1 August 2011
Tag Archives: Louie the ginger cat
Caught in the act: self-incrimination.
Before there were two Persians in my life, there was one ginger cat, Louie. The late Louie the ginger cat was huge, almost 24 pounds (10.8 kilos). He had presence! The photo shows one moment where Louie managed to catch himself in the act of being a bad kitty.
I couldn’t account for the odd photo at top left until I noticed a little detail. Look at the black circle…the tip of Louie’s tail! With a little Photoshop manipulation, I uprighted Louie’s picture, and regard the result as one of my sweetest souvenirs of his time with me!
Louie captured proof he’d knocked my webcam off the monitor and walked on my mouse…
Here’s another look at Louie, in a quiet moment when he was being a good boy:
Louie was a beautiful cat, sweet dispositioned, and a character.
a tail of two kitties…
Andy isn’t the only cat with an interesting tail. Louie, the predecessor to the boys, also had an intriguing tail:
Louie’s fine tail.
Then there was this video, one of my first attempts at cat videography. Louie was a natural:
The closer it gets to the anniversary of Louie’s death, the more I think about what a fine cat he was. The boys are fun, cute, lively, and great to have around the house. Louie was an older, wiser cat. He taught me a lot of what I needed to know as a cat companion.
Captain Me-Ow
Captain Me-Ow is the name a friend gave to this photo of the late Louie the ginger cat, cat super hero. “Captain” because many super heroes have rank. “Me” for “it’s all about me” and “Ow” because that’s what happens to you if you don’t pay attention to “Me”! It is a favorite photo of that beloved cat.
The original photo wasn’t much. Just an under-exposed snapshot of my cat Louie sleeping on my computer chair. The cute super hero uniform is the work of a New Zealand friend with a delightful quirky sense of humor!
Some time after Louie died on August 1, 2011, I decided I wanted to hang an enlarged photo of him in my home. This was a natural. Aside from showing his magnificence, it shows him in a humorous way: Louie, if nothing, was a funny cat!
The person who custom framed things retired, so I tried to find a ready-made frame big enough to display the photo of Captain Me-Ow and failed. It has odd proportions. I ended up buying a poster frame that was way bigger than the photo. Friction and static electricity held the photo in place until wee Andrew started tugging on the bottom part of the frame, pulling it off.
I re-attached the piece; Andy pulled it back off. Finally, I took the photo down till I found a solution, which was a smaller poster frame that still is bigger than the photo. Positioning the photo in the smaller frame, I let friction and static electricity hold it in place again. No problem there. AND it hanged higher than the other frame because it was smaller, of course, and I used the same nail. Andy, I figured, couldn’t reach high enough to bother this one!
Of course he did, pulling off the bottom piece of the frame again.
No cat will defeat me, I declared, and taped the thing together. Andy tried to repeat his naughtiness, but was defeated.
Or was he? He managed to break the hold of friction and static electricity on the photo, and gravity finished the process of creating what you see above: A cat-altered piece of cat memorabilia. The whole thing is taped tightly, would be a mess to straighten out.
The more I looked at it, the more I started to see the sense of it. A household with cats always is a bit askew. Louie couldn’t have done better! Ahem! “Captain Me-Ow”, rather.
Mayhem and Tornado would be better names
I love my little fuzzy guys, Andy and Dougy. They are an amusement, a challenge, a responsibility, a source of entertainment and videos. Not bad for free cats that cost me $1400 in veterinarian bills before I had them 3 1/2 months!
They came to me by accident, really. Louie, the beloved 23 pound 12 ounce ginger tabby I had before the boys died on the first of August 2011. Some of you know the story. I had him cremated at the veterinary where he got his shots and check-ups. It was when I picked up his ashes that Tara, one of the technicians who raises cats, came out with this little fuzzball that looked remarkably like Willie the groundskeeper on “The Simpsons”, you know, a crazed wild-haired Scotsman!
“Would I be interested in having this kitty when he’s old enough to leave his mother?” she asked. She set him down on the counter , and he waddled over to me! Aw! “Sure!” I said. Seems he (and Dougy) weren’t breeding or show quality, so their value as cats for sale was diminished. Plus they were sick, and responsible breeders don’t sell sick animals. They just give them away! I joke. I really, really appreciate the fact that Tara gave them to me as pet quality Persians still have a value, and it’s more than I ever paid or likely would pay for a pet, hundreds of dollars. On the other hand, look at that face! Aw! Priceless!
I decided he needed a Scottish name since I am mostly of Scottish ancestry. I chose Andrew, after the patron saint of Scotland, St. Andrew, even though I’m Presbyterian and Andy’s no saint. There was a hope, however, so he became Andrew James Thomas. All my pets have the same middle and last names. Because. Don’t ask. Just seems right to me, and I like James, which has some family connection. The absurdity of it, this long name on this fuzzball appealed to my sick sense of humor. “He’ll grow into it.”
[It says “naughty kitten”, which, by the time I took the photo seemed a shrewd assessment of his potential for mayhem when he grew older. And how!]
Dougy came a few days after I picked up Andy to bring him home. After a week, Andy’s illness concerned me enough I called Tara to let her know I wasn’t sure Andy would survive. He had diarrhea, ate sometimes, other times not, and that I wasn’t ready to have another pet die on me so soon after Louie. I was very stressed! She picked him up that night and took him to the clinic, where I left him till his medical issues were in better control.
When I went to the clinic a few days later to see Andy, Tara came out with another fuzzball that looked pretty much like Andy, only a bit bigger now that the boys were maybe two, three weeks older. She told me Andy played well with his brother while at the clinic, that the brother wasn’t a kitten she could sell because of health and age issues (I think it was), but would I be interested in having him?
Aw! Damn cute kittens! Of course I wanted him!
Yes, the boys play well together! I decided Scrapper Nr. 2 needed a Scottish name as well, the boys being brothers and all. I sorted through many suggestions from friends: Angus, Archibald, Murdoch, ugh! Nr. 2 was a quirky little rascal, funny and loveable. “Why not name him after another quirky little rascal, funny and loveable, me!” I thought, though I had concern people would judge me to be vain or crazy to name a cat after myself. “I’ll pronounce it ‘Doogie’, and no one will know the difference,” I smugly decided. It took no time at all for Doogie to become Dougy, and for me to learn he tore around the apartment at top speed, a little tornado.
To this day, the boys tear around the apartment at top speed, leaving a trail of destruction, a fact well documented here and on videos, many of which I’ve attached to different posts.
Mayhem and Tornado. Those are pretty cool cat names. Too bad I didn’t think of them earlier!
The late Louie was a wonderful cat.
I uploaded this first on DailyBooth.
Louie the ginger tabby cat
I guess everyone has a favorite pet, now defunct. I mean, Andy and Dougy are dear to my heart. Yes, I congratulate myself for accepting them as gifts when they were kittens, but there is one cat before them that was something else: Louie the ginger tabby cat!
Before he died suddenly on 1 August 2011, I compiled photos into an adventure for a friend’s son and daughter, both pre-schoolers at the time. It has a moral, since it’s for kids. The story has some sloppy spots when I look at it again, but it still has some charm. More importantly, it reminds me how much I miss Louie, a goofy, fun cat that actually was the second cat I rescued at the time from the animal pound. The first one was in my life briefly. (Freckles the gray tabby, died after being spayed.) Louie was meant to be a companion to Freckles, but turned out to be the main cat, the only cat until I got Andy and Dougy.
So, here it is. A cat tale with a moral and a Jazz soundtrack, because Louie was named after Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong:
I hope you enjoyed the video, which was created from a PowerPoint file, something I couldn’t do when I made the story in 2011. I hope it also shows how a cat rescued from an animal shelter hours before he was scheduled to be euthanized became a good companion to some old, retired guy, who learned most of what he knows about cats from this loveable lump!
mumbling along
“Does anyone read this blog?” is a perennial question most bloggers ask themselves when they update their blogs. There must be hundreds of thousands of these odd snippets floating around in the ether, full of personal insights and commentary on everything under the sun. How do people connect with them?
I follow, irregularly, three very good blogs that have little in common other than the passion and technical skills of their creators. There have been others, also very good, by technically skilled, passionate creators, that I followed for a time, then stopped visiting. No reason. I just stopped stopping by.
I am not certain why these things happen, I just accept that my interests, the time involved to indulge in them, and Factors X, Y, and Z (the latter, unknown) keep me away. Out of sight, out of mind. Like my blog, which I see I last updated in March, which was a very busy four updates month.
If you adore and follow me, the long space between the last of March’s updates and this must have been sheer torture; if not, then join my billions of non-followers, blissfully unaware, possibly better people for it!
Incidentally, part of the reason I’ve been absent is I, as @phainopepla95 of dailybooth and phainopepla95 on YouTube, have been busy with other time-consuming web “stuff”, the videos below, for example.
(Without sound.)
(With sound.)
My brother is visiting from California. Yesterday, my cat Louie amused us with his quirky eating habits!