Theater and Cats DO Mix!

Those serious Sioux City thespians are leading the way to a whole new vision in cat-theater futures.  The Sioux City Journal reports today that if you bring a can of cat food to the theater for the play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, it’s as good as a ticket.  Proceeds go to the local humane society. 

You can bring other cat stuff as well to serve as your admission price, just don’t bring your cat — contemporary theater for now remains wholly unprepared for cat-inclusive audiences and will need to surmount obvious technological barriers before that dream is realized.

Bullet Train Borrows Cats’ Ears & More

A futuristic train in Japan will feature air brakes shaped like cat ears that retract like cat nails!  Of course, the retractable-claw cat-ear air brakes are superior to all the brakes people have made without involving cats’ design ideas, proving that cats should be consulted more often in the design-phase process.

What does it mean that a train of the future borrows so heavily from feline technologies?   Is this early evidence that cats are on the cusp of improving our lives Big Time?  

A minor point: Cats take no responsibility to the disco-tights quality of the train’s exterior. For that, I think you can thank manga.

Learn about the cat’s forthcoming bullet train here.

Cats Versus Windmills: This Spin Job Needs a Quixote

Cats are back in the headlines, this time taking fall-guy status in the Great Windmill-Bird Debate of ‘07.   It’s enough to make you want to pull a Quixote on whatever windmill executive came up with this latest spin of anti-cat PR. 

Okay, cats have a song bird problem, it’s true.  The problem is, there is something undeniably attractive about slaughtering little singers who can’t help but give themselves away with the essence of what makes them song birds, their lovely little voices. 

But the main problem is not the song, the bird, or the cat.  These three are but an innocent catastrophe waiting to happen, set into motion by nature herself, and diverted into a force 90 million housecats strong by none other than the species voted most likely to change the planet’s climate this century.

It’s hard enough we have to blame ourselves for how bad things have gotten around old Earth here, and it only makes it worse when we shift responsibility to the creatures we keep.  I’m telling you, cats are blameless — the blood they spill is all on us.

Personally, I don’t mind curbing my little killer’s freedom by keeping him inside so I don’t have to handle the guilt that comes along with the dead bodies on my doormat.  I keep my cats inside as well, you’ll be glad to know.

As for Mr. Windmill PR spin executive, shame on you for using cats to take the heat off your clean-energy industry.   That’s about as useful as Quixote busting a cap in some windmill’s backside, although not nearly as entertaining and literarily significant.

The Truth About Cats & Sleep

Cats get a lot of crap for the phenomenal amount of down-time they take, and I admit to being one to make fun of their marathon knock-out naps. Yet it turns out the joke is on me because science has known for years that cats actually accomplish stuff as they sleep!

That’s right, cats may look like they are lost in LaLa land, but actually they are getting to the REM time that will fine tune them into tip-top form and function. Their half-life in dreamland lets them practice their moves on an ideal basis, turning them into the hunting machine they would need to be, if they needed to hunt.

It’s all reported in The Mind at Night by Andrea Rock. Not that I approve of this kind of research, seeing as French neurobiologist Michel Jouvet “surgically disconnected the portion of the cat’s brain that normally paralyzes its muscles during REM.” Still, it’s fascinating to know that cat dreams are a form of practice for the demands of the real world. One can only hope they reconnected that part of the brain later so the cats could go back to dreaming in peace, even if was 1960.

Clear from this stunning discovery, cats are not born enemies of time management – they simply practice it on a level that humans are only just starting to understand.

Finally, Self Help for Cats

Welcome to Self Help for Cats, a site devoted to the self-improvement of house cats. The human race has not domesticated a new species in thousands of years, so we have to work with what we got.

Self Help for Cats is not so much a website or a blog as it is a world movement. Cats everywhere are taking charge of their lives and saying, “Hey, we better get with the band wagon!” After all, cats have issues to deal with – public relations issues, for one. I mean, cats are super popular number-wise, but dogs right now have them beat in the charisma category. And any cat knows that’s just plain whacko.

Of course, PR isn’t the only area where cats need a major makeover. Cats in general need a whole new career concept and a complete political rebirthing. Self Help for Cats takes on the gamut of opportunities available to help your cat realize his greatest dreams.