Dateline: NEW YORK (15 September 2011) — A calico cat named Willow disappeared from a home near the Rocky Mountains five years ago. Willow escaped when contractors left a door open during a home renovation. Willow was suddenly found Wednesday on a Manhattan street, identified by an implanted chip, and will soon be returned.
How she got to New York, nearly 1,800 miles away, no one knows. Whatever happened, Willow dodged coyotes and owls in Colorado, life on New York streets, and everything in between. Willow was just five and a half pounds.
These advertising cards were all the rage - and collectible. Just a bit before Lovecraft's day, but I couldn't resist in honor of Kappa Alpha Tau ! _____
Cat predicts 50 deaths in RI nursing home A cat with an uncanny ability to detect when nursing home patients are about to die has proven itself in around 50 cases by curling up with them in their final hours, according to a new book.
Egypt's supreme council of antiquities says its archaeologists have unearthed a Ptolemic temple dating back more than 2,000 years and which may have been dedicated to the ancient cat-goddess Bastet. The ancient cat-goddess Bastet found among the temple's ruins in the Kom el-Dekkah area of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.
Lovecraft Loved Cats. Periodically, the HPLblog gives you breaking cat news. :)
Is your cat left or right pawed? 10:28 24 July 2009 by Ewen Callaway Direct Link
Researchers tasked 42 domestic cats to ferret out a bit of tuna in a jar too small for their heads. Among 21 females, all but one favoured the right paw across dozens of trials, while 20 out of 21 males preferentially used the left. One male proved ambidextrous.
Not so for two simpler activities: pawing at a toy mouse suspended in the air or dragged on ground from a string. No matter their sex, all of the cats wielded their right and left paws about equally on these less demanding tasks.
Lovecraft loved cats and I believe he would have smiled at the survival of this member of the Kappa Alpha Tau tribe.
The unbelievable tale of a cat named Lucky -- who fell 26 stories and survived -- doesn't quite prove the myth but it comes pretty close.
In early May, Keri Hostetler was readying her lower Manhattan apartment for guests who were coming to visit. She cracked the window of her home office a few inches -- something she "never, ever did" -- just to air the place out. She left the door to the room ajar and got to work on her laundry.
Her beloved cat Lucky, a 3-year-old gray-and-black striped male who Hostetler describes as "a lover and a hugger" was wandering around the apartment. Or so Hostetler thought.
"I came back up from doing laundry and saw that the room where the window was open -- the door was open," she told "Good Morning America Weekend Edition." "I rushed in to the window and saw the window washers kind of waving for me."
Meanwhile, across the street, two men were on scaffolding, caulking windows more than 30 stories up, when one of them spotted Lucky on a narrow ledge just across the way.
"The cat was on the ledge and we saw it trying to turn a corner. But there was no ledge for him to step on," said John Hayes, the eagle-eyed worker. "My partner told me to get my camera, so I did."
Lucky fell 26 stories before landing on a cement balcony below. Hayes was able to snap three photos: Lucky on the ledge, Lucky in midair, and Lucky's landing.
Back in the apartment, Keri noticed the door was open and the cat was missing.
"I ran around the apartment screaming for him," she said. "And then I saw the window and I knew what had happened."
When she went to the window, she saw Hayes signaling her, letting her know that the cat had indeed taken a great fall.
"I didn't know if it was dead or alive," Hayes said. "I found him curled up in a grill cover on the sixth floor."
For Hostetler, who has had Lucky from the time he was a kitten, it was an emotional day.
"It was the worst day," she said. "If you have children, I imagine that that relationship is somewhat similar for mine for a pet since I don't have kids yet. He's awesome. And he's been with us. He goes with us on trips. He flies to see our families, so it was devastating, at first."
Lucky was rushed to a veterinary hospital, where he was treated for minor injuries -- a broken toe and a broken lower jaw.
"That's the miraculous thing about Lucky," Hostetler told "GMA." "He has been [lucky] since we got him."
At the scene of the accident, Hayes mentioned to Hostetler that he'd taken some pictures of the cat's plunge. Hostetler thanked him repeatedly for keeping a sharp eye out for her cat and waving to her so she knew that he'd fallen.
Babels of blocks to the high heavens towering Flames of futility swirling below; Poisonous fungi in brick and stone flowering, Lanterns that shudder and death-lights that glow.
Black monstrous bridges across oily rivers, Cobwebs of cable to nameless things spun; Catacomb deeps whose dank chaos delivers Streams of live foetor that rots in the sun.
Colour and splendour, disease and decaying, Shrieking and ringing and crawling insane, Rabbles exotic to stranger-gods praying, Jumbles of odour that stifle the brain.
Legions of cats from the alleys nocturnal. Howling and lean in the glare of the moon, Screaming the future with mouthings infernal, Yelling the Garden of Pluto's red rune.
Tall towers and pyramids ivy'd and crumbling, Bats that swoop low in the weed-cumber'd streets; Bleak Arkham bridges o'er rivers whose rumbling Joins with no voice as the thick horde retreats.
Belfries that buckle against the moon totter, Caverns whose mouths are by mosses effac'd, And living to answer the wind and the water, Only the lean cats that howl in the wastes.
Lovecraft loved cats. I think he'd like this cat and this story. _____
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Yoda, a smoke-colored feline whose four ears give him the appearance of a horned devil, became the toast of several high-profile Web sites the week of 17 August 2008. The blogosphere quickly pounced on the story of a 2-year-old cat who had been a barroom oddity before he was adopted by a suburban couple. Ted and Valerie Rock found Yoda in 2006 while watching a Bears game at a (Chicago) Blue Island bar with fellow volunteers from the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Patrons were passing the 8-week-old kitten around, mocking his appearance and calling him names such as "Devil Cat" and "Beelzebub." The Rocks took pity on the kitty and offered to adopt him. The establishment's owner, who kept the cat in a cage atop the bar to amuse patrons, agreed.
Would Lovecraft have chuckled or been upset over this one?
_____
Saudi Arabia's religious police have announced a ban on selling pet cats or exercising them in public in the Saudi capital, because of men use them as a means of making passes at women, an official has said.
Jeff is a loyal participant in the Lovecraft-Google-Group. Pazuzu's Petals is his blog, and besides words of wisdom from his daily life, he adds interesting bits of research and arcana.
In the used book store I picked up a cool ghost story book - another of my hobbies is collecting ghost stories. Anyway, in Ghosts of the Carolinas, Nancy Roberts, University of South Carolina Press, 3rd printing, 1991, (c) 1988 from Roberts' stories circa 1962-1967. "The Witch Cat" (pp. 34-39) describes a story of pre-Revolutionary South Carolina of a widower grain miller who meets a beautiful traveler and marries her. It's a typical composite ghost story with classic story telling elements. However, Roberts is an gifted, outstanding storyteller and makes the narrative come alive. I extracted a pericope from the within the longer story that I thought Lovecraft might have liked had he read it or would have enjoyed hearing if one of his friends had told it to him.
The Witch Cat ...Tim Farrow could feel his flesh tingle with real fear. ... At that moment there came a sharp, staccato pounding at the door ... Tim sprang ... seized an ax which he had placed beside him in the event of trouble. There was a brief moment of silence. Then the door flew open . In rushed a horde of tremendous cats. Backs humped and teeth bared, the cats began to inscribe menacing circles around him. As they passed they struck visciously at him with their outstretched paws. The terrified miller soon saw that if he did not defend himself he would be clawed to death. Grasping his ax with both hands he swung mightily at a ferocious cat springing straight at him. The face with its flashing yellow eyes was close upon him as his ax swept through the air and landed on the animal's right paw, completely severing it. The cat gave one cry of terrible pain and with ear splitting screams and catterwauling the whole band fled out the door through which they came.
Tim stumbled out of the mill and back to his cottage. He found his wife in their bedroom. She lay on the bed in a rapidly widening pool of blood. To his horror he saw that it flowed from her right arm.
The arm had been neatly severed at the wrist.
Before the wretched man could speak his wife leaped out of the bed and her body took on the shape of a monstrous cat. Eyes blazing, it streaked past him out of the house.
Roberts wrote for the Charlotte Observer, coming tot he attention of Carl Sandberg who encouraged her story telling. Her first book was in 1958.
As a teenager, Lovcraft had a triple blow. His grandfather passed necessitating a rapid move from the house he so loved into an apratment. Simultaneously his cat was "lost". No one, not even Lovecraft, knew what ahppened to the cat. Perhaps it was scared and disoriented, perhap returned to the old, familair home, perhaps was struck by a car?
In the 21st century, a mass exodus from over-mortgaged homes is causing a repercussion all to familar to the one that affected Lovecraft. Perhaps we get a glimpse of what happened to poor Lovecraft's cat.
Foreclosures Lead to Abandoned Animals By EVELYN NIEVES – Jan 29, 2008
Pets "are getting dumped all over," said Traci Jennings, president of the Humane Society ... In one such colony in Modesto, two obviously tame cats watched alone from a distance as a group of feral cats devoured a pile of dry food Jennings offered. "These are obviously abandoned cats," Jennings said. "They're not afraid of people, and they stay away from the feral cats because they're ostracized by them."
Despite months of warning before a foreclosure, many desperate homeowners run out the clock hoping to forestall an eviction. Then they panic, particularly if they are moving to a home where pets are not permitted.
The problem is exacerbated because most people grappling with foreclosure are returning to rental housing or moving in with relatives — two situations where it can be difficult or impossible to bring pets. "What we've always known is that when times are hard for people, they're hard for their pets," said Stephen Zawistowski, a vice president at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. ... happy endings elude a majority of foreclosure animals.
Lovecraft loved cats. I think he'd like this story.
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. - The last time cat-owner Kelly Levy saw her tiger-striped feline was before she took her husband to the airport. The 24-year-old came back to her house late Friday to find the bottom step, where Gracie Mae would usually be waiting, empty.
Levy tore the house apart looking for the 10-month-old tabby who had been spayed just days before. She and her dad took out bathroom tiles and part of a cabinet to check a crawl space and papered the neighborhood with "lost cat" signs. Then she got a phone call.
"Hi, you're not going to believe this, but I am calling from Fort Worth, Texas, and I accidentally picked up your husband's luggage. And when I opened the luggage, a cat jumped out," Levy recalled the caller saying, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. Rob Carter, of Fort Worth, told The Dallas Morning News for its online edition Tuesday that he made it home with the suitcase.
"I went to unpack and saw some of the clothes and saw it wasn't my suitcase," Carter said. "I was going to close it, and a kitten jumped out and ran under the bed. I screamed like a little girl." Carter said that he eventually was able to get the cat to come out from under the bed. "In the morning, I got close enough to see its collar and the phone number on it," he said. "So I called the number and got a hold of the crying wife of the traveler."
Gracie Mae had crawled into Seth Levy's black suitcase undetected, been put through an X-ray machine, loaded onto an airplane, thrown onto a baggage claim conveyor belt and picked up by a stranger. Carter delivered Gracie Mae to Seth Levy and the tabby made the 1,300-mile trip home on an $80 plane ticket Sunday night.
Carter said that he considered keeping the cat before he knew she had a home. "If I couldn't have found a good home, I would have kept it," he said. "We were going to name it Suitcase."
Classic era fanzine by Roy Loan, Jr. from 1950 (you should be bale to click on the image and enlarge it in a new window).
20 pages with highlights: Seabury Quinn - On Science Fiction And The Weird Phillip Bridges - What's That Name Again HP Lovecraft's : Something About Cats ... is reviewed Phil Rasch - Comments On Cycles DR Smith - The Road To Fame II
In Columbus, Ohio, K.A.T. member Tommy saved the cat's owner, Gary Rosheisen.
He was on the ground near his bed having fallen out of his wheelchair. Tommy hit the right buttons to call 911.
"I know it sounds kind of weird," Officer Patrick Daugherty said, unsuccessfully searching for some other explanation.
Rosheisen said he couldn't get up because of pain from osteoporosis and ministrokes that disrupt his balance. He also wasn't wearing his medical-alert necklace and couldn't reach a cord above his pillow that alerts paramedics that he needs help.
