Just a cat post

Saturday, October 16, 2010

I'm uploading some pictures and videos so it's time for a cat post.

Windy is a bit overweight now and we try to get him to exercise as much as possible, and this is one of the methods I use. Turn him over, touch his leg on one side and he'll try to bite, then touch the other and he'll go for the other side, and keep that up for a minute or two and it resembles a personal trainer monitoring a person doing situps. The session here in the video was a bit quick but I took the video myself and didn't want to try setting the camera up again.



Next is Windy interfering with plans for European domination.


Something else he likes to do - sit on my lap with legs out in front and get presented with object after object which he will then smell.


Closer:




What about MB, the cat I took care of at the temple?



That video is from March last year. MB has always been a special case as he grew up at the temple and is used to having a large place to live in, and the two days he spent at the apartment where I live (not that big) were not at all enjoyable for him. Still, the temple was not the best environment: while better than being on the street, over the two years he was there he hurt his tail, got covered in tanglefoot (that sticky stuff used to catch mice) which took two weeks to get off, got in fights with other cats there all the time, acquired a skin condition I had to give him medicine for for two weeks (snuck it into these tiny sausages he likes so he never noticed), had something wrong with his eye, and (the final straw) disappeared for six days after which he turned up with his foot swollen to twice its size. We took him to the vet for two weeks for that and it was lucky that he didn't end up losing a toe from gangrene.

So in July I took him to Canada (Calgary) where he now lives at my dad's house. Now instead of sleeping in the rafters in the basement he looks like this.


Oh yeah. A real bed. Interestingly enough, after spending so much time outside (24 hours a day for 2+ years) he has no desire to go outside. The other cat at the house (Meeka) loves going outside and always asks for it and it seems somewhat akin to a person who grew up in the suburbs but likes to go the bad part of town to hang out (Meeka) vs. one who actually grew up on the street (MB) and thus has no attachment to it whatsoever after things improve.


Now that the personal update is done, I also have some real news: I wrote last year that Korea is on the verge of becoming a cat-loving country, and a couple months ago on Lee Hyori's positive PR for street cats (the video there has been taken down though). A few days ago there was another good sign of improvement here regarding cats: I went to COEX this week, which is the big convention centre that looks like this. In the bookstore inside (Bandi & Luni's) the newest book being exhibited at the very front was one called 행복한 길고양이 (Happy Street Cat(s)), which was made by a person who has a blog here who spent five years taking pictures of street cats for the book. It seems to be selling quite well, and a book with not just cats but also street cats is extremely important, because as I mentioned in that Lee Hyori post there is still a large number of people that like cats, but only if they are purebreds, and for some reason see cats on the street as an entirely different species.

The best picture on the blog? Probably this one.

http://cfile25.uf.tistory.com/image/162D2D354CB3159C7033CB

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