The Last Cat Standing

Photo by Orlovic, modified by Tony Wild

The Last Cat Standing

by Katherine Tomlinson

Moo had been the sweetest cat Lois had ever known. An ordinary black and white “cow” cat, she’d been the runt of a litter of kittens born to a feral cat occupying the parking garage of the office building where she worked. A young woman from the sixth floor, a receptionist at the insurance company that sprawled across half a dozen office suites, had rescued the kittens and then littered the building with photocopied flyers offering them up for adoption.

Building maintenance kept taking the flyers down, but every morning there was a fresh batch taped to the mirrors in all the ladies’ rooms and on the stairwell sides of all the exit doors.

Lois had successfully staved off such appeals before—in the days before email it seemed like once a week every local newscast included a pet adoption segment and the critters on offer were always super cute.

Separated at Birth? Bette Davis and ... my mother!

My mother had Bette Davis eyes and in this picture, I think the resemblance to Ms. Davis is striking.  That's Bette in a still from Jezebel, the movie she made when she wasn't selected to play Scarlett in Gone with the Wind.  I think my mother had better eyebrows. (And she could raise just one of them--a talent I lack and envy.)

But what about Shakespeare and dogs?

Just in case you're wondering if I have something against dogs...there is some persuasive evidence that William Shakespeare really didn't like them very much. Here's a really interesting blogpost on the subject from Dr, Metablog back in 2006.

Shakespeare and Cats

Painting by Susan Herbert

On the website PandEcats (an online magazine devoted to Persian and exotic short-haired cats), I found this article about Shakespeare and cats. Seems he mentions cats 44 times in his plays. check out what PandEcats has to say here.
You might also be amused by the paintings of Susan Herbert, who re-imagined famous scenes from Shakespeare with cats. Check out her other work in a playful YouTube video or The Cat's Gallery of Western Art.

There's probably a story in here somewhere

The household has been unsettled for a few weeks now--earthquakes, illness in man and beast, and a singular slowness of cash flow.
Today it all came together in a sort of crescendo of misery.  I've been up since three this morning with the corpse of my cat, waiting for the local pet crematory to open. In the past my best friend has attended to the "arrangements" for me but he is sick as a dog and hasn't slept for two days, so this one is on me.
To distract myself, I caught up on the latest episode of Drop Dead Diva. The storyline was about a bereaved fiancee named Kathy fighting with her soon-to-be mother-in-law over her fiance's ashes. what were the chances?
Sigh.
And it's August 9, which would have been my mother's 84th birthday and I was already missing her.  (My mother loved cats and when I came home to take care of her in her final illness, I brought my gray tabby Kichi,who adopted her and spent hours on her bed, available for petting or just companionship.)
Life sucks sometimes.
At least my pet wasn't a horse. Cremating a horse costs $1200.... except for something called a "mini."  I'm not sure I want to know what that is, but I'm going to ask anyway.
Sigh.

Mark Twain filmed by Thomas Edison

This may be the best "found footage" movie ever.
A short clips has surfaced of Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain taken by Thomas Edison, who was a friend, in 1909.  (One of the places I saw this posted reminded me that Clemens was also friends with Nikola Tesla, which made me think of all sorts of Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter-style shenanigans that could be written.)
You can see the clip here.

Hamlet--the real story in Royal Deceit

Before he donned the Batman's black cape, Christian Bale sported a red cape as Amled, prince of Jutland (Denmark) in this movie based on a chronicle by Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, which was also the source material for Shakespeare's epic drama Hamlet.
In Royal Deceit (a really terrible title), the set-up is much the same as Hamlet--the young prince of Denmark has seemingly gone mad following the murder of his father (and in this case, brother as well).
Although the murder is blamed on two "scouundrels," the real murderer is the king's jealous brother (Gabriel Byrne), who co-opts the queen (Helen Mirren, looking luminously ageless). From the moment the uncle "modestly" accepts the crown in Amled's place, the story begins to diverge from the one we know, although elements remains--like the characters who became Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the girl who was the model for Ophelia, here called Ethel (long E, pronounced EEE-thul), and played by a very young Kate Beckinsale.  (She mostly wears shapeless costumes that make her look pudgy, which is unfortunate.)