Catbeth!

We've discovered that our new cat has a secret psychopathic side, a case of Dr Striker and Mister Hyde except the lunatic rage-madman side is only unlocked when he's got a mouthful of flesh. Aka "The absolute worst time to discover that something has a lunatic rage-madman side."

Beware this crazed monster! (We accept you may find this warning difficult to process.)

I discovered this when I gave him a mostly-eaten chicken leg. He's already experienced the incomparable joys of meat meat, because thanks to the wonderful Lady X even our cats eat better than most humans, but this ...changed him. In the same way the Vietnam war or gamma radiation ...changes things. He's always growled for meat, dashing off the table with it clutched in his mouth (because if there's one group he doesn't trust with food it's the people who just gave it to him) - but this was the first thing he'd had with joints, tendons and various other "this came from an actual torn apart animal" indicators. Indicators which flipped his internal (and heretofore unknown) personality switch from "adorable" to "CHANNEL THE SPIRIT OF KING MURDER-LION!"

PS Even having a personality switch means you're definably mentally ill.

He started growled like jet-engine sucking in a bucket of gravel, a loud and very dangerous sound emphasising that if you're not made of something explosion-proof it would be a fantastic idea to run for your life. The exact noise was "GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHT" as he his Howl Of The Wolf was drowned by an enormous fart, as every muscle in his body tensed so hard it shoved every atom of air out of both ends. Grenade pins have made less dangerous noises bouncing off petrol stations.

He was so angry he couldn't think - he locked in place, clutching his meat and refusing to move as he tried to sonically defend it from the entire universe. He focused on Neutrino (our other cat, who had up to then been "big brother" but was now very clearer "The First We Shall Kill, Meat, We Shall Rend Him And Make More Meat.") Striker kept roaring like a burning nuclear reactor while Neutrino didn't move because he knew he was outside the range any sane cat could consider threatening. But that wasn't the kind of cat Striker was anymore.

I had to take Neutrino into another room, if only for his own protection, and instead of relaxing Striker it merely completed his conversion into Catbeth - a tragic soul destroyed by paranoia after acquiring the one thing he most desired. He arched his way around flat one step at a time, emitting 360° hatred and tormented by invisible enemies. You've probably noticed how cats can see invisible specks of dust, but Striker could see invisible snipers and every single one of them was trying to kill him and take his flesh. Once every five minutes he'd dare to actually eat a bit of the chicken, before gravimetrically detecting that space-time itself was out to get him and dashing across the room more aggressively than fourteen Rambos headbutting a nuclear warhead.

It took him over an hour to eat five grams of meat. It's also why we'll never give him more than that, or need to invest in home security. An entire terrorist army could invade our home, foolishly (but flatteringly) mistaking me for Bruce Willis, and all we'd need to do is throw Striker a chicken and hide in the bathroom. For that much meat he'd beat up the Incredible Hulk, and I'm fairly sure we could tunnel through the floor and escape - possibly to China - before he finished enough of the meat to even consider where we'd gone.

Neutrino Fortress!

A man's home may be his castle, but that's because man considers himself vulnerable, mortal, not the center of the universe, and various other problems not shared by cats.


Note the luxuriously bubble-wrapped basement and the faithful (teddy) hound in the courtyard.

So when Neutrino took immediate possession of the new stronghold - a word I didn't even know could be applied to cardboard boxes until that moment - he started projecting an "I'M IN ABSOLUTE COMMAND" vibe so powerful three alien empires suddenly crossed Earth off their "To Conquer" list.


Neutrino is the opposite of impressed (and appears to think his castle is edible)


Lacking claws, medieval defenders had to make do with bows an arrows. Yet another shortcoming unknown to felines.


For anyone, nay, anything else, sticking your face out of the only hole in your defenses might have been a weakness.

Indeed, Castle Neutrino became such an important (and frankly adorable) local landmark he was forced to batten down the hatches and defend himself from giggling paparazzi.



But he weathered the storm - cats are extremely good at enduring adoration and disproportionate amounts of loving attention, those being the closest the brilliantly parasitic geniuses come to any sort of hardship - and went on to be King of All He Surveyed!


He surveys us. But we already know that.

The Neutrino Fly Trap

Here's Neutrino begging for attention:

And here's what I see:

He's the world's first fly trap with a fur coat, and by "fly" I of course mean "Me." Not because I'm egotistical (though I am), or because it's more exciting (though it is), but because I've been targeted for destruction by my own pet. He'll stretch and roll and emit logical impossibilities - yowls laden with the frequencies of crying babies but don't make you want to throw him out an open window (especially on airplanes) - flexing a big fluffy belly and demanding more immediate attention than a burning nuclear reactor.

And when he gets it...

THE BEARTRAP CLOSES!

NEUTRINO STRIKES!

Remember: this is me trying to stroke him in exactly the manner he's been begging for. Any attempt to pet, placate or otherwise pacify (and I don't mean "pacify" in the riot police sense, though if these keeps up I might) the cat results in attempted me-eatery.

Note how he backflips to intercept my fingers when I try to get behind him - I could be fighting Jet Li and not get attacked this much. I've actually evolved puncture-proof skin over the last few months - either that or I've worn his teeth down with my cunning strategy of "polish them with my own flesh."

Which is why I've started looking at these.

Ideal for knights, industrial saw operators, and people trying to stroke Neutrino .

Time To Strike!

Look around you: anyone not going awwwww is secretly A ROBOT AND YOU SHOULD DESTROY THEM!

I would have started this article with words if I could write anything cuter than that picture. Striker's leapt into our lives, onto this page, and very frequently at things he's not meant to touch in the kitchen, so it's time for the Strike Retrospective! Behold, as one cat generates more love in a year and a half than 40% of Americans manage with a marriage.

The first Neutrino detection

Fellow cats see eye-to-eye

The first meeting was extremely embarrassing, for Neutrino, who I want to remind you was five times the size and are-you-kidding times the weight of the Strikitten. Because after this early exchange, Neutrino fled from the least intimidating item since the marshmallow - hiding under tables, tearing across the room, and at one point leaping a three-meter-drop (to get away from a rival which fell over trying to walk to the edge.)

Neutrino hiding on the opposite side of the room, on a shelf, behind a spaceship. Which might be overkill.

The Anger Of The Innocent!

I was the only person who understood, because Striker hated me. He would hiss like an angry spider any time I was near, and when something that is literally The Picture of adorability hates you it leads to awkward questions.

The Picture

You wonder "Is there something horribly wrong with me, that such beautiful innoncence would take offense, or is there sometihng wrong with this bloody kitten?" Luckily I'm me, and when I asked myself my ego replied "Don't worry about it, hero, you're amazing! Excellent! Great! Hell, anything that doesn't like you is just proving that they have a problem!" (Some other parts of my brain said things too but I couldn't hear them.)

Yes, the picture would be cuter if you could see the frankly adorable (at that moment) B feeding Striker. But I haven't asked if I'm allowed to do that yet, so you'll just have to make do with the second cutest picture ever.

The Move

Unfortunately B's entire family became allergic to Striker (as opposed to just the poor father, whose allergy they simply ignored to get the cute kitty), and we took over. Since then they've become a real couple (the great thing about being neutered is you no longer car about two males living together - maybe we should try that on the Proposition 8 supporters!)

Rrarrr, why do you have to get up so early! Come back to bed!

Striker unpacks the new Neutrino he ordered after breaking the first one.

The even found their own place together...

You only wish human apartments had a bubble-wrap room.

...started signalling passing aircraft to drop any catfood supplies they might have...

...and even posed for the cover of their upcoming indie music album.

Here Comes A New Challenger!

We've seen more feline action than a Christian in the Coliseum over the last few months, as the cat population of OurFlatville has unexpectedly doubled.

He also contributes to the MacBook overheating problem

The new arrival's name Striker, which goes to show that you can give the fluffiest little furball in the entire history of cuteness to an eight-year-old boy: he's still an eight-year-old boy.

I shall call him Lord Deathcrusher!

The kid in question is B*, and the whole Striker-centric business was our fault. B's entire family had been hovering on the edge of"Want a cat want a cat" for years, but Neutrino-exposure tipped them all over the edge. Even though the father's allergic to cats. Neutrino is that cute.

*"Posting other people's real names online" is right at the top of the internet Don't Do That list.

For a few months all was incredibly well, before the mother became allergic as well, meaning B had to choose between his cat and his own parents. Luckily Striker had grown beyond the "appallyingly cute kitten" stage by then so B was able to make the right choice. But since giving the cat away would mean the family would at least three heart transplants (and probably another nine before they stopped breaking every time they missed the little guy), we took him on instead.

They quickly reached the cat version of equilibrium - both of them up higher than us

The result is pure perfection. We love Neutrino and his biting in a way any student of Stockholm Syndrome could write a book about, but in the words of a visiting friend "Hey, this one's a real cat! You can stroke him and he doesn't try to amputate your fingers!" After some initial "trying to tear each other to pieces" struggles, things have settled down to a much friendlier "only occasionally trying to tear each other to pieces for fun*." Even better, Neutrino now needs all his spare energy to fend off the younger generation and is only one-quarter the complete-breaking-things-bugger he was before.

*NOTE: At 5 AM, the human and feline interpretations of 'fun' differ radically.

But it's not all buggers and battles. Most of the time they're fine*.

*That's a lie. Most of the time they are ridiculously adorable.

The Made-Up Cat

That title doesn't mean that Neutrino's a Cheshire cat, fictional but full of personality - our abundance of scars and the rapid turnover of martini glasses confirm his existence - but that he's made a concerted cosmetic effort to look cuter. Since he's starting as a leopard-skin-tuxedo-wearing cat with little white gloves that's a tall order, but if there's one thing my ex-glassware has revealed it's that no height is beyond his reach.

It started with his feline fascination with our washing habits. Whenever we're rubbing, scrubbing, or showering he stares with wide eyes as if to ask "What's wrong with you people? I know you have tongues! I've seen them! Why do you use weird smelling horrible non-spit on yourselves?" This confusion upgrades to outright horror when watching me shave, aghast at my self-mutilation. I guess watching someone shaving their own whiskers off is the cat equivalent of a Saw movie.

We didn't realise that he'd decided to try it for himself, mistaking months of desperate scrabbling of every pot and bottle on Xin's cabinet onto the floor as standard "Destruction = Attention!" buggery. In our defense his entire existence up to this point supported that view - we'd no more suspected that he really wanted to try the cosmetics than you'd think The Incredible Hulk kept ripping shirts because he was looking for a good tailor.

But poor Neutrino persisted in his frustrating, thumbless quest to open one of the containers, and his limited "knocking things onto the floor" strategy eventually succeeded! One Friday afternoon we walked in to find tiny blocks of brown powder scattered over the floor (painful experience instantly assured us it wasn't excrement) only to see an artfully eyebrow-powdered Neutrino staring back at us. But this isn't like the college movies where a little make-up (and taking off the glasses) turns the quiet girl into the belle of the ball. All eyebrow powder does for a cat is give it extremely brown eyebrows. And nose. And paws. And bellly. (That'll be the lack of thumbs again.)

Then again, your make-up must be successful if it motivates a married couple pounce on your body and drag it to the nearest bathroom. I'm not sure exactly what he was expecting, but a few minutes of vigorous rubbing under the taps disabused him of the notion that cat cosmetics was the next thing, as well as most of the powder. The problem is that cat fur is to human hair what the Amazon jungle is to a shrubbery, and the eyebrow powder had adapted to this new environment like a lab mouse shot to the Moon by NASA finding it really is made of cheese. It was Not Coming Out.

That's when Neutrino started getting seriously mixed messages, when the lady who'd been vigorously rubbing his wet flesh moments before shouted that he would NOT be allowed into her bedroom for a long time. But then, the finest minds of our generation cannot understand the heart of a woman. What chance does a cat with a make-up kit have?

It's now a full week later and his paws are still shaded. Our only hope now is erosion eventually removing the stain, or that the whole "every cell in your body is replaced every X months" eventually removes it along with his entire current body. Because if seven days of cat-licking can't remove it, we humans have no chance.

Feline Education

Train accidents, baby-snatching, nuclear power plant accidents - all manner of terrible things happen because people weren't paying attention for a few moments. So Neutrino's trying to help us, training us not to leave anything unattended for even a single second.

(Note: when you have to bring up nuclear disasters and kidnapping to turn your pet's behaviour into a good thing, there may be room for improvement).

He's not a cat - he's a glass-seeking missile. You'd be safer leaving a drink inside a pinball table because there's a small chance the ball will fall between the flippers, but none that Neutrino will miss. You've be better off just dropping your drink and hoping gravity doesn't notice (which still wouldn't work, as Neutrino would soar through the air to take it out moments later.)

You can tell he's trying to teach us - on the few occasions we've had more warning than a loud crashing (from another room), a low swearing (from ourselves), and the patter of tiny quadruped feet (running like hell), he knows exactly what he's doing. He locks eyes with you then reaches out his paw - magnetically attracted to the breakable by some unknown fifth force of the universe - and taps it over.

Some people talk about baby-proofing their homes, but we're way ahead of them: any toddler would need special forces demolitions training to outdo our existing Neutrino defenses. And as any physicist will tell you, it's wasted: you can't keep neutrinos out of anything - they almost completely ignore normal matter until they hit it. Scientists use vast tanks of chlorine. I can do the same with a single martini glass (or at least I could, but no longer have a single martini glass. Or regular glass. Or several varieties of cup.)

His other favorite things are trash bins, or "Neutrino Present Collection Vessels" (as they apparently translate into feline). Throw something in and he's there like he heard sleigh bells on December 24th. Again, it's all for the best: training me to empty the bins approximately every minute, or sometimes skip the bin and just carry every piece of trash direct to the disposal.

And do we still love him? Of course we do. Would I love anyone else who rummaged through my trash and smashed my stuff? Since the only other type of person who does that is a stalker, I'll have to get much more famous to find out.

Three Views on Getting a Cat Together

Views arranged in order from least-to-most important, apparently.

Scientific Americat

Update: This was picked up by Kate Wong, aka "Editor of the actual Scientific American." Cool!

Cat Rubix Cube #1

It looks like the first one was a little easy. Not a mistake I'll repeat!

Neutrino Predicts The Superbowl!

That's right, our cat has cast the future and predicted that the Saints will win the Superbowl. We gave him $50 and asked him to tell the future - read what happened after that here!

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Neutrino's New House!

Cats can't conceive of their owners buying anything that isn't for them, which is why they watchi intently as you remove the useless stuffing any boxes you bring home before leaping into their new toy. They think it's cute that you amuse yourself with what, to them, appears as unnecessarily complicated packing foam.

(And I only wrote "owners" in that previous sentence so you wouldn't get upset about "slaves." )

Cats LOVE boxes. We're not sure what instinct drives them to leap into any cardboard container they can find, and can only imagine that there used to be some sort of delicious reverse-turtle mouse which moved around the savannas inside an opened container.

Xin and I are inveterate stuff-getters, on the grounds that

1. Stuff is awesome
2. I can afford stuff now

Anyone with experience in material wealth will know that this turns our apartment into an infinite box generator where storage space is constantly subdivided into tighter and tighter rearrangements of cardboard Tetris. Once the warranties expire these containers are consigned to recycling, but then I realised: why re-use them for the good of the entire planet when I can instead re-use them for a single cat?

It'll also make it easier for us to actually unpack things

The humble first step in this packing palace is the box of a humidifier we puck up in Pacific Mall: it's already ended the days of waking up with burning sandpaper where our throats used to be, and because we bought it in a cheap Chinese housewares store I'm fairly sure the return policy expires before you even pay for it. Not exactly an expansive estate - more a cardboard kennel - but Neutrino moved in almost instantly.

Behold!

The Neutrino is IN

But he doesn't welcome visitors:

(I think I'll have him answer the door next time someone tries to sell stuff.)