OwlKitty is back and this time she’s sliding into Leonardo DiCaprio’s DMs.
The last time I saw Titanic was in a movie theater 25 years ago when the film was just released, its theme song was befouling airwaves and its director, James Cameron, was playing at deep sea explorer in the Mariana Trench. (Cameron would return for an expedition more than a decade later, matching the depth of a science team who made the dive decades earlier, but doing it solo. His interest had been sparked by the work he did on Titanic.)
I remember feeling restless as the movie dragged out, then incredulous as women and girls all around me sniffled, dabbed at their eyes with tissues and even sobbed! Teenage Big Buddy could not comprehend it.
But this version of Titanic? It’s more my speed, coming in at an economical 1:07 running time and featuringOwlKitty in place of Kate Winslet:
As you can see, Winslet isn’t entirely gone from this cut. She just plays second fiddle to OwlKitty, Leonardo DiCaprio’s first love.
Who’s the Queen of the World now?
Want more OwlKitty? Check out her star turn in Jurassic Park, where she replaced the T-Rex and rampaged around the doomed island looking got catnip and treats.
One lucky cat in Ohio has an aquarium designed just for him.
Cats love watching fish almost as much as they love eating them, but felines and their aquatic counterparts are infamously difficult to keep as pets in the same house.
People who own standard aquariums inevitably learn they tend to double as unintentional treat cabinets for determined kitties who find ways to get at nature’s snacks inside. Some opt for supposedly more secure aquarium covers and resort to the usual tricks — double-sided tape, scent deterrents, foil — to keep their furry friends from climbing up to help themselves to treats.
Others take the easy route, pulling up hours-long Youtube videos of fish tanks for their cats’ amusement.
But one cat has the ultimate set-up, cat TV at its finest: A custom-built aquarium that provides him with a 360-degree view of the action from within the tank.
The cat’s name is Jasper, and his human, Melissa Krieger, bought the cat-approved tank from a Cincinatti shop that designs and builds custom aquariums.
There’s a cat-size shelf directly beneath the tank, and an observation blister built into the bottom of the tank itself, big enough for Jasper to poke his head up and get the closest view possible short of diving into the tank. Melissa even put a cat bed on the shelf so her furry overlord can watch the fish in comfort.
Two viral stories claim schools are allowing students to “identify” as felines, while one district is accused of providing litter boxes in school bathrooms.
Two curious stories relating to cats have been circulating online this week: In the first story, a substitute teacher claims she was fired because she refused to meow back to a student who “identifies as a cat,” while parents in a Michigan school district were infuriated by a rumor that the district was providing litter boxes to cat-identified students in school bathrooms.
First, the obvious, or perhaps not-so-obvious considering the media attention and outrage surrounding bothstories: Neither one is true.
Why did people believe them? Because we’ve gone insane as a society, of course, and basic reality now means different things to different people depending on their political ideologies. If you’re on the left, you might think parents who aren’t sophisticated news consumers are so paranoid about school curricula, they’d believe just about anything. If you’re on the right, you’re might argue that some schools have gone so overboard with political correctness, it’s not a stretch to imagine privileges conferred on the allegedly cat-identified.
For those of us who subscribe to neither ideology, the whole thing is another sad example of the polarization that is destroying the US, the same divisive talk amplified by platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
But that’s beyond the scope of this blog, which is to celebrate cats, have a laugh and occasionally put the spotlight on animal welfare. I don’t want to lose readers by wading into a political landmine field, but most importantly I don’t want anyone to feel unwelcome on this site.
The Michigan incident started when a mom of kids at the Midland School District, about 130 miles northwest of Detroit, spoke at a school board meeting about a rumor — which she took as fact — alleging the school was accommodating “furries” by providing litter boxes in unisex bathrooms.
Lisa Hansen asked other parents to join her to “do some investigating” into the policy
“I’m all for creativity and imagination, but when someone lives in a fantasy world and expects other people to go along with it, I have a problem with that,” Hansen told the Midland school board. “This whole furry thing has just got me. I’m staying calm, but I’m not happy about it, and it’s happened on your watch, and I don’t understand it.”
Here’s the video: (It should start at the relevant section, but if it doesn’t, Hansen speaks at the 32:44 mark)
Hansen’s claims were picked up and reshared by a state GOP chairwoman, Meshawn Maddock, who warned “Parent heroes will TAKE BACK our schools” in a Facebook post.
The school’s superintendent, Michael Sharrow, was forced to do damage control with a public statement, telling parents it’s a “source of disappointment that I felt the necessity to communicate this message to you.”
“There is no truth whatsoever to this false statement/accusation,” Sharrow wrote. “There have never been litter boxes within MPS schools.”
The story about the fired substitute also had its roots in an online video, with a woman who says she’s a teacher relating the story via TikTok. The woman, who uses the handle @crazynamebridgetmichael, said she was taking attendance when a student responded to his name with feline vocalizations.
“I get to the third row and I hear this ‘meow!’ ‘Uhhh, excuse me? Excuse me?'” she said in the TikTok video. “I start looking on the ground, through the fourth row—everything’s good. Go to the fifth row—everybody’s there. Then I hear ‘meow!’ I’m like, ‘Okay, what’s up with that? Who’s doing it?’ And this little girl in the very front row says, ‘You have to meow back at him; he identifies as a cat.’ Are you kidding me?”
The student stormed out of the classroom when she laughed at him, she said, and the school’s administration fired her: “They said ‘We no longer need your services if you can’t identify with all the children in the classroom.'”
The story was picked up by several widely-read sites, included in Tucker Carlson’s daily newsletter, and reshared on prominent Twitter accounts in addition to going viral on Facebook.
The story was widely shared on social media and reported by a few dozen online media outlets.
The only problem is it isn’t true. In a follow-up video the teacher admitted she made up the story to “create awareness of what kids are going through at school.” She didn’t elaborate, so it’s not clear if she was criticizing school policies for allowing students to identify as different genders or arguing that kids’ needs aren’t accommodated. Occam’s Razor would indicate she was just chasing clicks.
The one thing that’s certain, however, is that cats don’t deserve to be in the middle of this mess.
Top image: A 20-year-old Norwegian woman who identifies as a cat. The woman says she was “born the wrong species.” “My psychologist told me I can grow out of it, but I doubt it,” she told an interviewer. “I think I will be cat all my life.”
Frodo the Cat is 20 years old and doesn’t get around like he used to, so his handy human put his handy skills to work and built the little guy his own lift.
Liam Thompson is a 21-year-old Youtuber who’s known for building cool stuff.
His cat’s name may be Frodo, but Thompson said he’s in “Gandalf territory” at 20 years old and has been having trouble getting around to his favorite spots, especially a sunny corner of the backyard where he likes to sit poolside and enjoy the New Zealand warmth.
“Despite his ancient-ness, he still insists on hobbling down these stairs every day to sit out in the sun,” Thompson says in a video about his latest project. “That is, until today.”
The video shows the handy Kiwi building an “elevator” — more like a stair lift for a cat — out of wood, an electronic hoist and a handful of small hardware pieces. The passenger compartment is a simple cart, and at the press of a button the cart descends or ascends the stairs along a wooden track.
Frodo isn’t bothered in the slightest.
“Are you ready to go downstairs without having to move a muscle?” he asks his cat before the maiden ride. “I hope so, because it took me four days.”
Thompson is delighted as the elevator works perfectly and Frodo rides it without fear or protest, laughing as the orange senior cat makes himself comfortable during the ride. The current setup requires Thompson to push a button, but perhaps in the future he can add a simple button for Frodo directly on the cart.
Speaking of elevators, this cat thinks he’s Leslie Chow from The Hangover:
Owl Kitty’s human puts his beloved feline into an iconic scene from 1993’s Jurassic Park.
Owl Kitty’s human has put his house panther into The Matrix, John Wick, Home Alone, Titanic — and now the original Jurassic Park as a stand-in for the terrifying tyrannosaurus rex.
Despite standing at least 20 feet tall and weighing several tons, Jurassic Owl Kitty is a kindler, gentler threat to Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum and the kids. Kitty just wants to rub up against the Jeep and purr, and perhaps score some cat food, not eat people like that evil dinosaur.
Plus we can now confirm that, even if they were twice the size of African elephants, cats would still be cute:
Pain In The Bud 