For those of you who’ve been hidden under a rock for the last few years, one of the most far-reaching Internet memes is that of the lolcat. Since 2007, icanhascheezburger has been the single most influential disseminator of lolcat material, and while not all are winners many are… especially those that highlight feline behaviour:
So if you haven’t already, visit the site or subscribe to their feed – well worth it.
Being someone who truly appreciates animals, both wild and domesticated, for what they are and what they have to teach us, I’ve never been one to condone the ridiculous practice of clothing one’s pets. The majority of people who do so, in my humble opinion, are anthropomorphisizing in a sad way, and generally using their animals as pseudo-people to make up for some lack in their lives and/or themselves. And I’m not the only one who thinks so, thank your-deity-of-choice.
However, be that as it may, recently we found ourselves crossing this line with Mary. Not for the reasons one would imagine, though – it was simply the least complex solution in order to stop our silly Siberian from over-grooming a wound. The Victorian collar option was out, as the wound was outside the area, meaning she could still reach it with her hind legs. We’d tried bandaging her paw, but that led to her toes becoming painfully sensitive for some reason.
As a last resort, we bought her a blue cat (or dog, more the humiliation…) shirt, tore off the very badly thought out sleeves – she could barely walk with them hampering her movement – and put the thing on over her collar. Needless to say, little Miss Fluff was very indignant about the whole thing, but it paid off in the long run (+/- 3 weeks, cringe) as her wound finally healed.
Adjustments around the collar area.
Final tweaks around the collar area.
Finally shirt is on...
And not even a solid under-shirt scratch...
... can stop Mary keeping her distance from the those shirty savages.
When outside for the first time, Mary checks to see if anyone is watching her misery.
And like many before her, uses grass to feel better.
Heading out into the cruel world.
Finally at rest, plotting her revenge.
… the more they stay the same.
Installed a new Wordpress version, to properly support tags and a spiffy new tag cloud (which can be seen in the sidebar, cleverly labelled “sandboxes”). All this took some time, and obviously lent itself towards us not meeting our new weekly schedule of updates.
To make up for this, two posts to follow this informational in rapid succession. If the cat doesn’t interrupt directly, or indirectly by causing some sort of drama. Which she never does. Almost.
