A cockatoo is learning how to bowl. The lesson is going great, but when he fails to get a spare, he resorts to cheating. Can you blame him, when he gets such great feedback for knocking down any pins? The game descends into chaos, with both the bird and the coach dissolving in laughter. -via Digg
So... I JUST FOUND A CAT THAT IS NOT MINE AND IT HAS HAD BABIES UNDER MY BED. pic.twitter.com/83ktBHGgT5
— Paris Zarcilla (@ParisZarcilla) May 30, 2018
In case you want to shut the world out and wallow in the universe of warm fuzzies, here's a photo-heavy story for you. British filmmaker Paris Zarcilla found a strange cat under his bed that had just given birth to kittens. He's fallen deeply in love with them.
To my cat sons and daughters, I'll be the hero you deserve, but not the one it needs right now (because of mama cat). So I'll hunt for you, because I can afford it. I'll be your silent guardian, your watchful protector. Love, #CatDad pic.twitter.com/JkaUpGzXCP
— Paris Zarcilla (@ParisZarcilla) May 30, 2018
Well, "fallen in love" doesn't do it justice. Zarcilla has discovered a new plane of existence and uses words like "nirvana" and "fatherhood" and "the hidden depths of my own capacity to love." He is obviously suffering the effects of either oxytocin or toxoplasmosis. I'll vote for oxytocin. There's nothing like a tiny new family member (or five) to make one's outlook change. Read the entire thread here, and bookmark Zarcilla's Twitter feed for updates. -via Metafilter
Walter Geoffrey is a French Bulldog who does not like to be ignored. Instead of barking to get attention, he'll sing an aria like he's on stage at the Metropolitan Opera House. See more Walter Geoffrey at his Instagram page. -via Tastefully Offensive
One thing we all know about dogs is that they're all good dogs. This episode of Scatterbrained from Mental Floss has a lot of neat stuff about dogs, starting with trivia. Then learn how bloodhounds work, how a breed gets into the American Kennel Club, the origins of the Puppy Bowl, and research on dogs' ability to smell human emotions. No, it's not everything there is to know about dogs, but the entire show is about dogs, so it's all about dogs.
Can you stack boxes too high for Maru to climb into? Maybe the real question is, how can you get that many boxes all the same size? Well, I can imagine if you're mugumogu, people just give you boxes all the time. Maru eventually meets his match, and we get to hear him meow more than we've ever heard before. -via Everlasting Blort
In 1901, a young dog later named Roxy was taken in by a conductor for the Long Island Railroad. Roxy made friends easily, and was soon traveling by train anywhere he wanted to go. He had favorite conductors, favorite passengers, and favorite stops across Queens. On Thursdays, he would go to Montauk Point for a seafood dinner, then spend the night at the Jamaica station. Other nights, he'd be at the YMCA or in Garden City with another conductor. He knew every train and its schedule, and how to get where he wanted to go.
The conductor would say, “President Peter’s orders are that Roxy has the privilege to occupy a seat in any car at any time.”
Sometimes he’d sit with the passengers, while other days he preferred riding in the baggage car or with the fireman. He was known to spring from the open cab while the train was going 40 miles an hour. But he could also sit patiently still on the platform while waiting for just the right train to bring him back to Jamaica or Long Island City.
On several occasions, Roxy traveled in a private car with President Roosevelt to Oyster Bay. Sometimes he’d visit the president’s home there. The Roosevelt children reportedly loved him.
We also know that he spent the Easter holidays in Merrick in 1905. Whomever he stayed with put a blue ribbon on his collar that read, “I spent Easter at Merrick and had a daisy time.” Perhaps this was Miss Elsie Hess, a school teacher who lived across the street from the Merrick station. Miss Hess always gave Roxy a drumstick at Christmas, and he’d also go to her house for care whenever he was ill. She even had a wicker basket just for him in case he stayed the night.
Then the day came in 1911 that Roxy got on the wrong train -for the first time ever- and ended up in Philadelphia! That adventure made the papers. Read about the life and times of Roxy the Long Island Railroad dog at The Hatching Cat.
After ten years of sharing his ennui and nihilism, Henri is retiring from making videos. He says he's retiring, but his farewell video makes it clear that he has given up on sharing his existential philosophy because no one one listened anyway. From Facebook:
Well, the time has come. My final video with the annoying thieving filmmaker is here. Now, I will finally be able to officially retire in peace and work on my philosophy without interruptions. I plan on writing the great feline-american novel. I thank all of you for your support and adulation.
See more of Henri in previous posts. -via Tastefully Offensive
Even if you don't know what a "blep" is, you've probably seen it. That's when a cat, particularly one that normally carries himself like royalty, lets his mouth go slack and his tongue hang out. The cat, not paying a bit of attention, can stay like that for quite some time, giving cat photographers an opportunity to preserve them at their silliest. Dogs do it, too, but we don't consider it odd when dogs blep. What causes a cat to do that? It turns out there are quite a few reasons, and possibly more we don't understand yet. Mental Floss goes over those reasons from veterinarians and cat experts for why your cat bleps, and none of them involve communicating rudeness.
You can rewind to begin this video at the beginning, but that part contains plenty of NSFW language. The real fun starts at :57. YouTuber penguinz0 picked up 5400 balls for a song at the Toys R Us going out of business sale and turned his hallway into a ball pit. His dog is bursting with pure joy at figuring out all the ways to play in it. That's a good dog. -via Boing Boing
Our hero finds himself surrounded. He must run the gantlet of enemies, using his cat-like (duh) skills! This unique footage is only enhanced with the addition of the song "Run" by AWOLNATION. The song has become a meme, accompanying quite a few familiar running sequences you can see in a compilation video at Tastefully Offensive.
What is that thing? What's it doing? Where's it going? A clowder of cats at what looks to be a cat shelter encounter a robotic vacuum cleaner. Their curiosity is way ahead of their caution, which is where we got the adage "curiosity killed the cat." -via Digg
Nappone at the upholstery shop.
Italian photographer Marianna Zampieri presents a series called C-AT Work that features cats who go to work with their humans. Librarians, hair stylists, musicians, craftspeople, office workers, and store owners go about their day as their cat presides over their domain.
Fulvio in his theater.
The goal of this project is always to try to capture the beauty of the relationship that is created between cats and people with whom they share most of the time, demonstrating the great dignity and incredible adaptability of these animals in any situation. All seasoned by the setting that the most diverse work environments can give, creating the astonishment that can be born seeing the cats placed in environments where we are not used to see them.
Nando at the newsstand.
You can see the series in slideshow format at Facebook and more of Zampieri's cat photography at Instagram. -via Laughing Squid
Turn the sound on before you watch this. Tasha is playing hide-and-seek because she doesn't want to go inside, and she's found the perfect hiding place! Tasha is pretty smart for a dog. She understands that her man's viewpoint is different from her own. She's a little fuzzy on the concept of glass doors, though. -via Bits and Pieces
We love cats, and we love monster movies. What's even better? Cats starring in monster movies! Thrill to the spectacle of a 50-foot cat stomping through Tokyo or some other urban area, blocking traffic and knocking things over (as they do). Indonesian digital artist Fransdita Muafidin imagines these scenarios in photo mashups, with fluffy kittens threatening society with their incredible mutant mass and their adorableness. See 17 of his photo collages in a roundup at at Sad and Useless, and more at Muafidin's Instagram gallery. -via Everlasting Blort
Last Thursday, residents of Zaporozhye, Ukraine, called emergency services about a cat stuck in a tree. The tree was very tall and spindly, and no one could climb high enough to get the cat down. So the fire department brought in a ladder truck. The people on the ground were expecting the firefighter to save the cat. The firefighter, on the other hand, was apparently just told to "get the cat out of the tree." He was determined to do that, by any means necessary. The most you can say is that his method was a bit less drastic than that of a Russian operation we posted a few years ago. -via Digg
