Walk Through The Web Wednesday – 4/17

Happy Wednesday my furiends,
This week we’ve been having some fun with cat groups. As you might guess, The Human is a member of multiple cat groups on the web and we have our own Facebook page as well. One of the groups we subscribe to is “This Cat is GROMPY”. The Human was messing around with different features on her camera and submitted this photo to the group This Cat is GROMPY. So far I’ve received almost 500 reactions and comments. Some folks asked for a full cat photo so they could see what I really looked like. I don’t know, do I look that GROMPY?

We also belong to the group, “This Cat is CHONKY”. Someone put out a requests for photos of CHONKS when they were babies. Here is Oliver’s

Lily, not a GROMP or CHONK had The Human do a few glamour shots .

And finally, here is our photo celebrating National Pet Day on our Facebook page.

Well, that’s a glimpse of our week. I hope your week was purrfect!

Cat looks fur-ious after being chiseled out of wall

This story reminds me of that saying I’ve heard you humans use, “no good deed goes unpunished”. This feline got himself in a pickle and found himself  between two walls and the object of a rescue by firefighters. The Fire Captain said crews, “carefully chiseled” out the hapless feline and that it is now safe and sound.

Despite being rescued from death’s clutches, this cat does not look grateful at all!

Cats Are Finally Having a Big Hollywood Meow-Ment

After reading this article I’m thinking about having The Human find me an agent! Cats are showing up in all kinds of films these days. In Steven Zaillian’s Netflix series Ripley, a Maine Coon with the screen name Lucio, plays a main character role.  

Then there’s  Paramount’s upcoming A Quiet Place: Day One, about a woman struggling to escape an alien invasion with her tuxedo cat, Frodo. Last fall, Disney’s The Marvels co-starred a deadly super-powered ginger cat, Goose. In Matthew Vaughn’s spy comedy Argylle, which has just started streaming on Apple TV+, Bryce Dallas Howard is on the run from assassins with her Scottish Fold, Alfie.

As you can see my feline furiends, there are more and more lead roles for felines who can act. We felines have gotten leading roles in animated movies but live action film parts have been few and far between for us.

There would be the rare cat part such as Disney’s 1965 film That Darn Cat and the Coen brothers’ 2013 dramedy Inside Llewyn Davis and that’s just about it.  The reason for this is stated that cats have long had a reputation for messing up scenes and testing even the most patient of filmmakers.  This has caused us to be treated more like a movie prop than a true actor.

In an early draft of Argylle, Vaughn says his novelist Elly (Howard) likewise left her cat at home before embarking on an adventure with superspy Aidan (Sam Rockwell). “Then I saw a Taylor Swift documentary where she has her cat in a cat-pack and I remember thinking it was a crazy image,” Vaughn recalls when speaking to The Hollywood Reporter. “I thought having the three of them going on an adventure together would be fantastic. I was nervous about it being a cat, because cats aren’t exactly the most trainable animal.” Yet by the time the movie was released, Aflie was front and center in the marketing campaign.

Zaillian was also wary of giving a cat such an important role in his adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley. “I had written the cat into the scripts, and I did it with some trepidation,” says the Oscar winner, who recast the role Lucio twice before finding the majestic and judge-y looking King. “I had this idea that the only witnesses to Tom’s crimes would be animals that couldn’t testify and people who might be uncomfortable testifying. The cat, of course, was the tricky one. [During casting,] owners would bring cats into the office and think you would want them to do tricks. But what we wanted was a cat that could just be really chill, and comfortable with people and cameras.”

And in the upcoming Quiet Place prequel, writer-director Michael Sarnoski (who previously made the Nicolas Cage animal-centric film Pig) likewise gave a cat a hefty role. The movie’s cat wrangler, Jo Vaughan (who also worked on The Marvels), says Day One might be the finest cat performance she’s ever seen in film due to Frodo’s relationship with the story’s human characters, combined with some thrilling action sequences.

Why are cats bring written in as major characters in films? First, cats are a hot item right now and let’s face it, we own the internet.  There are so many cat videos showing off our many talents and these would have to have captured the attention of Hollywood decision makers.  And decision makers like Argylle are realizing how emotive we felines are. Add to this the advancement of CG animation technology and Hollywood is becoming more and more open to hiring felines.

Finally, there are more humans who now know how to teach us to do stuff so acting cats have a much better repertoire.

So my furiends, brush up that resume and film an audition and prepare yourself for stardom!

The cat distribution system worked its magic once again when a kitten followed a man into his home

The Human has been hearing the phrase “kitten (or cat) distribution system a lot lately. Here is a wonderful story that explains what it means.

Redditor r/BurtMaclin23 had never owned a cat although he’s lived lived just about every pet you can imagine like dogs, ducks, chickens, and pigs, reptiles and parrots.

He shared a story of how a kitten walked into his life on a recent post shared to the subreddit r/cats. He was outside one morning when a kitten saw him and followed him back inside. He had seen the kitten previously, but when trying to call her over, she ran away from him and into the woods.

This day, she walked inside with him without hesitation, “trying to infiltrate” his home, he wrote. His dog of 15 years had died two months prior to the kitten’s arrival so he figured the timing was right and let the tiny kitten stay. He turned to Reddit asking users for advice and tips to make her comfortable.

After no one responded to his queries to see if the kitten had a home he took her to the vet and checked if she was chipped. Now he’[s happy that no one claimed her because he’s enjoying her. He said, “We are doing great! She is a handful and very opinionated but extremely affectionate,” r/BurtMaclin23, who asked for his real name not to be used, told Newsweek via Reddit messaging. “I still miss my dog but I think this kitten found me right when I needed her.”

So that is how the cat/kitten distribution system works. Someone needs a cat (even if they don’t know it) and a cat shows up and finds themselves a forever home!

The Human has been hearing the phrase “kitten (or cat) distribution system a lot lately. Here is a wonderful story that explains what it means.

Redditor r/BurtMaclin23 had never owned a cat although he’s lived lived just about every pet you can imagine like dogs, ducks, chickens, and pigs, reptiles and parrots.

He shared a story of how a kitten walked into his life on a recent post shared to the subreddit r/cats. He was outside one morning when a kitten saw him and followed him back inside. He had seen the kitten previously, but when trying to call her over, she ran away from him and into the woods.

This day, she walked inside with him without hesitation, “trying to infiltrate” his home, he wrote. His dog of 15 years had died two months prior to the kitten’s arrival so he figured the timing was right and let the tiny kitten stay. He turned to Reddit asking users for advice and tips to make her comfortable.

After no one responded to his queries to see if the kitten had a home he took her to the vet and checked if she was chipped. Now he’[s happy that no one claimed her because he’s enjoying her. He said, “We are doing great! She is a handful and very opinionated but extremely affectionate,” r/BurtMaclin23, who asked for his real name not to be used, told Newsweek via Reddit messaging. “I still miss my dog but I think this kitten found me right when I needed her.”

So that is how the cat/kitten distribution system works. Someone needs a cat (even if they don’t know it) and a cat shows up and finds themselves a forever home!

The Human has been hearing the phrase “kitten (or cat) distribution system a lot lately. Here is a wonderful story that explains what it means.

Redditor r/BurtMaclin23 had never owned a cat although he’s lived lived just about every pet you can imagine like dogs, ducks, chickens, and pigs, reptiles and parrots.

He shared a story of how a kitten walked into his life on a recent post shared to the subreddit r/cats. He was outside one morning when a kitten saw him and followed him back inside. He had seen the kitten previously, but when trying to call her over, she ran away from him and into the woods.

This day, she walked inside with him without hesitation, “trying to infiltrate” his home, he wrote. His dog of 15 years had died two months prior to the kitten’s arrival so he figured the timing was right and let the tiny kitten stay. He turned to Reddit asking users for advice and tips to make her comfortable.

After no one responded to his queries to see if the kitten had a home he took her to the vet and checked if she was chipped. Now he’[s happy that no one claimed her because he’s enjoying her. He said, “We are doing great! She is a handful and very opinionated but extremely affectionate,” r/BurtMaclin23, who asked for his real name not to be used, told Newsweek via Reddit messaging. “I still miss my dog but I think this kitten found me right when I needed her.”

So that is how the cat/kitten distribution system works. Someone needs a cat (even if they don’t know it) and a cat shows up and finds themselves a forever home!

The artist Gustav Klimt was a Cat Daddy

Famous Austrian artist Gustav Klimt loved cats so much that he let them take over his studio and his heart.  When art critic Arthur Roessler visited the painter’s studio, he was reportedly shocked by the conditions he met.

“As I sat with Klimt and rummaged around in a heap of papers, surrounded by eight or 10 meowing, purring cats, play fighting with each other, so much so that the rustling study sheets just went flying, I asked him, puzzled, why he tolerated such antics spoiling hundreds of the most beautiful drawings,” Roessler wrote.

Klimt was pointedly unbothered by the chaos around him. “No, my friend, even if they crumple and tear one or the other pieces of paper,” he told the critic. “It doesn’t matter; they only pee on the others, and, you know, it makes the best fixing agent.”

It hasn’t been determined if Klimt used cat pee as a fixative on his work. Probably Klimt was tired about being questioned about the cats in his studio and made the claim as a joke.  

Klimt was quite a recluse and lifted himself out of poverty with his art. He moved from his country life to live in the elegant city of Vienna.  Although the elite of Vienna purchased his art, they shunned him in society due to his country dialect and manners which were not fit to move in their society.  

No wonder he turned to his furry friends for company. An iconic photo, shot by photographer Moriz Naehr, depicted him standing outside his studio, wearing one of the floor-length caftans he painted in, cradling his beloved cat Katze.

It’s interesting that despite his deep affection for cats he never painted them. Last year, however, the Vienna Tourist Board mashed up the internet’s love of cats with Klimt’s and launched their campaign titled UnArtificial Art. They used A.I. to reimagine Klimt’s iconic artwork, The Kiss, replacing the lovers in the painting with sorrowful felines in a tender embrace.

Image above: Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (1907–1908). Collection of the Belvedere, Vienna. Right: A.I. picture generated on Midjourney by Vienna Tourist Board. Photos: © Belvedere Museum and Vienna Tourist Board.