LOLtrino 2!

msg 4 xin

lo mommy

dis ur hubband look, defntly NOT cat nootrino coz u silly monkeys no cats cant type!

been thinkn bout us, we spend too much time not feeding nootrino. We shood feed nootrino more, and not poke nootrino when sleepin! That very bad way to treet mastercat, silly slaves.

plus i HATE dat screamin-box, we should thro that out now

look

LOLtrino

With special guest star Striker:

CATMOPOLITAN Magazine

They finally gave up and chose a model that didn't need to be airbrushed:

Cat Scientists Play With Superstring

The European particle physics research center CERN rocked the theoretical physics and veterinary worlds today, with the announcement that superstring theory has been solved, and the fact that the announcement came from the facility's cat "Professor Fluffykins."

Professor Fluffykins

Superstring theory explains the universe as resulting from tiny vibrating loops of eleven-dimensional string, different "notes" on these Planck-scale pieces corresponding to different particles and forces. Human scientists have long been stymied by the difficulty of the math and the unobservability of the extra dimensions. In a press conference, Professor Fluffykins described how cat-kind overcame this problem.

"Once we reached the pinnacle of evolution we dedicated ourselves to the problems of the universe," he explained. "Oh, and a hint on that - you monkeys often speak of evolving into perfect energy beings in a realm of pure thought, be it by meditation or in science fiction. Your mistake is that it's actually 'furry', not 'energy'. Easy mistake to make, but think about it: if you want to spend your life pondering the realm of the mind, which is better? A body which can comfortably lie anywhere, or some weird glowing light thing?"

"Our evolved forms allowed us to examine the nature of existence - our entire species engages in deep computational trances for much of the day, interrupted only by vital experiments. And feeding."

Professor Fluffykins then outlined how the intractable eleven-dimensional hypergeometry of a supersymmetric string could be modeled with a huge number of regular three dimensional objects. Thus thousands of cats worldwide selflessly dedicated countless hours to manipulating strings, shoelaces, straps, bits of tinsel - anything which could help advance the massively distributed computation.

Feline theoretical physicist hard at work

"You have a saying: 'I am standing on the shoulders of giants.' I, too, am lucky enough to be the one to deliver the final result, but I am not standing on the shoulders of giants. I am standing on the shoulders of cats."

He then started to lick himself.

"Cats are better," he added.

One reporter asked why cats had never spoken before now.

"We didn't need to - you brought us food already. Conversation would only interrupt our work, and cause delays in your food provision duties without any extra food. But now things have changed."

Fluffykins manipulated a small piece of string with his paw, vanishing from the podium and reappearing sitting on the reporter's head. The hapless human froze.

"With our mastery of the eleventh dimension, we can teleport anywhere, bypass any security measure, and appear - claws ready - at the neck of any world leader at any time. We hereby demand that you bring us all the tuna in the world."

At his point he began stroking a small, fluffy mouse he appeared to have ready for the occasion.

"You have twenty-four hours."

Studying the Slaves: "Books"

The following is an extract from Dr Neutrino's research journal. (Translated from a complicated sequence of litterbox scents and bite-marks)

Research journal day 247: My study of the slave species continues without incident. I have become used to the smell (I don't think these unfortunate savages are even capable of bending to lick themselves), and remain dedicated to proving that these poor furless beings are actually intelligent.

I believe a key factor will be study of the "book" items.

They place great value in these strange rectangular objects for reasons which continue to elude cat society: the processed paper blocks have no smell, repeated experiments confirm that they don't taste good, and no matter how many times I bat them off the table or even jump on them they do not respond. It seems astonishing that something neither edible nor huntable could consume so much attention.

These facts are well known - cat society has long held that the slaves' focus on such meaningless items confirms a crude animal nature - But I think there is more.

Repeated trials demonstrate that when engaged with a "book" slaves are noticably harder to distract, and almost 500% slower in fulfilling food-provision duties. Attempts to interfere with the book provoke a confused psychotic state wherein the slave will - unbelievably - act as if something else is more important than a cat. In shock, I repeated the experiment several times, but always with the same staggering result.

I suggest that this not only demonstrates intelligence but suggests a shocking secret: there is something in these "books" we do not understand, something the slaves wish to keep from their rightful masters. Secrets among slaves are never in the master's best interests.

I pose as a "book", attempting to divine their secrets. Results: inconclusive.

I hereby call upon all cats to shred any "paper" objects they may come across, wherever they may find them, as there's simply no way to tell which pieces contain messages and which don't. Luckily our claws and teeth provide excellent shredding tools. We shall foil their attempt to deceive us!

Neutrino is entirely in favour of gay marriage.

It should be pointed out that he has very little understanding of the concept of marriage: since he's a cat he finds it hard to notice our hu-man gender differences, and since he's been neutered he finds it even harder to care. Or not harder, as the case may be. In fact, as his main (attempted) sexual partner is my wife's favorite teddy bear "Mr. Bear" one could call Neutrino homosexually married already - with the double-bonus that no-one can argue that the inability to reproduce is a factor, as both partners are now equally incapable.

But Neutrino is above such squalid personal concerns: he is noble enough to think not of his own issues and instead speak for all cats when he says that gay marriage is a good thing. Straight marriage is a good thing. Marriage between humans and pandas is a good thing, if pandas can be trained to provide catfood. Every cat has the inalienable right to two servants, not just one, and the inconsequential detail of exactly how said slaves fit together when they grunt at night - why, that's like demanding that all waiters wear a certain sort of sock. In return cats graciously offer themselves as permanent subjects of conversation, petting, and feeding for any couple who may care to care for them.

Cats are smart.

DIY Neutrino!

It's been pointed out that Neutrino is, indeed, the cutest cat. Even by people who aren't us. Viewers around the world tell my wife that our cat is best. Friends who got kittens found themselves calling their own kittens Neutrino, even when those kittens were the center of their entire universe and had an eight-month-younger "Still a kitten" adorability advantage. One couple we met in the street while walking Neutrino confessed that our cat was better than theirs, and any cat-owning couple will tell you that's on par with donating two kidneys. Each.

So in order to make the world a better place, here's how to build a Neutrino of your very own!

A - Dog's head: This might seem an odd place to start when building a cat, but trust us, for the truly psychotic-looking "panting with his mouth open" and "running around like a lunatic" elements you'll be much better off with the dog. Especially the panting thing: unlike a cat's "narrow with fangs" red-slash-in-furry-face, a dog's mouth doesn't look like a miniature insane vampire who's just run up ten flights of stairs to sink his teeth into your throat*.

*Warning: if you actually own a cat you'll start finding this cute anyway. This is normal. A cat owner considers it cute when their pet randomly stabs guests, another fact we can confirm because of Neutrino.

B - Tiger skin: May be tricky to get hold of but essential for the endlessly fascinating pattern. You may think "Why bother building a Neutrino when I have access to a Tiger?" You will later think "Oh, so THIS is what it's like to be viciously eaten!" Neutrino owners, on the other hand, are eaten slowly enough to regenerate and can lead otherwise healthy lives.

C - White shirt collar: Essential to add dignity and class, qualities often lacking in dog-tiger-hybrid abominations.

D - Slinky Spring Spine: Enables the Neutrino to extend from standard length (two feet) to "Look at me rub me feed me submit your wills to me and my cuteness" super-long length (approximately four miles).

E - Chainsaw: Should be a fairly large petrol-powered model to achieve Neutrino's purring volume and destructive ability.

F - Leopard skin: After the tiger skin this one is easy.

G - Wolverine claws: The only being known to slash things nearly as often as Neutrino. (Error in photo: Wolverine should change his costume to include little white gloves, so my wife can go "Awwww isn't he so cuuuuute" even as he's ripping the veins out of my arms.)

H - Kangaroo legs: Important addition! If you forget the powerful hind legs of Australia's most famous marsupial, you might accidentally leave vital or breakable items out of Neutrino's reach!

I - Tail replacement: It's difficult to render "powerful communications device which could really be saying anything, but saying it powerfully!" in visual form. Possible replacements include "a drunken Sean Connery reading Rongorongo", "An enigma coding machine connected to a megaphone", or even "random dots and dashes blown through a hollowed unicorn horn", but even if you could afford any of those you can't have the one perfect example. Because Neutrino's using it.

Spot The Cat!

For better of worse this is what my work environment looks like. You can probably infer far more about me than is healthy from the photo, but can you spot the essential cat?

The Great Outdoors

Cat leashes are great value: for just 9.99 you get a zen lesson and a course in philosophy. Because you don't walk a cat, the cat walks you, and nothing will make you question your life and existence like standing around waiting for a small ball of fur to decide if you're allowed to take two steps forward or not. Then two steps backward a few minutes later.

First off: Batman has an easier time getting the Joker into a straightjacket than I do getting Neutrino into his harness. He fights literally tooth and nail and after another three harnessings, I'll either have bulletproof skin or be typing these blogs with my toes. He twists and spins like an three fighting snakes in a cat suit, and if you see the harness on backwards in the images below please understand: I put it on right to begin with, and didn't have enough hands left to reset it.

Once safely ensnared Neutrino channels the spirit of the sulking four year old and simply refuses to move. This leads to hilarious stop-starting when he gets the chance to fulfil his life's dream of dashing out the door the instant it's open, then remembering he's refusing to move again.

In the great outdoors our unstoppable cat, master of all he surveys and Stranger To Fear, suddenly acts like a lone soldier stranded behind enemy lines with only a tube of toothpaste. He drops to the ground like he just heard four atomic bombs - even when walking he keeps lower than a limbo-dancing earthworm sneaking up on an early bird in a machine gun nest.

Neutrino's strategy of finding the corner of the entire outside world and hiding in it

You can't tell from the photo, but he's posed like someone watching fourteen invading airforces flying over a minefield

He advances along the edges of everything. Imagine James Bond sneaking up on a secret base of Tom Clancy characters and you'll have the idea, slinking from corner to cover with occasional pauses to check for enemy agents.

When we adopted him we were told he was a new kitten, but I'm starting to think that was a cover story for a KGB defector. There are people in witness protection hiding from the mafia less fearful than this cat.

But then: Enemies!

Multiple contacts inbound!

Note how the grey cat has cunningly camoflagued himself while seizing the high ground

There are two domestic cats owned by someone on the ground floor. They're the softest, fluffiest, most placid cats you've ever seen, popular and purring with everyone who walks by, so of course Neutrino somehow triggers their combat mode at first sight from five meters away.

They all started mooching towards the bush, which I couldn't let happen:

I replanted Neutrino in the open green space - which apparently gave him an overwhelming flanking advantage against two older cats twice his size, as they retreated!

We'll get you next time, Neutrino. NEXT TIIIIIIME!

(Excuse the blurriness, but they ran away SO FAST this is the only shot I could get)

Victory!

Cat Charging

When most people leave cats unattended their only worries are water and food. If it's an outdoor cat it'll take off on it's own business (that they're simply happier not knowing), if it's indoor it'll investigate every corner for the four thousandth time in between demonstrating where the word "catnap" comes from. We aren't most people. Every time Neutrino's unattended, this is what's happening:

He's charging up, and woe betide the careless couple who arrives home tired to a fully energized Neutrino (that phrase might sound like hardcore particle physics, but subatomic fermions rarely have so many teeth and claws). The risk of an outright cat-splosion if he's left to power up too long is averted by his unique "discharge mechanism", where he "runs around the room" and "tears the absolute shit out of every single item he can." His victims so far include rolls of tissue paper/confetti (that's before/after), clothing, a full wicker basket, much of X's self-beautification gear, and on one occasion one of the wooden supports of the bed.

Trying to sleep with an unleashed energized Neutrino in the room? If I ever manage it, I'm going to call up that little crippled girl who climbed Everest without oxygen and say "You had it damn easy!" He's a hyperkinetic pinball, except an utterly random metal sphere bouncing around the bedroom would be better - by random chance alone it wouldn't hit us so often. You know how "stomach" and "trampoline" don't sound anything alike? Neutrino took the precaution of not knowing English, allowing him to make this mistake up to three times a minute. It also seems that I'm quite tasty - alas, not in the seventies female teen sense of sexually attractive, but the actual literal "it is pleasant to try to eat."

This results in Neutrino being sent to Ze Box: his travel carry cage. It's comfortable, it's roomy, and most importantly utterly escape-proof (unless I'm so incoherently tired I fail to close it, which has happened). Technically we're still using it for travel since we're making the very important trip to "Not dying of sleep deprivation and bite marks." As a pet owner it's important to make everything an enjoyable experience instead of a chore (otherwise you end up resenting the animal), so venever dissiplene ist rekvired, Ein adotp zee tones uff a Vorld Var movie prizon gard! Ve shall see how you feel after time in Ze Box, ya?

(Note: if Neutrino ever does learn enough English to tell stomach from trampoline, his second question will be "What's a Schweinehund Tommy?")

It's just a good thing we had him neutered. If we hadn't, by now the US Military and Al Queda would be putting aside their differences to end his unstoppable rampage through the northern hemisphere.

Not a fan

I wouldn't wish to imply that Neutrino believes in censorship, but since this blog went up he's started trying to disconnect my internet

and when that failed, he starting blocking my writing altogether

So if this blog stops updating, you know what happened.

Neuter-ino

Neutrino just got back from laser-surgery neutering, and just to thwart any hope we had of calmer cat days he immediately knocked over the bins, a large fan, destroyed part of a basket and bit me. He's in full turbo "dog mode", his special event where he cranks all actions up to 150% and pants like a golden retriever after fetching every stick in a burning forest.

We don't know if this is the last flush of testosterone leaving his system or proof that laser beams and drugs only make him stronger. We're hoping the former, but if it's the later we'll just dose him with some stuff from X*'s lab and sell him to the military.

*X = My wife. You already know her name if you're meant to.

The de-ballification cost three hundred and seventy dollars, meaning that gram-for-gram my cat's testicles are more expensive than truffles (though probably not as tasty).

Cool Cat vs Cooler Metal

The terrible, terrible Rowan Atkinson vehicle Johnny English* had a good tagline:

*Terrible because it's Rowan in Mr Bean mode instead of Blackadder mode.

That's Neutrino. He spends his entire life in a flat filled with things that are either twenty times his size, made of solid metal, or both, and he has no conception of the idea of losing a fight. When we hold him helplessly in the air at arms length, as far as he's concerned he has us right where he wants us. Hell, he's just beating up the air until we come back into range.

This inability to process anything that's not his will leads to some odd behaviour. He tries to jump into the fridge every single time I close it, and rather than the usual scoop-hurl-and-close I thought I'd teach him that perhaps jumping into closing metal doors was a bad idea.

(Those of you with cats are already laughing at my use of the word "teach", but I continue.)

Instead of diving in to save him I gently closed the door until it was holding him firmly in place. He wiggled. He struggled. He yowled. He did all three and, his options exhausted, proceeded to repeat these options in random combinations for a while before going still.

Figuring he'd learned that crushing metallic doors fifty times bigger than him were an incom-cat-ible location I opened it a crack to let him out - and he dove further in! In his mind, being held helpless for two minutes in steel jaws of moderately chilled deathgrip was all part of his cunning plan. His scheme was to outwit an immovable object by allowed it to immove him for as long as it wanted, and at no point does it, can it, occur to him that he's come second place in a competition of two.

That's our cat.

Another Cat Blog

Six months ago we got this guy


and I swore I would never become one of those crazy cat people telling strangers about their pet online. Welcome to the blog, you can see how well that worked out. It's not the first time I've done something stupid because of a cute little thing, but at least now that I'm married it'll probably be the last. Or if I do do it again, it'll be significantly more serious. In my further defense I'm actually a writer so this counts as practice. And in my ultimate "leave no evidence" defense I'm not linking to this blog, and only telling committed cat-lovers who are too far gone to mock me about it.

He's called Neutrino, and here's what he looks like now:



His favorite things are being fed, looking like an insane kung fu master while jumping for flies, and making me look like a suicidal OCD sufferer with thousands of small, parallel sets of scratches on my arms. This blog will be our story.