Hello All,
Alberto here strolling down the internet highway to bring you the best in feline happenings. I hope you enjoy this week’s compilation.
Purrs & Head Bonks,
Betty Boo, the Feline Hair Salon Employee – Yahoo Lifestyle
Those of you who follow my Wednesday wanderings know how much I love stories about cats with jobs. I prefer to find felines with unusual professions and Betty Boo fits the bill. If you happen to visit the BABAR Hair Studio in Melbourne, Australia you can meet their purrfect employee, Betty Boo. Her photo is featured on their website and they make sure you know Betty is part of their customer service team. Their website says, “At BABAR Hair we love what we do. We create professional salon results, in a relaxed, easy atmosphere: where good old fashioned hospitality with a glass of wine or beer, a coffee and biscotti, a cuddle from our salon cat and choosing your own vinyl (if you’re not digging our cool tunes already!) are all part of the experience…”
Not everyone finds a visit to the hair salon as a relaxing experience and Betty caters to the more nervous clients. Betty will sit on your lap or even sleep on you while you’re having a shampoo. And if that wasn’t enough, Betty is an opining feline on her own blog, aptly named “Betty’s Blog”. Betty is definitely my kind of kitty!
Cats Can Be Right Or Left Pawed – SmithsonianMag.com
Have you ever bothered to watch which paw your cat uses when they knock things off of counters or tap you oh-so-gently to wake you up? You may want to look next time because according to researchers at the Animal Behavior Centre at Queen’s University in Belfast, after analyzing data collected on 44 cats, 20 females and 24 males of all variety of felines, the researchers concluded that cats, unlike humans who are overwhelmingly right-handed, did not have an overall preference for a certain paw. Individual cats did display what they called “handedness” and certain paws were selected for taking the first step down a flight of stairs, snagging a treat or stepping into the litter box. There are a lot more interesting tidbits in the article. You can see me above, exhibiting that I am ambi-pawderous when it comes to doing my blog posts.
Cats Get Their Own Violin Concert in this Animated Short – Nerdist
Combine a famous violinist (Augustin Hadelich) and animation and you get a great little movie about music loving cats. Fantasia dei Gatti is an animated short film that features the violinist giving a concert to felines. What happens next? Well you’ll just have to watch the video to find out!
Cat Brings Her Human a Gift Every Morning – MetroUK
Baloo the cat had a shaky start with her human. Adopted by Ben and his now ex-girlfriend, they returned Baloo when they felt they weren’t ready to have a cat in their life. They quickly realized they made a mistake and hurried to get Baloo back. Baloo, a cat to realize how lucky she is, is closely bonded to Ben. She began to bring him presents, birds, mice, etc and drop them on his chest in the morning. After Ben impressed upon her that half dead creatures were not gifts he greatly appreciated, she began bringing him leaves. When Ben showed his appreciation for the leaf gifts, the morning gifts became a regular routine. Now Baloo can show her love and gratitude and Ben doesn’t have to fear his morning gifts.
Felines Bringing People Together in Turkey – The Guardian
Selem is a resident of historic Istanbul. He puts up with the tourists that push their way through the crowds and demand a photo op with him. Selim enjoys hanging out in his shop, a leather store called Moria. Selem is a cat. Selem and the other cats in historic Istanbul much prefer their independent, cushy street life but when winter comes they are forced to endure the care of humans. Winter cat houses appear all over to accommodate these pampered pussy cats.
Turkey is a nation struggling with national identity, divisions about religion, secularism and ethnicity but there is one thing that does unite the Turks and that is their love of cats. Someone once said that the only thing an Islamist, a secularist and a socialist could agree on was the punishment of anyone who harmed a cat. I never realized that we felines were such unifying creatures. I think I should start a group, Felines for World Peace and make the Turkish cats the leaders.
a feline’s need in mind. Needless to say, the tree is made of quality materials. It’s called the Neko Tree and I think the Tribe of Five should have one. I had the female human convert 1 milion yen to USD and it’s only $8,826,20 (which sounds waaay better than 1 million yen!)
uninterested. You’ll find out what catnip is, why we’re attracted to it, what it can be used for (did you know humans can benefit from catnip?) 
In the process of doing my blog post I met a very nice Tuxedo Cat named Whisky. The Tribe of Five was interested to hear Whisky opine about his human, his life in the UK and the life of a Tuxedo Cat in general, so I set up an interview with him. I invite you to join our conversation and we always love to hear from fellow felines and if you’re at Tuxedo, definitely give us a “meow out”.
Why thank you Oliver. I got my name because my mum had never seen a cat with such long whiskers! Eventually my name (Whiskers) was shortened to Whisky and it stuck!
I don’t remember much of the first few months of my life but I do remember when I was a kitten of four months, finding myself in a cold suitcase outside a cat rescue home. Thankfully, they let me in! A month later my mum and dad came to see me in there. We got on great and through my fabulous powers of purrrsuasion, I convinced them to become my humans.
Are you kitten me? Left in a suitcase? ‘Makes me wonder about some humans out there. I must say though, the humans in the UK do seem enlightened about “moggies” and we often opine on cat-topics from across the Pond. Since your humans are such fans of tea, do they serve you catnip tea?
Catnip tea? What’s that? I’ve never heard of it, please tell me where I can send my humans to get some. I do have a small amount of catnip but my human mostly hides it away.
We felines spend a lot of time keeping watch over our neighborhoods by sitting in the window. What do you see when you look our your windows and what’s your favorite thing to watch outside?
I love watching birds, they get me so excited! Sometimes a big black cat comes and meows at me through the window and we have a chat together too.
Ah, that was one of his stupid ideas that never worked. He’s probably forgotten about it. I think he hoped to use it to get in touch with a few veterinary students who may be interested in coming on as writers, but he had no applications. Oh well!
Well, he certainly has become informed about Tuxedo cats and a great advocate for them. Your inspiration has resulted in amazing work. Have you ever watched Henri, le 
Well my friend, this interview has gone quite long and you’re looking a bit tired. It’s been great fun. Thanks so much for purrticipating and please thank your human for all his hard work on behalf of Tuxedo Cats! Oh wait, it appears that we’ve gone overtime and into Whisky’s nap time. We’ll just wish him and his humans well and quietly, oh so quietly end this interview.
Did you know that in the UK 75% of all cats are Black and White? And, because they are so common they’re often overlooked by many people when choosing a cat? Well this black and white cat says that’s terrible! I was horrified to learn that Tuxedo patterned cats generally spend more than ten days longer in cat shelters than other cats. This really made me think. If our humans hadn’t adopted us after fostering us, Alberto (my brother, the Siamese looking fellow) probably would have been adopted much sooner than me, even here in the U.S.
Home | felineopines 