! (I guess this is one of the very few things I agree with Caitlin Flanagan on. Eek.)

Anyway, it sounds as though Betty Currie has given Socks loads of love. Last spring, Southern Maryland Newspapers Online published a feature that portrayed them as besotted with each other:

She is his biggest fan.

And the feeling appears to be mutual.

Socks lies on the back deck of the Currie home and nuzzles Currie’s toes with his nose and face as she grooms him to prepare him for photos. Her attention is one of the only things that has roused him from his determination to nap. ...

He’s even won the somewhat grudging affection of [her husband] Bob Currie, who says he’s not really a fan of cats.

‘‘He really has a nice personality,” Bob said. ‘‘He’s really smart.”

Like both Hillary and Bill Clinton, Bob is allergic to cats. For Bob, too much exposure to cats causes ‘‘sneezing, coughing, his eyes to get swollen,” he said, especially when Socks gets up on the Curries’ bed and curls up on one of Bob’s shirts, just for instance.

The cat ‘‘lives better than I do,” Bob says as he looks down at Socks lying on his shirt, not seeming to mind that much.

Maybe Socks ended up right where he needed to be after his retirement from politics. Here's wishing him - and the Curries - peace and comfort.

Of Housecats and Cat-houses

No, not that kind of cat-house. I mean home design that's properly feline-accessible.

Back in Grey Kitty's prime, when I first moved in with my boyfriend in Berlin (the same guy who's now my husband), we slept in a loft bed in a one-room apartment. Well, two out of three of us did. GK was initially banned from the bed. But one day, in a blur of spinning, clutching paws, she scrambled gracelessly up the ladder and glared down at us defiantly. GK specialized in glaring. She did it very, very well.

My mate followed her up the ladder and pitched her kindly but firmly out of bed.

GK climbed up again. And again. And again. Until finally she wore down the humans and occupied her rightful place between the two pillows.

In the long run, this was probably incredibly stupid, because my partner developed a serious cat allergy and we are now catless. It's possible that he could have avoided the allergy - or at least the resultant asthma - had she slept elsewhere. Be that as it may, for as long as we lived in that little studio, she stayed ensconced in that bed.

We all stayed in that apartment so long, in fact, that GK started to grow old. She still clambered up the ladder as clumsily and gamely as ever. But she never did learn how to climb down again. She was always climbing-impaired from kittenhood onward, though that's a whole 'nother story. Her egress was to leap - plunk! - onto the backrest of a couch. As her catty knees grew sensitive, it obviously hurt her to make the four-foot jump.

My husband (who by then was sniffling and wheezing like crazy) responded by building her a ramp from the bed onto the couch.

GK had it good, all right. And yet, if she'd seen this, she'd have felt entirely neglected.

From I Can Has Cheezburger? The original source for the photo is The Cat's House.

What Cats Say When We're Not Listening

Just because it's finals week and I'm coming down with a lousy cold that has sucked all the intelligence out of my head and replaced it with marshmallows (to be mildly euphemistic) ... it's time to up the Kittywampus cat content quotient. The curmudgeonly one on the left captures my mood. Enjoy. (Meow.)

Caturday! B & W & Grey Kitty

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

That kitteh in back looks so like Grey Kitty. Actually, they all do, right down to their elegant saggy bellies.

Prince Chunk Has Found a Home

Remember the 44-pound cat that was abandoned in New Jersey last summer? Prince Chunk has found a home. (No, not Princess Chunk, as previously reported - I guess sex is hard to determine through so much fat and fur.)

Warning: Seeing the other kitties who need a home in this video made me teary, wishing my mate didn't have an allergy problem that rules out adopting another cat. (He developed asthma back when Grey Kitty was still alive.) But maybe someone who watches this has room for (another) cat in their home?

Palin, Clinton, and the PUMAs: What My Students Taught Me Today

Discussing Sarah Palin in class today challenged my belief that the support for McCain among former Clintonistas is mostly a media mirage.

Several of my students reported family members or friends shifting their support from Clinton to McCain. And they said McCain's choice of Palin really cemented this shift. It's mostly women who are migrating to McCain, though not exclusively so: one student's grandfather wants to vote for a strong woman, and to heck with her policies! (Oooh, a Freudian could have some fun with that!)

I am PUMA, hear me roar. Gosh, I wish this were just a phantasm of the media. Or a Daily Show sketch.

No, this isn't an actual puma, it's just a wonderful she-lion at the Berlin zoo. She was having a great time toying with that rope. Photo by me, Sungold.

Attack of the Big She-Cats

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

What's with all the big-cat metaphors for women of a certain age? Unless you've been in an induced coma all this week, by now you've heard the acronym PUMA - "Party Unity My Ass" - for intransigent Hillary supporters, which as we all know, are all foaming-at-the-mouth, ferociously menopausal women.

Never mind that Katha Pollitt looked for these legendary beasts in Denver and couldn't find any. They were all circling around Chris Matthews like a pride of lions around potential meat, I suppose. Here's what Katha saw:

I thought I might find some PUMAs at the Equalitea-- like every other journalist here, I want to track down those elusive felines. (Later I learn they have spent the day hanging with Chris Matthews, getting enormous amounts of exposure and making women look like lunatics.) In the powder room I run into Ellie Smeal and Mavis Leno. "What about those PUMAs?" I ask.

"There has to be some reality here," Ellie says exasperatedly. "Personally I think a lot of these people were McCain supporters all along. I know plenty of women who gave heart and soul to Hillary who are with Obama now."

(The Nation has the rest of Katha's amusing PUMA hunt.)

Yeah, it's not that to-the-death Clinton loyalists don't exist. They do. They have legitimate gripes against the media's sexism during the primary; not so legitimate against Obama's campaign. Those few who are still holding out on Obama are just playing straight into the Republicans' paws. As Nora Ephron writes in today's Huffington Post, preserving Roe v. Wade ought to be argument enough to sway every remaining Clintonista into the Obama camp.

But most of these alleged PUMAs are the product of Republican machinations. Amanda Marcotte has been exposing the thinness of the PUMA narrative for nearly two months now. At least some of them are this season's version of the Roveian Swiftboaters or the Nixonian ratfuckers.

And then there are the even wackier PUMAs who've crept out of the LaRouche wilderness. Some followers Lyndon LaRouche showed up at Obama's Berlin speech, as my friend Kevin at Rumproast reported a few weeks ago. LaRouchians in Berlin? Not exactly my idea of a broadbased American movement.

The PUMA appellation comes on top of "cougars," those predatory over-the-hill gals on the hunt for tender young man-meat. And with two data points, I think we've got a budding metaphorical field - a new way of framing aggressive, powerful femininity.

I dunno. It's no secret I love cats. I'm fascinated by the big ones, too. But there's no shortage of condescension and misogyny in both of these terms. As Kate Harding acidly observes at Salon, by some definitions, a 40-year-old woman dating a 35-year-old cub already counts as a cougar. A PUMA is by definition shrill and irrational.

So there's no question that pumas and cougars are yet another expression of backlash against feminism. These cats aren't meant to evoke beauty or grace. They're an expression of fear. My gut says it's mostly male fear, but that may be unfair. Lots of women, too, fear powerful female politicians (who put their own powerless into relief or just get branded as bitches). Or they worry that overtly sexual women might steal their man.

The metaphors draw on the current of cultural ailurophobia that goes back at least to the witchhunts, and that has been wed to misogyny ever since. If a pussycat can be a witch's familiar, how much worse these big kitties! In a world where insect bites account for far more disease, death, and misery, we still hold these shared fears of the great cats as - tellingly - "man eaters."

And yet there's an optimistic way to view these big she-cats, too. By definition, backlash only occurs when there's something substantial to oppose. It's no coincidence, I think, that this frame is appearing in parallel with Clinton's candidacy and media reports of women have sex just because they want to.

And didn't Helen Reddy sing it first? "I am woman, hear me ROAR!"

So we've got two options, as I see it, which aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. We can ironically appropriate these catticisms, much like feminists have taken back "bitch"; we can be tigresses and lionesses, or at least mama ocelots. Or we can mock them altogether. You've probably already seen this wonderful spoof that ran on the Daily Show last month, but if you haven't, it'll be your best-spent five minutes of the day.

On Femininity, Felines, and Frivolity

So yesterday Rebecca Traister at Salon's Broadsheet wrote a piece that basically suggested Kittywampus might throw a lot more weight around if we didn't have a frivolous name and address too much feminine stuff like parenting and cats and - well, maybe also feminism:

It is not without irony, for instance, that one of the women Jesella [NYT staffer Kara Jesella, writing on the recent BlogHer conference] interviewed about not being taken seriously online runs a blog called Lemonade Life. This isn't a blog about lemonade; it's a blog about living with diabetes, and a cursory read suggests that it's a very good, smart one. Lemonade Life's Allison Blass has written on her site that the name is in reference to making lemonade of the health lemons life has handed her. And that's terrific. It makes sense.

But we can't pretend that a title doesn't affect how a blog is read and digested. And the fact is that the people over at Netroots are calling their blogs things like the Plank and the Page and First Read and Hotline, names that scream solidity and self-importance and power. A blog about personal experience and illness certainly needn't be named with an eye to political urgency, but what about starting from a place of self-regard and personal authority and naming it after yourself, like Kos, or Drudge, or one of the women who does get taken seriously online, Arianna Huffington? Think about how much easier it would be to get the respect that some of the BlogHer women crave if they started taking themselves more seriously.

This is a tricky argument to make, since there is nothing intrinsically wrong with giving a blog a cute name or, for that matter, writing a blog about a feminized topic -- be it motherhood or fashion or dating -- that is destined for a niche audience. In an ideal world, of course, the experiences of parenthood and style and love wouldn't even be marked as feminine, since they are all shared.

But this is not an ideal world.

Now, I don't have any ambition to become the next Arianna Huffington. If I did, I'd have to spend a bunch of time talking to Larry King. I don't need that kind of annoyance. I'm perfectly happy having a few loyal readers.

But I do want to think about whether it's a good idea to act oh-so-serious - to join in the Drudgery, so to speak. If women do that - if we help devalue those things "marked as feminine" - aren't we condemned to second-class status forever? Aren't we then abandoning feminist causes instead of furthering them?

As Traister ought to know from Salon's own in-house blog on women's and gender issues - Broadsheet, where her analysis appeared - issues involving women and gender still tend to be trivialized and marginalized, even in left-leaning publications. Broadsheet's comment section attracts way more trolls than the rest of the site. Where Salon used to have a whole department dedicated to gender ("Mothers Who Think) and a whole 'nother section devoted to sex, neither of these have survived multiple reorganizations. More's the pity.

We see similar marginalization in the way the Democratic Party has begun to see abortion rights as optional. We see it in the way issues like equal pay or maternity/paternity leave are painted as the concerns of "special interests." We see women voters being trivialized as "soccer moms."

In other words, it's not just femininity that's marginalized and trivialized. The same thing happens to feminism, too. I'm not going to defend every aspect of conventional femininity. I think high heels are just a torture device, for instance. Still, if we devalue "the feminine" in a knee-jerk way, we shouldn't expect feminism to be taken seriously, either.

So I think some of us are needed for the skirmishes in a different register: redefining what topics matter in the first place. For me, parenting is absolutely as important as politics. In fact, parenting is political, on a micro-level, and that's one of the things I'm exploring both here and in my academic work. I could say something similar about sex, which - although men are supposed to love it way more than women - is an intensely feminized topic.

While I'm grateful that there are at least a few prominent political bloggers who also happen to be women (I adore Jane Hamsher, to name just one), I think that - perhaps unlike the conventional media - the blogging world is vast enough that we need to work on both levels. We need women writing on macro-level electoral politics and on micro-level parental politics. We need women writing on the economy and on sex. And then there's the thorny question of how these different levels intersect.

To my mind, anyone writing on any of these issues is a "political blogger."

I also think that it's really okay to not always be deadly earnest. I'd like to believe I don't blow my credibility if I pillory fat cats sometimes, while other days, when I'm sapped from the summer heat, I just want to be tickled by ... an actual fat cat. I know that most readers are more than smart enough to tell the difference. I trust that my serious writing speaks for itself. And honestly, I think that a sprinkling of silly posts keeps me from waxing too pedantic.

As for the name of my blog: I picked it because it's a great, quirky word that I associate with my North Dakota upbringing. It's a word my parents use occasionally. And of course, it gives me an excuse to feature a kitty here and again. I suppose it goes without saying that felines are regarded as both feminine and frivolous (mostly by people who don't know cats!). But I won't be renaming it anytime soon.

What do you think? Do femininity and/or feminism automatically detract from a writer's credibility? Does occasional silliness undermine a writer's more serious posts? And what's with all those girly flower pictures, anyway?

(This daylily was blooming in my garden the day I flew to Berlin. Yes, it's a flower; it's pink; it should put you in mind of sex. And the problem with all that is ... what exactly?)

Catty Corpulence

Photo from the Chicago Tribune, reproduced here with the presumption of fair use; I'll take it down if anyone objects.

This cat was found wandering (or "waddling," as all the news accounts have it) in New Jersey. She weighs 44 pounds - two less than the all-time world record. That's a couple pounds more than my son the Tiger, who's a substantial five-year-old person.

Wow.

"Princess Chunk," as rescue workers have nicknamed her, is pictured here with Deborah Wright, who's acting as her foster mom.

For more images, see the slideshow here.

How to Win at Cat-opoly

This evening the Bear and the Tiger were playing Cat-opoly. It's like Monopoly, except that instead of buying properties, you invest in cats. And instead of going to jail, you fall into the water.
Investing in cats is of course a dubious premise, even for a cat lover like me. Grey Kitty was strictly a source of outward cash flow. If anyone figures out how to make money by renting out cats - as mousers? - I'd love to know what I was missing.

Well, I suppose since the cats in the game are all fancy breeds, there might be stud fees. Hard to explain that one to a preschooler, though.

The Bear bankrupted the Tiger after convincing him to trade precisely the cat cards that the Bear needed for a monopoly. I thought about admonishing him for taking advantage of his four-year-old brother.

And then I thought: No, better couch this as an early lesson in economics. Because y'know, that's just about how real monopolists, war profiteers, Enrons, and Halliburtons become mega-rich. Add in a few price fixers, lobbyists, Abramoffs, and Cheneys, and you're good to go.

Now we just need to figure out how to get all of them - not just Abramoff - to fall into the water.

Image from Amazon.

Cat Got Your Tongue?

The latest National Geographic Kids claims that cats have 16 words that they use to communicate. It was driving me and the Bear nuts that the magazine doesn't say more - is this a top-secret language, so secret that only the cats know and aren't telling? Is it kind of like the mysterious name that T.S. Eliot describes in "The Naming of Cats?"

... The name
that no human research can discover--
But The Cat Himself Knows,
and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought,
of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

Even after googling it, the Bear and I failed completely to figure out what National Geographic was getting at. But I did find this very funny lexicat at Artsy Catsy. I'm copying their whole list; if you love cats, do visit their blog.

1) Catcall: A signaling device we use to give marching orders to humans to fill food bowls, open doors, give us chin scritches and their undivided attention.

2) Catty-corner: The proper location for our litter box.

3) Caterwaul: What we sometimes hit when we miss the litter box.

4) Catwalk: Our daily exercise regimen, consisting of short shuffles to the food bowl with occasional detours to the catty-corner.

5) Catkin: What happens to kitties who didn't have hoohaectomies or ladygardenectomies.

6) Catalyst: What humans use to do our shopping, i.e. 1. Stinky goodness 2. Temptations 3. Litter 4. Toys 5. More Temptations

7) Catacomb: A device used on kitty spa days to remove cat-a-mats from our furs.

8) Catapult: What we do when the catacomb gets caught in a cat-a-mat.

9) Catnip: What we do when you "pult" too hard with the catacomb.

10) Catgut: An essential part of our insides, which requires constant filling with stinky goodness and Temptations.

11) Catsup: Mealtime; a method for filling the catgut.

12) Catnap: What we do when we're not catsupping.

13) Category: The yucky stuff we yak up all over the house when we've catsupped too much.

Now, we at Kittywampus no longer have a resident cat since the demise of Grey Kitty a few years ago. But we still observe proper eticatte, and so - knowing what GK would've said - here are our humble additions to Artsy Catsy's compendium:

Catalog: The shape deposited in our litter box after too much catsup and cat-a-mats.

Cat scan: Surveying our territory for signs that the humans are about to break out the catsup.

Catsuit: That which suits us, especially stinky goodness and Temptations.

Catamount: That's personal! Didn't you learn about that in biology class?

Catalytic converter: The elegant system for digesting catsup.

Caterpillar: Leader and paragon of the feline community; top cat. (Feared and loathed by Grey Kitty, who was not all that.)

Catfish: The stinkiest of stinky goodness; comes in a can and should be served at every catsup.

Catechism: The long and often futile program of schooling humans to properly cater to cats.

Catastrophe: Punctuation, used (sparingly) in cat communication. When formed by the tail, often resembles a human question mark.

Categorical imperative: The requirement for humans to cater to every feline whim; priority of feline wishes over all else.

If you come up with any more catty silliness, leave a comment and I'll add it here.

LOLdictionarycat from I Can Has Cheezburger?