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Friday Cat Blogging

They just are photogenic, aren't they? My cats are equally cute, but if you are in the mood for making such determinations, try:

And for other weekend entertainment:

Friday Ark
I And The Bird
Carnival of the Cats
Carnival of the Dogs

Sweet dreams.

No Snapshot Poem . . .

. . . so perhaps a dream will do:

I have recently moved into a shabby apartment. People keep coming in -- poor people, homeless people, mentally ill and physically disabled people -- mostly women. They get in no matter how many times I lock the doors and windows. They are like moths, they are everywhere, they get in through the slightest opening.

I don't know why they keep coming in. There is nothing here worth stealing; I've fallen on hard times myself and there is almost nothing in this apartment.

Waking, I realize: of course I can't keep them out.

They are me.

Seeing Things

[It's a sprinkler head.]

Caffeine & Gasoline

Two stories on tonight's news seem, oddly, connected. President Bush chokes out the conservation word, and a caffeine-laced drink is being marketed to four-year-olds. I write this to try to identify that connection I feel.

Common sense, and the lack of it? Only now does the Leader of the Free World discover what his parents should have taught him when he was knee-high: that when on a budget (as most of us are) one conserves.

But this common sense is appealed to only in time of extremity. It is reasonable, in this world, to expend any resource as if it were infinite. It is reasonable, in this world, to sell speed in juice to children, for the sake of profit. And it is possible, in this world, to persuade the insensible citizen that these acts are reasonable.

We pretend that the health of the planet, that the health of the children, or the poor, or the other however we define them, is of no consequence to us. That we can use, abuse, and exploit them with no harm to ourselves. That there is no connection among us all.

But the planet shakes, or the water comes over the wall, and we are reminded that pretense does not stand against a true storm.

Saturday Squirrel Blogging

I was later than usual getting to the feeder today. This is what awaited me.

Silly Kitties

Thanks to Quiplashr for stuffonmycat.com, lots of photos of extremely tolerant felines:

And from Erin, we have Cats In Sinks, lots of photos of . . . well . . .  cats in sinks:

I don't know why people send me this stuff . . .

And why are there no photos of stuff on Spike or Boo in a sink? Because my cats are not cooperative, that's why.

    

Other places to find photos of critters, cooperative or otherwise:

Friday Ark
I And The Bird
Carnival of the Cats
Carnival of the Dogs

And finally, The Amazing Adventures of Puffy "Bear" Kumanoko, Patty "Paws" McKittybutt, and Buck Wannabeanie.

May all you critters have a safe weekend.

Birdie Bums

Not a particularly special photograph, you think? I wouldn't have thought so myself, until it became part of a Journey:

lilitu93 says:

Boing!

Journey: Birdie Bums
    map

Click those arrows, and you will travel a breadcrumb trail of birdbum photos.

What? You have something better to do on a Thursday?

Snapshot 21 September 02005

bird cries lift me
from the shallow
surface of sleep

while i slept
flood walls broke
southern cities drowned

these northern hills
bleached tan
the maples turn

birches rustle
storms swirl
lifting the sea

south and north
autumn comes
north and south

the darkening

Missing

CNN is showing photos of missing children.

I glance up from my computer to see:

India Brogan
Age 3
Missing From: New Orleans, LA
No photo available

And I wonder, boy? girl? Irish? Creole? Some branch of my own thorny family tree?

India Brogan, Age 3:  May you be safe.

Carnival of the Cats #67

I am leaping back into blogging with the 67th Carnival of the Cats. As I gather these entries together, I am listening to the Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Concert from Jazz at Lincoln Center. What an amazing collection of talent, of cool cats. A reminder that New Orleans, like our beloved cats, is a part of our American lives, wherever we live them.

So in a mood of hope and celebration, let the Carnival begin: