average joe cat show!!!

This Saturday in Seattle there’s finally a place for all the totally special but still very normal cats to go to have their day in the sun: the Average Joe Cat Show.

Unlike some of the fancier cat shows out there, the Average Joe Cat Show is a day for cats to just hang out and be awesome. Prizes will be awarded for: Longest Tail, Softest Fur in the West, Longest Whiskers, Fluffiest Tail, Black Beauty, Best Senior, Most Unusual Markings, Mr. and Mrs. Personality, Most Average, Scrappiest Looking, Most Playful, Most Obnoxious, and Monster Cat (largest).

There’s also a costume contest. This guy won last year:

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cooper the cat: emerging photographer

You may remember Cooper the cat, whose owners strapped a small camera to his collar and let him loose in their neighborhood. Well now Cooper has achieved something many photographers dream of: his first solo show.

“‘We never thought we’d have an artist that is an American Shorthair cat,’ said Kevin Law, owner of the gallery and a professional photographer. ‘But . . . he has classical compositions right out of a photo textbook. There may be no intent behind them, but they’re beautiful artwork.’”

Indeed.

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spending eternity with your kitty

Earlier this week, Democrat Ken Jacobsen proposed a bill that would allow Seattle pet owners to be buried with their pets. Jacobsen, who lost his 23-pound cat Sam recently, realized that Sam would have preferred to be buried with him instead of in the backyard, and is hoping that limiting the bill to cats and dogs he can ensure its passing.

Jacobsen and Sam

I don’t see any problem with this. But some do. As the article says, “other opponents were concerned about diminishing the dignity of human remains, and the fact that those who have died wouldn’t have any say in whether a family pet would later be added to their grave.”

Right, I’m sure that’ll be a big problem. “Hey, Grandma hated cats. You know what would totally get her goat? If we buried her with one! Yeah!”

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the continuing adventures of cats with cameras

Last month, I wrote about Mr. Lee and his cat camera. One of the cats I noticed in the gallery on Mr. Lee’s site was Cooper from Seattle. Now Cooper is having his own brush with stardom, or at least as much stardom as a cat wearing a camera around its neck can garner. He made the front page of his local Seattle Post-Intelligencer

and appeared on Animal Planet’s new Cats 101 series.

Cooper’s owners, who are filmmakers themselves, have a flickr set of his photos, some of which are actually kind of beautiful, like these:

Someone should give Cooper a gallery show!

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