Lumpy's Corner

Life is odd. A week ago, after a few weeks of more consistient writting in the blogsphere, I was sucked away by a few house guest. Freakie, the friendliest and bravest, walked cross the street and introduced himself. Anyhow, now you know why I have been busy.

If you like kittens and want one comment here. I am in the Greater Cleveland area and they are free to a good home. Leave a comment here. They all seem well behaved and healthy. If you like kitty photos, book mark my Flickr Meow Set for I will be adding more.

Here are some links I found this week that I thought interesting and/or fun:

• The Periodic Table of the Internet
• This is eerie but very interesting. I would be afraid if this cat curled up next to me.
• Well it seems that those of you who think pot never hurt you might actually be psychotic. (I also have to wonder how they eliminate the stat that those with psychological issues are more likely to use drugs. Is it a symptom or a pre-disposing factor?)
• There has been some success with computers learning baby talk

Some of these links are not from this week but the week before. I still thought them of merit. It is very likely that you will not see a post here for a week or so. I must deal with some tweaks on the server side. Too much to write and too little time.

Well, I finally got with the new mellinium and got myself a YouTube account....

I thought it was rather kewl that my cats could do some basic tricks. I am rather impressed with this link I hard about on one of many Leo Laprote's podcast. John Dvorak mentioned that he liked it so much he posted it to his blog.

I would also encourage you to check out the actual YouTube Page for more videos and check out the number of views.

Well, it seems like my nature for sharing, or perhaps showing off depending on your view, and my room mates have combined to produce a few questions. Lumpy's cats will likely do that agin in the future. Fluffy balls of fur tend to do that.

The first being; can you train a cat? The answer is a definitive yes. How else would they have existed as domesticated animals since the Egyptians? All jest aside, more often than not a person really means; "How well can you train a cat?"

In my opinion, they can be trained very well. The cat below, is not even a year old. His brother is just as manageable. Check out the video and then you decide.

I think, considering my efforts, my cats are very well trained. I attribute much of this to just a few things. First of all, I really love them and enjoy working with them. Second, is many years back I read this book.

The second question was why does your flickr set include so many photos of your cats sleeping?

Mainly three reasons:

1. They sleep about 17 hours a day presenting lots of opportunity for such shots.
2. Feeding mode and napping mode are about the only time they are stationary enough to get an easy photo of... I have many action shots of "parts" of my cats.
3. When napping, they are likely behaving and looking cute.