The perfect kitty for geeks allergic to cat hair: Computer Cat Wall Clock.

He is made out of mostly recycled computer parts, ranging from recycled hard drive platters and floppy disks, to memory ears and a wire tail.
He also uses one of the finest quartz clock motors to keep accurate time.

The charming clock cat can go to your home, if you live in the United States, for $24.99 plus mail. That means no kitty for me. (via GeekAlerts)
Related posts:
Top 20 Strangest Gadgets and Accessories
Flip Clock

Here are my collection of links with cats, specially saved to blog today. And before you run away complaining “Oh no, cat pictures!”, take a look on the images and their descriptions. They have cats, of course, but they aren’t all just about cats.
The toy above, called Gato, was designed by Israel Chavira. This cat loves honey, probably cause his bee body type. A silly curiosity: the Spanish word “Gato” means cat, chat, Katze, katt, gàtto, and it has the same writing for Portuguese, gato.

Among the hundreds of cool scanned images of Modern Mechanix, the vintage articles with cats always get my attention. And, of course, I saved them to share: Cats Are Fun to Photograph, From Cats to Cataclysms, Cat Pictures Used to Scare Away Birds, Blows Glass Globe Around Cats (no cats were harmed!) and Things I Learned from Ten Thousand Cats. The last article is from 1934, but some things about what we know about cats didn’t change.

By A. J. Adamson

ONLY by dealing patiently and kindly with a cat, particularly during its early life, may you develop the sort of animal everyone wants as a companion and pet. Unlike dogs, cats will respond only to kindness. Punish them and they grow surly and spiteful. I speak from rich experience, having bred fully 10,000 cats during the last quarter of a century.

The old idea was that every animal should be punished when caught in a wrongful act, but cats do not understand the meaning of a whipping. They are weak-willed and easily tempted and must, therefore, be guided in paths of righteousness.

Before all those stupid mania of LOLcats (I’m tired of them), there was The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, a comic strip created and illustrated by the cartoonist Aloysius “Gorilla” Koford, according to Adam Koford his grandson. From 1912-1913 he produced a comic strip which was featured in 17 newspapers, including the Philadephia Star-Democrat, the Tampa Telegraph, and the Santa Fe Good-Newser. It featured the exploits of one Meowlin Q. Kitteh (a sort of cat hobo-raconteur) and his young hapless kitten friend, Pip. Adam is sharing those “treasures” (the comics are brilliant), and until now there are 340 images on the Flickr set. BTW, there is something on those comics that reminds me Krazy Kat. (via Will You Look At That)

The iCat is a project developed by Philips Research Technologies in 2005. I think iCat is a bit scary.

iCat is a research platform for studying human-robot interaction topics. The robot is 38 cm tall and is equipped with 13 servos that control different parts of the face, such as the eyebrows, eyes, eyelids, mouth and head position. With this setup iCat can generate many different facial expressions – happy, surprise, angry, sad – that are needed to create social human-robot interaction dialogues.
A camera installed in iCat’s head can be used for different computer vision capabilities, such as recognizing objects and faces.

The giant Plant Cup designed by Gitta Gschwendtner, was available at YouSayTomayto for $338.00. You can’t buy it for now, however, you can take a look on set of pictures Plant Cup, with more demonstrations of its uses by Eek, the grey cat, and Miss Moneypenny. Grey cats rock.

Garfield is damn cool. I always loved this Jim Davis comic, since I was a child. Probably because I always had lived with cats. Cats can be very affectionate in one moment, and totally selfish two minutes after. Seriously? I don’t care, they still much better than human beings. If you are not cat lover, the chances of you like and understand Garfiled are low. And ask to somebody else to explain why it’s funny won’t convince you.
The Garfield Variations presents works of anonymous “artist” who enjoy this character and pay a homage sending images of Garfield variations. Don’t expect find some ouvres d’art, just go to have fun. If you think you can make a better Garfield, submit your own creation to the site. (via Yahoo! Picks)

The Canadian artist Jeff de Boer is a Calgary-based multi-media artist with an international reputation for producing some of the world’s most original and well-crafted works of art. He creates some incredible metal sculptures, figurative and abstract, suits of armour for cats and mice, armour ties and sword-handled briefcases, rocket lamps and pop culture ray guns. (via Cynical-C)

The Whiskas® product line Oh so… was released with a brilliant campaign created by the agency TBWA London. The print ads for Oh so… products are beautifuly clean, composed by coloured infinite backgrounds and origamis of each variety of food: beef, lamb, pork, chicken and fish.

Maybe I’m wrong, since we don’t have those new products here, but the TV ads for them don’t follow the same line: there are no origamis. Check the TV commercials for Whiskas ‘Oh So Fishy’, Whiskas ‘Oh So Meaty’ and the Australian ads for them on the Australian Whiskas site. You will notice that even not using origamis like images of animals, the ads
still been cute, because that’s the real strategy to sell cat products to their “owners”. You know we aren’t the real owners, don’t you?

I grew up picturing death as the Grim Reaper, the skeletal figure carrying a large scythe. Even though I studied in catholic schools, I’ve never believed their philosophy that death is an angel of God and there is a better place after the death. Death is the end. I like the idea of reincarnation but I don’t believe in it, but if I did believe in it my friends very well know that I would like to return as a cat.
Ingmar Bergman took me to a new fantastic dimension of death with his masterpiece The Seventh Seal. Since then, the grim reaper, played by Bengt Ekerot in the film, is a nice and strange man that plays chess, that still carries a scythe. In that cause I would be… damned (I can’t use any “f word” here), because I’m a terrible chess player. In this new representation of death, the death itself was much more human than the catholic teachings would have it. He/she had intelligence, sense of humor – even if a bit strange – and it was almost understanding of our shortcomings, but still implacable. Remember: the grim reaper cheats and always win.
Neil Gaiman showed me another version of death, as a cool pretty girl with a Gothic style, who everybody loves.His death “looks like rock star Nico in 1968, with the perfect cheekbones and perfect face she has on the cover of her Chelsea Girl album.” His death always try to be nice, but keep doing her work. Interesting vision, but I keep the Bergman’s portray of death as my favourite.

But that was until now. From now on, the grim reaper is a cat to me. This article changed it all for me: Oscar the Cat Predicts Patients’ Deaths (via The Pet Blog):

When Oscar the Cat visits residents of the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, the staff jumps into action — Oscar can sense within hours when someone is about to die.
In his two years living in Steere’s end-stage dementia unit, Oscar has been at the bedside of more than 25 residents shortly before they died, according to Dr. David Dosa of Brown University in Providence.
After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He’d sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.

The fury grim reaper is the cutest representation I ever seen. That’s the perfect image of death for me. However, I don’t want he visiting me for now. The story about Oscar the cat was originally published at The New England Journal of Medicine by David M. Dosa, and it’s in everywhere now, including Scientific American and BBC (video). My favourite part is:

Making his way back up the hallway, Oscar arrives at Room 313. The door is open, and he proceeds inside. Mrs. K. is resting peacefully in her bed, her breathing steady but shallow. [...]
One hour passes. Oscar waits. A nurse walks into the room to check on her patient. She pauses to note Oscar’s presence. Concerned, she hurriedly leaves the room and returns to her desk.[..]
The priest is called to deliver last rites. And still, Oscar has not budged, instead purring and gently nuzzling Mrs. K. A young grandson asks his mother, “What is the cat doing here?” The mother, fighting back tears, tells him, “He is here to help Grandma get to heaven.” Thirty minutes later, Mrs. K. takes her last earthly breath.

He’s Charon. If you thought this interesting, read also Can pets sense illness? article.
More posts with death: Cinemorgue, The Fantastic in Art and Fiction, My Death Space, Collection of Life and Death Masks, Death according to Giornale Nuovo,Medieval Macabre and Coconino Classics.

Oh, what a lazy day is Sunday. I always heard that people love Sunday, but I never was a huge fan of it. It isn’t a productive day for me and it goes too fast. On Sundays I have a strange feeling that I’m late for everything, even it been the first day of the week. Strangely, it’s also one of those days I don’t know what to do and I feel lost if I don’t go out. Sunday turned into the day to go to a restaurant, or go to the cinema, or to an exhibition, or if I stay at home, it’s the day to read a (whole) book or be hypnotised by TV.
That’s why I love internet: you can stay at home in a grey Sunday and do something more productive. Try a new recipe, watch a feature film or a funny animation, play a silly game, answer all those boring e-mails, discover a new book to read, chat with distance friends, search for a new hobby or find some cool stuff to keep your hands busy. And that’s my point for this Sunday: keep your hands busy with the following links of papercraft. Check the printer and the scissors and go to them.

The little fellow above is Walter Kitty is a character from the book The Secret Life of Walter Kitty written by Barbara Jean Hicks. It was created by the writer and illustrator Dan Santat, who also illustrated the book and it’s perfect for all kind of cat person, even the allergic, in his works. (via Paper Forest)
For the group who prefers dogs, Ben The illustrator released a second series of Speakerdog Paper Toys. The series 2 was created by 21 wonderful illustrators, graphic designers and graffiti artists. Twenty one lovely models to empty your printer cartridges. BTW, the series 1 still available at Ben’s site. (via Urban Retro Lifestyle)

The company Furni has a free cardboard cutout toy in limited edition to download: Furni meet Bigchief. The little paper dude is a collaboration between Milan design company BigChief Design and Furni. It’s a series limited to 5000 download, so be fast. Try also the BigChief – The original to download.
The Flickr is Flickr Monkey is there to share super cute papercraft models. Choose a dog available in brown and red, a red, green or blue bird, and a He’s so cute on Flickr – Photo Sharing! available in five colours (orange, green, red, blue and purple). To thank Flickr Monkey for the toys, after print, cut and fold it (or them), submit the image to the group Flickr Monkey & Friends. I need a new printer to make a blue monkey to me.

My last suggestion goes to the excellent French blog Agence eureka. It’s full of beautiful vintage images, from film magazines to illustrations of children’s books. If you have some time, make a deep search on the archives, where you will also find several of images of vintage toys to print, cut and play. Among those preciosities, the last one was a Maquette d’Epinal, a small circus to fold. But my favourite post of last times is about some lovely Japanese paperdolls, who points to three complete scanned cutout dressing books here, here and here.

It’s Friday and it’s thirteen! I’m going to make my contributions to Friday Cat Blogging and some horror. I hope you enjoy.

Jaakko, a The Groovy Age of Horror (NSFW) contributer, posted about Biglie Humane (The Human Balls), a fumetti with giant children who likes to play with tiny, compared, humans. Cool, but not the best part. Those kids have a giant kitty that likes to play, as all the other cats. In the place of insects or toys, the cats play with those tiny humans. If you saw any time a cat playing, you are able to imagine the lovely (horror) scenes.
PS.: My condolences for you kitty Jakko. Take care.

The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire always celebrate the Fridays with an special Vampire Kitty Friday post. This Friday cookie jill gave to us a great cultural contribution from the Japanese folklore, telling to us about SaruDama: The Vampire Cat of Nabeshima.

Here’s a classic Japanese tale dating back to the Hizen daimyo of the Sengoku Era (1568-1615). It presents a Shinto perspective of the spiritual dimension of Nature itself, here depicted in the form of a large cat who not only consumes humans, but then supernaturally changes its form to become that human, after which it interacts and easily deceives everyone it encounters.

My last contribution to this Friday Cat Blogging is the remarkable image of the two angry – and cute – baby snow leopards at the Zoo Berlin, via The Pet Blog. Ten-week old snow leopards Lanak, left, and Askai hiss to photographers during their first appearance in the Berlin Zoo in Germany. And they are right about hiss to the photographers: flashes are annoying.

Via WikiHow I discovered how to make polymer clay cats and the fantastic universe of clay sculpture creatures of Fergus Ray Murray, aka Oolong. Thanks to him, now I’m with an irresistible wish to buy pots clay of clay to to make that clay cat. Maybe make a series of them, and shot my own claymation film. Or a clay dodo!
Many of his clay creations are cats, however, there are lots of other lovely creations: dogs, lizards, beavers, monsters, elephants, dragons, frogs, dinosaurs, turtles, lions, caterpillars, penguins, bats, fishes and other creatures – but no dodos. Murray has a great and remarkable style. Don’t wait for the very detailed works of Aardman: his clay creations are simple, almost minimalistic and brilliant.

PS.: it’s Friday… that’s why there are so many cats in this post. Please, don’t blame.

With her magic hands the Russian artist Natsha Fadeeva makes fabulous Handmade Stuffed Animals: cats, dogs, mice, bunnies, chickens, bears, sheep, goats, bears, foxes, pigs, hedgehogs and others. Her fluffy stuffed animals are knitted from mohair and the others are needle-felted. If you felt in love for than and want one, be patience while she works in other projects: sent a message and wait, there is a the long waiting list. Other of her works: watercolors, Cloth dolls and this marvellous Stuffed Dragon, . (via Children’s Illustration)

PS.: this cat looks like a crossing between my cats Truffaut and Rousseau: orange and fluffy.