Miaow

I went to a choral eucharist at Southwark Cathedral yesterday evening. During the consecration a cat appeared and curled itself up luxuriously in the middle of the kneelers in front of the communion rail, having accurately worked out where in the whole of that huge church it could most comfortably get in everyone's way. It was very annoyed when someone moved it and yowled loudly. In honour of this cat I am posting some cat-related links. Because as we all know, the internet is made of cats.

4OD has lots of good stuff on Youtube, including Chris Morris pointing out in Brass Eye that the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats because they thought they were funny. (Morris was ahead of his time in this as in many things -- this was about eight years before the invention of YouTube itself and ten before I Can Has Cheezburger, and as I recall back in the 90s cats were not seen as intrinsically amusing.)

Google built a neural network and let it loose on the interweb and it came up with a Platonic ideal of a cat.

Here is an excellent illustration of the Smart poem "For I will consider my cat Jeoffry". And by the same artist an excerpt from Edward Lear's poem "How pleasant to know Mr Lear", featuring Old Foss his cat.

And two quick things not to do with cats but I want to close the tabs: 1) a ten-year-old girl bursts into tears in a room full of Rembrandts; her parents take her to a psychiatrist whom she eventually marries; apparently a true story though it sounds like a novel; 2) two small girls interviewed about a bad haircut.