Not technically a selfie, per se, but definitely related.
I was messaging with Björn in the kitchen and set my phone down. Jacoby stepped on it, and typed:
olh lmnk m
And he sent it! I’m not sure how he managed to do that with his toepads, but…
…he seemed just way too proud of himself for it to have been completely accidental! Wonder what he was trying to say?
This week’s Photo Hunt subject is “Quick.”
Anyone who has ever clipped a cat’s claws knows all about not cutting into the quick!
I’m pretty good at clipping claws, but one wrong move – on my part or on the cat’s – and you can cut one claw too short and the blood will flow.
And claws can bleed a lot.
It can happen to the best of us. And I swear – I did NOT cut Angel’s claw too short just to take a photo, either…however, you may recall I once cut one of Angel’s claws too short and had to bandage her foot for a few hours.
If you do have a mishap and accidentally cut a claw too short, I found the best styptic gel at CVS of all places – Super Clot!
It not only stops bleeding, but it has a disinfectant and lidocaine to relieve pain. Incredibly handy and the best product I’ve found yet.
My friend Leza posted this to an Aby group on Facebook with the comment “Of course the Aby is sitting like a tease. smh! lol. Never cease to amaze us do they?”
So of course I had to buy it.
It’s a vintage, circa 1970, Irish tea towel.
And yes, the Aby is the only cat on it that’s posing like a porn star.
Jacoby has no comment.
This is why it’s so important to have a two-way cat superhighway.
Angel is pretty much trapped up there in the top box while Jacoby (and Tessie) block her one way down. And don’t think it’s accidental. Jake just wants to be up there in that top spot…and Tessie is just “helping.”
I had wanted to eventually create some kind of way down to the windowsill on the other side, but it never happened. However, Björn and I are already planning a walkway in his (our!) apartment what will be a two-way street. He also has a balcony that is going to be a cat paradise when I get finished with it. Now if I could only just move there!
I’ve been postponing showing you all this one because I swore I’d finish it…but that was almost 8 months ago, so I thought I’d at least show you the sketch.
This goes back to when I met our friend Summer last May at BlogPaws.
As you may recall, I wasn’t allowed to bring Jacoby with me.
So I had to bring Flat Jake instead. This cartoon – which I had been planning to do about Jake and Summer finally meeting – is the result.
In some respect, Jake not going to BlogPaws is the reason I haven’t actually been able to finish this cartoon. Ever since I came back, things have been rather…interesting. But you know all about that.
As I posted yesterday, Jacoby loves to cuddle with me. Sometimes, he likes to sleep on me…
…and other times, he’d rather sleep with me. Under the covers.
He usually uses my arm as a pillow. And he often falls asleep so deeply that he stops purring!
When Björn and I FaceTime, we try to keep our connection going as long as possible.
Usually either my wifi or his will crap out overnight, but we try to fall asleep “together” whenever we can. Since we’re six hours apart, we generally manage to do this most often on weekends.
Of course, Björn wakes up before me, and yesterday morning he captured these shots of Jacoby sleeping on me while I slept.
I have no idea why Jake likes to sleep perched on my back or shoulder instead of nestled up in the blankets behind my knees or along my side.
He purrs when he sleeps on me like that, though. It’s very comforting.
And even though he weighs 4.5kg and he’s lying on my ribs, it doesn’t seem to bother me at all.
Do you think Jake knew that Björn was taking his photo?
Oh, yeah. He knew.
Buh-bye.
This week’s Photo Hunt subject is “Cat.”
Wow. I just don’t know what to do with words like this.
While I was in Skövde, Björn and I visited our friend Tess, and her two cats Målle & Saga, a five-year-old brother and sister tabby pair. Målle is a big, goofy boycat, red classic tabby and white, who reminded me a lot of Jacoby.
He came right up to the door to greet us and when he wasn’t stampeding up and down the stairs, he was hanging out with us. Björn took photos of me with him and his sister.
“Oh, a finger!”
>
“Use it to pet me!”
Målle was quite a character.
His sister Saga was a little more reserved. She’s a petite little brown mackerel tabby and white.
She was still very friendly, though. It was nice to have some attention from kitties around Jake’s age!
Björn’s mother is an artist; her home is filled with paintings she’s done as well as artwork done by others.
In fact, she painted this portrait of Oskar the cat on the mailbox.
It’s actually painted on a metal plate, which is changed according to the seasons.
She has these two woodblock prints by Swedish artist Sven Ljundberg that I instantly fell in love with when I saw them. After yesterday’s post, you know why…
They are marvelous.
Björn’s mother doesn’t speak much English, and my Swedish is…progressing…but we bonded over a mutual love of art, cats and magpies.
She even gave me a copy of this postcard, featuring another version of his cat and magpie theme.
Besides Sven Ljungberg’s prints, paintings and sculptures, he also published a limited edition book with his Katt och Skata prints, of which only 990 copies were printed in 1976. His home village, Ljungby, has a museum dedicated to his art, and you can see a virtual tour of some of the pieces online.
When we all move to Sweden, Jacoby and Angel will have fabulous HD Cat TV on a big window.
This is the view from Björn’s living room window.
Granted, it’s significantly different from the view they currently have out their windows…
…which isn’t to say that watching cars and trucks isn’t interesting. I just think that cats in general find birds more captivating than vehicles.
There are lots of birds that frequent the yard outside Bjorn’s apartment, as well as squirrels and the occasional rabbit.
Residents aren’t supposed to feed the birds from their windows or balconies, but they still come close to the buildings.
Best of all are the magpies.
I love magpies; I grew up in Northern California, the only place in the world where Yellow-Billed Magpies exist.
There are no magpies in Massachusetts, and even blue jays and crows are fairly scarce in the city.
I miss seeing them and was happy to learn that once I’m in Sweden, I’ll get to see them, as well as crows and jackdaws, fairly often.
(This is a crow at the train station in Falköping…I love their colouration so much!)
Views like this, taken outside Björn’s living room window, are common.
Which is really cool, since I love magpies.
I found the view outside Björn’s window endlessly fascinating.
I can only imagine what Angel and Jake will think!
Pyret, being 16 years old, is rather immune to the birds outside.
She’d rather watch me work on my laptop!
Sometimes, a cartoon idea can come from one simple idea. Like this one from May 2014. It started from a discussion on Facebook about the “Aby smile.” Abys seem to smile a lot…especially when they’re being naughty. That, coupled with a silly desire to draw Grumpy Cat, led to these rough sketches.
And of course, the final version…
Turns out, Tardar Sauce is way harder to draw than you’d think! I spent more time on her sour face than on the whole rest of the cartoon.
Hipstamatic comes out with what they call “Hipstapaks,” sets of retro “films,” “lenses” and “flashes.”
They like to name these paks after cities, and not too long ago they released one called Södermalm.
Södermalm is a neighbourhood in Stockholm known for being especially cool, hip and trendy.
It also just so happens to be the the part of Stockholm Björn and I stayed in the first few days we were together in Sweden.
So of course I had to play with the Gotland film and Bruno lens for this week’s post. How could I not? I mean…Södermalm!
It was awesome, too. My first night, we had one of the best meals as what is now one of my favourite restaurants, Harvest Home.
We wanted to go back there before we left, but that last night we stayed in an entirely different part of Stockholm and couldn’t get there easily. So we went to a marvelous German restaurant a few blocks from our hotel instead. Amusingly enough, as coincidence would have it, that first night before going to Harvest Home, we considered eating at their Södermalm location…I guess we were destined to eat their food eventually!
We also went to a great meatball restaurant in Södermalm. I had reindeer and Björn had wild boar. Both were fabulous.
Meatballs For the People is the kind of place that puts up funny signs on the sidewalk. It was as much fun on the inside, too.
Of course, Södermalm, like most cool, hip, fun neighbourhoods, is an expensive one to live in, it’s still a lot of fun to visit. I know we’ll be going there again.
And maybe we’ll even bring Jake with us!
I’ve been sleeping irregularly since Björn and I became a couple.
It’s bad every day; I wake up at least once a night. But it’s worse on weekends when I don’t need to wake up at a particular time.
I wake up randomly about once every three hours. And when I do, I wake up with cats.
Usually, it’s Jacoby and Tessie who sleep with/on me.And I have to say, it’s nice and very comforting to have them to wake up to.
What I was trying to capture in this photo – and what you probably can’t see – is that Jake was sleeping on my arm and wrist with his head pillowed in the palm of my hand…so adorable.
This week’s Photo Hunt subject is “Dog.”
When I was in Sweden, I noticed that there were a lot of dogs in public places – indoors!
And not just places like trains and subways, either. This dog was in a mall in Stockholm. He was very well behaved, and he wasn’t the only dog I saw in that mall that day.
However, as you can see, he’s waiting in a queue with his master in a coffee shop that serves food! That’s a big no-no in the States. This bodes incredibly well for Jacoby and I having shopping adventures in Skövde. We may even become regular fixtures at the shopping mall that’s only several meters from Björn’s apartment! At least, we’ll have to visit Dad at work on Saturdays when Björn works at that mall…
Our friend Sanna-Leena has an fabulous tattoo featuring her two boy Abys Sketsi and Kossi.
This week, she got a new tattoo featuring her red/sorrel girl Aby Kiipi! I love her eyelashes! Check out the video on Sanna-Leena’s Instagram to see the rest of this amazing tattoo done by Ravi-Lassi in Oulu, Finland. Well, I know where I’m getting my next tattoo!
My mom gave me a Cat Gallery Desk Calendar for Christmas this year, so I have twice the kitty photos to enjoy.
And look! That sure looks like an Abyssinian nose to me. Of course, it could also be a tabby, or a Singapura…what do you think? Is it an Aby?
Since I’m planning on living there for the rest of my life, while I was in Sweden I spent a good bit of time looking at the cat food that is available in my new homeland.
Which…yeah, I was looking for packaging featuring Abys, for the most part. Like this brand. I’m not 100% certain this one’s an Aby, because of all the desaturation going on…but this cat looks like an Aby to me!
This one is definitely an Aby. Kind of an embarrassingly overweight Aby…but an Aby nonetheless.
Then we have good old reliable Royal Canin, featuring a Somali on (of all things) a low-cal dry food.
Funny thing about that Royal Canin dry food…it’s also featured on the back of the January issue of Kattliv magazine! I actually started a subscription while I was there, and and as you can see, this is my first issue.
In non-Aby related food news…I thought this was interesting. They have Temptations treats in Sweden, but they’re called “Dreamies” instead.
And I also found a line of treats that features a happy Burmilla on its packaging. I bought a couple of different treats with the Burmilla on them…after all, Tessie is a Burmilla variant, since she’s smoke instead of shaded or tipped.
The “big” present I brought back for the cats, though, was Moose (even though it says “Elk” on the box) and Reindeer cat food.
I think Jacoby is considering the advantages to cat food packaged in paper boxes vs cat food packaged in metal cans…you don’t necessarily need thumbs to open a paperboard box…
Look! We already have our first Page-a-Day Calendar Aby for 2016!
CAT YEARS
Kittens develop rapidly and, by their first year, have almost reached adulthood, approximately equivalent to 15 human years. At the end of their second year, cats are about 24 in people years. After that, they age approximately four years for every calendar year. A 10-year-old cat is similar to a 56-year-old person. Cats generally live from 12 to 15 years; outdoor cats don’t live quite as long, usually around a decade.
But the best part about this photo of Freddie, is that he, and his human Linda, are both members of The Abyssinian Cat Club on Facebook!
The Daily Abyssinian...and Singapura 