#oneaday Day 904: Furry

We've had our pet rats for a little while now and they're both starting to get a bit more confident. Willow, the shy one, has grown significantly more than her sister Lara, making it quite an amusing sight when they play-fight in the evenings.

One thing I find with all animals is that I can't help but anthropomorphise them. They are little people to me, even though I know they can't understand the things I'm saying and that the cute little nibbling thing they do on your finger isn't necessarily a sign of affection — it's more likely them determining whether or not I'm something they can eat.

This means I do silly things like talk to animals. I talk to cats. I talk to dogs. And I talk to our rats, even though they probably find those freakishly huge giants who keep dropping treats into their home utterly terrifying.

I can't help it. I don't know why I talk to them when I know they can't understand me. But I do. I say their names, hoping that they'll learn them. I hope that they'll come when I call them. When they do do something, it's easy to assume that it's because I did something to encourage them. If I say their name and they jump on the side of the cage to climb up and see me, it feels like "I did that" even though it's probably just coincidence. (I know that you can train a lot of animals to respond to their names and to come when you call them, and that rats are surprisingly intelligent little furballs, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that they are responding to me and coming to see what I'm doing.)

I guess this sense of attachment I feel to pets, and the assumption that they are somehow "little people" rather than "not particularly intelligent bundles of fluff", is what makes them good companions and nice things to have around. And animals certainly do have their own personalities — our two rats have clearly defined character traits, and the two cats who have been a part of my family in the past both also acted in their own unique ways. The two cats who live next door to Andie and I now, too, are both their own "people", though they are both united in their desire to get into our house as often as possible. (They haven't succeeded since we got our new sofa, and are being kept well away now we have the rats, too!)

The downside of seeing pets as "little people", of course — and I apologise for getting maudlin here — is that it makes it hard to deal with when they pass on. I recall feeling genuine grief — like, the sort of grief you feel when an actual person dies — when both our family cats died. One such outpouring of said grief can be found here, from the early days of this blog.

But let's not focus on sad things. We have pets now, and they are great. They are becoming much more confident, too, so soon we might even be able to actually take them out of the cage, pet them and play with them. They're still a bit too jumpy for that just yet — Andie's had a couple of bites just from trying to pick them up — but they seem to be learning that the Big Scary Things who keep opening their cage are actually sources of Treats rather than things to be feared.

We have thus far resisted the urge to fill Facebook with rat pictures in the same way people with new babies incessantly fill Facebook with baby pictures (please don't change your profile pic to your baby, it's creepy) but I'm sure that will change as they get happier and more at ease with us. So you can look forward to that.

#oneaday Day 588: House Guests

We have two cats. They're not ours, they belong to our neighbours. But they look like becoming regular visitors.

When I was unpacking things a few days ago, our neighbour visited and warned me that there might be an "inquisitive cat" coming to visit.

"Yes, I know," I said. "We've met."

Right on cue, Chester (for that was his name) came darting out of my front door, fresh from his expedition into our living room full of cardboard boxes. He'd been exploring and had obviously enjoyed himself.

Later, we also met Artie, the other cat from next door. Artie, while initially nervous, is now much more keen to come in whenever possible. "Whenever possible" meaning "whenever the door is open." We've had to kick the little bugger out several times already as he's already decided this place is his second home, it seems.

It transpires that the people who used to live here took care of the aforementioned cats whenever the neighbours were away, so it seems the cats associate this house with pleasant times. Fine by me. Cats are awesome.

(In other news, we get Proper Internet here in two weeks. At that time, the quality and length of entries will likely show a marked upswing as I can stop writing them on my phone and start doing them on the computer with its word count facility once more.)

#oneaday Day 130: Cats are Awesome

I could write about the whole Brink flame war, but I already did that professionally earlier, so I won't go over the same ground.

Instead, I thought I'd write about why cats are awesome.

This is inspired by the visit I had today from one of next door's cats, who is the very best example I've ever seen of a curious cat. She came in, demanded a bit of attention (which she got, as I have a genetic condition which means I cannot walk past any cat without at least attempting to pet it) and then proceeded to explore the house. She started upstairs, where she climbed onto my desk, wandered around behind my computer and then trod all over my keyboard while I was trying to send an email. She then looked very tempted to leap out of the window, but I encouraged her not to.

Next, she paid a visit to the lounge, where the piano is. Despite my polite requests for her not to, she jumped onto the piano and looked curiously into the inner workings. The lid was down, I hasten to add, and there clearly wasn't space for a cat.

Except there was. She managed to squeeze herself into the gap under the lid and disappear completely, the only evidence that she was there at all the sound of the bass strings vibrating slightly. Then a little head poked out as she attempted to extricate herself with some difficulty. I could have put the lid up for her, but she got herself into the situation she was in so she was damn well going to get herself out again.

You don't often think of animals as having "personalities" but cats very much do. The two cats who used to live in the family home (one after the other, not together, as neither were that fond of other feline company) both had distinct personalities, with Penny, our first cat, being all but convinced she was human and our family doing nothing to dissuade her, even inviting her to have Christmas dinner at the dining table on more than one occasion — and invitation she graciously accepted. Our next cat Kitty, on the other hand, was a bit dim but very affectionate, and made it her mission to make even self-professed cat-haters like her.

I know dogs have personalities too. But they need walking and they poo in the street and are rubbish at entertaining themselves, whereas cats are quite happy sleeping all day, stealing cheese and sunning themselves in the garden, with human interaction only coming when they feel like it, thank you very much.

So yes — given the choice and opportunity to have my own pet? Cats all the way, clearly.

#oneaday, Day 162: WTF?

Yesterday, my evening was brought to a screeching halt by the discovery of what happens if you go to Google, type in "2204355" and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky". (Hint: it's this.) This particular work of art is evidence of why the Internet is something that no-one will ever be able to understand. Thinking about that animation and trying to explain it is enough to make OMG HEAD ASPLODE.

Couple that with the fact that some people seem to be convinced that the number "2204355" has some sort of significance (a fact which I did some immensely frustrating and unfruitful research on today) and you've got yourself a proper mystery. Conspiracy theorists would say that the people who claim to know what "2204355" means but won't tell anyone really don't actually know and are just fucking with everyone. It's entirely possible. I've given up thinking about it and just taken to enjoying the dance and the music. CHIKKUN.

Of course, this isn't the first time that an inexplicable meme has swept the Internet. We've had this. And this. And this. Not to mention the many different cats who can do incredible things. And let's not forget the immortal Keyboard Cat, of course. Fatso may be long dead, but his legacy lives on to bring joy to millions.

Love them or hate them, internet memes like this are here to stay. They appear, explode in popularity virally, get overplayed and generally by the time parents or grandparents start emailing them to you as a .wmv file accompanied by size 18 Times New Roman type in bright pink, it's time to leave them alone again. But by then, something new will have appeared.

The thing that pops into my head every time I see something like this is "who came up with that… and how?" Who thought it would be a great idea to get a pixellated video of a black dude dancing and eating chicken and combine it with a hypnotic rainbow background and a chiptune version of the theme from A.L.F? Who realised that saying the words "badger" and "mushroom" over and over was inexplicably funny? Why combine a spinning leek with a Swedish folk song? Why are cats so awesome?

These are questions that will never be answered. But for every idiotic, ill-informed, racist, twattish, knobhead dicksplat that you come across on the Internet, remember, somewhere out there there's someone who will come up with one of these masterpieces of viral pop culture, whether it's through creativity, insanity or both.

Today, I salute those people. You make the world a better place and can brighten even the darkest of times.