Long day today and I feel drained, and obviously another day filled with exciting economic news.
Also, this is how you are greeted if you sit down to check your email before feeding your cat:
Cat owners will understand what I mean when I say he was in the middle of a five minute, uninterrupted, bitchy meow-purr whine when I took that picture. Normally I feed him at around five and avoid this, but it was so loud I decided to get an action shot. I better feed him before he goes for my throat.
amorphous
Nightmare Fuel.
joe from Lowell
He’s just a little fuzzy-wuzzy. Yes he is, he’s a little – OW!
Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!
Help!
Colonel Danite
Tunch looks svelte.
donovong
Jeebus! I’m sorry, but that picture is graphic evidence of the fact that he could miss a meal (or several) and it wouldn’t kill him!
ET
He looks like a loud meower.
Keith
I had to put up with that this morning (ran out of cat food last night). It got so bad (leg attacks, plaintive wailing) this morning, I fed them a can of *my* sockeye salmon.
Fwiffo
Look at the terrifying maw on that ottoman!
Lesley
Every day, around 4:30, the wee beasties at our home start circling like the floor sharks they are. We try to hold off until 5, or they keep pushing the time back each day. Today my husband nearly went insane trying to finish work while the growly meows were swirling around him.
I believe I saw Tunch’s expression several times.
Comrade Stuck
Looks like Tunch is mad as hell and is not going to take it any more. The way I felt after watching this clip for uber nutter Zach Wamp wingnutting away on Obama’s sockalist health care plan. They are like so many Beany Babies with a pull string that blathers the same stupid every time.
Good post from Steve Benen, watch video.
"people going nekked without healthcare"
Wile E. Quixote
Maybe you should dress him in black like Rush Limbaugh and Stephen Seagal so he doesn’t look so fat.
Roonieroo
It’s cool when you have multiple cats with differently pitched voices. You get a harmonized five minute, uninterrupted, bitchy meow-purr whine OR possibly in stereo if they manage to surround you.
Comrade Kevin
I am very familiar with that look.
robertdsc
You need to borrow your folks’s video camera to get this kind of stuff on tape, John. If G & G can charm the world, we need to to see the Tunch Star at his most ornery.
valdivia
even in mid complaint I love Tunch.
Carnacki
Cats may look cute, but their every other thought is "Kill, kill, kill."
Mr. Poppinfresh
He’s looking a lot healthier, John.
Now I have to run home before my two kittens poop in my shoes in protest of being unfed.
AhabTRuler
Huh! He can support his own weight. I guess I lost five bucks!
Fwiffo
Tunch totally looks like Scut Farkus.
Kevin K.
Now that my cat is on a new diabetic diet which includes wet food, I’m stalked every time I go into the kitchen by her. Either she wants more food (it dries quickly, so we can’t put a lot out) or she needs me to scrape it off the sides of her bowl because she mashes it up there with her tongue. What a scene. And don’t get me started about how often I have to clean the litter box because she now pees non-stop and refuses to use it (read: pisses on the floor next to it) if it doesn’t meet whatever standards she’s concocted in her almond-sized brain.
Man, I love my cat.
Laura W Darling
@AhabTRuler: Can’t….stop…laughing!
Christ. That IS the first time we’ve seen him upright, isn’t it?
(Edit: In a while, I should say. The 2008 photo of him blocking our view of two monitors comes to mind now.)
BethanyAnne
Cheyenne my solid black cat does that plaintive meeeEEEEooow! thing. Suli, the Siamese, just gets as close to me as possible, and starts purring loudly.
Punchy
OT:
Can anyone here smarter than me (read: everyone) interpret this for me? I read this to mean that if they go insolvent/outta cash/broke, that every bank that goes BK afterwards will have its clients SOL, even if they’re undy the $100K mark.
But if this were to even be an actual possibility, it would instantly cause the Mother of All Bank Runs, so I have to assume it cannot. So what really would happen if the FDIC goes kaput? Who insures my $35.67 in checking?
TheFountainHead
How long has Rush Limbaugh been sleeping on your couch, John?
JL
I have a friend who lives north of Athens, GA and recently she lost power due to the winter storm that moved through this area on Sunday. She has a wood burning stove on the lower level, so slept down there for a few nights. Her cat was not happy. Cat’s don’t seem to be adaptable to change. With a dog, you just show them the bed and they are happy.
Laura W Darling
@AhabTRuler: I got all fuxxed up in that last post of mine with the wacky edit window and its wicked, temperamental ways.
Here is one of my Willie with a look much like Tunch’s. It is reserved for expressions of dismay over my "gardening skills".
Cut the graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas!!
Ryan S.
@Punchy:
Congress can appropriate more loot for the FDIC.
Assuming some idiot Repub army doesn’t filibusters it.
The Other Steve
The US Treasury.
amorphous
@Punchy: I think it means that it’s time for more tax cuts. Yeah… that’s the ticket.
@Ryan S.: By which you mean, they will threaten to filibuster, and Reid will throw up his hands and (obvs) go back to building his train from Disneyland to the Moonlight Bunny Ranch.
media browski
-kitten- Tunch thinks of nothing biut murder all day.
Tax Analyst
Now THAT’S a mouth that looks ready for blood.
Krista
Awww…poor Tunch looks like he’s panicking. "Hoo-man! You’re forgetting dinner!"
Chuck Butcher
Our spare bedroom has its windows near ground level and I use it for internetting and news watching. As I BJed I felt two holes burning into the side of my head. Marlin was staring in the window, very staring. I shook it off and continued to scoff at the Attaboy types. More burning. I put the easy chair foot down and cat disappeared. In the minute it took me to put down laptop and walk upstairs to the exterior door, there she stood. She knows. Now compare and contrast to the Attaboys.
Tax Analyst
That’s a very kind interpretation. I’m reading a higher level of malevolence.
Geeno
John – he looks like he’s about to fire you.
Terri
My oldest cat will wail if he can see the bottom of his dish peeking through the diminishing supply of food.
If I let it go long enough, the parrot starts mocking the cat wailing. It’s eerily similar to the Buffalo Bill character mocking his latest victim in the well in Silence of the Lambs.
John O
Had to put my stray down about 6 months ago, due to sudden and unexplained massive kidney failure, but still have two left.
One is just a complete d**k. (The other is a puker.) The d**k won’t let me sleep past 6:00AM, and he’ll mess with me to make his point, like knocking things off the dresser, chewing on paper he shouldn’t be chewing on, and casually walking back and forth over my previously sleeping body as if he’s just wandering about looking for the Holy Grail. Only occasionally does he bother to yell at me, at least at that hour.
When I get home, both of them talk to me pretty consistently and loudly.
So yeah, I get it, and loved the picture.
JL
Do we know whether or not John is still alive?
Polish the Guillotines
@Terri:
No kidding? I thought we were the only ones. We’ve got a Persian (who’s getting waaaaay up there) who will just sit in front of the food dish on hunger strike if she can see the bottom of the bowl.
demimondian
One of our floor sharks insists on standing outside our bedroom door starting at 5am and summoning food.
Fortunately, I usually waken at about 4am and feed them then.
Unfortunately, she now yowls to summon more food.
Bey
I tell people I have to feed my cats before they remember I’m made of meat….
valdivia
@Polish the Guillotines and Terri
same here with one of mine, even when there is food there it just does not register until the bottom of the bowl is covered. The other likes to take the food from the bowl, puts it on the floor then proceeds to eat it.
Laura W Darling
@Chuck Butcher: I have seen a few great photos of your Gus on your blog, but can’t recall any of your Marlin. Do they exist? Preferably, of the two of them in one frame?
Delia
One of my cats will start clawing the rugs if I sleep much past 6:30. She knows I have to at least get up to make her stop.
Polish the Guillotines
@valdivia:
Yeah, got one of those, too. Ling, a Siamese Manx who’d give Tunch a run for the money on Feline Fit Club.
She’ll also occasionally dunk pieces of dry food into the water dish, then fish ’em out and eat ’em. Peculiar.
JL
OT Sanjay has removed his name from consideration for Surgeon General.. That means we will continue to see him on CNN.
FourtyTwo
Cats may look cute, but their every
otherthought is "Kill, kill, kill."Even when kitty is loving on you, it is still thinking "How can I eat this bastard".
cleek
our cats give no sign at all that they want to be fed. i try to feed them every day at the same times, but if i’m an hour or two late, they never seem to mind.
TenguPhule
Feed me Seymore!
TenguPhule
Eat them before they eat you.
Anton Sirius
@Wile E. Quixote:
I was thinking he should be wearing Colbert’s silver Galactic Overlord cape from last night. Especially if it comes with the cool vocal effects built in.
"Tunch-nu demands sustenance, slave!"
Quaker in a Basement
You put "check email" ahead of "feed the cat"?
Tunch wants us to call the Humane Society.
Quaker in a Basement
You put "check email" ahead of "feed the cat"?
Tunch wants us to call the Humane Society.
KRK
Caption contest submission: "TUNCH SMASH!"
@Kevin K.:
My cat has chronic renal failure rather than diabetes, but yeah. The transition to wet food has been such a pain and so much gets wasted. Gus will only eat if there’s a lot on the plate, but then he gets bored with it so it dries out, or he licks it over the edge of the plate (or just licks the plate across the room and under something) and then it’s no longer "fresh" and appealing. And the copious peeing combined with neurotic fastidiousness drove me crazy until I swapped out his litter box for a washing machine drain tray filled with litter. It’s actually been a huge improvement — no more "accidents." If you can afford to give up the floor space, I recommend it.
passerby
Ha! Now that’s an "action shot"!
I get my "stop everything" call at around 3 p.m. but my cat’s mouth doesn’t open that wide.
It’s more like a dull, repetitive whine and he laser-stares at me. But, (zombie voice) I hear and will obey.
Chuck Butcher
@Laura W Darling:
I forget where she is but here’s one. Nothing of the two together, Gus is not camera inclined and Marlin is generally fairly leery of getting stepped on if he’s moving. Unless Gus is asleep the camera seems to incite movement on his part.
Gus’ method of dealing with the cat is to pretty much ignore her. He knows he isn’t supposed to kill her and it is not right for her to have a place in my hierarchy. He is pretty careful to avoid any situation that might promote conflict, any such would be fatal at his size.
Chuck Butcher
Marlin also finds seeing the bottom of the bowl unacceptable.
scruncher
So glad to see other cat caretakers talk about this. It’s almost impossible to explain to someone who doesn’t live with a cat just how, uh, insistent a cat can be about food. People who don’t live with cats think they’re neurotic, delicate fussy eaters who ignore everyone. My cats are like big lap dogs who would eat anything, including my foot, when they get hungry.
Calouste
At the moment our cat interprets my alarm going off in the morning not as the sign that I have to get up to go to work, but as the sign that I have to get up to feed her. That means if I lie in for even five minutes, she will enter the bedroom, jump on the bed and sit on/walk over me until I get up and feed her.
The positive thing is that I haven’t been late for work in a while.
Atanarjuat
I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Cole, but I white balance-corrected your capture of Tunch. Perhaps it may seem a tad cool by comparison, but it’s no problem adding a little warmth back without reverting to the orange tungsten cast.
http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/2979/feedmenowfxd.jpg
-A
Mnemosyne
We have to make sure the cats have at least enough dry food to cover the bottom of their bowls before we go to bed, or Keaton starts fiddling with the doorknob at about 5 am, trying to figure out how to get in. Since he’s a big 15-pound cat, he makes a major racket.
They get a treat of wet food every night at 10:00. I’m kind of a Nazi about it. One night, I was out late, so G. was in charge, which confused them. He forgot about it until Annie (who is a very tiny girl) came up to him and bit him on the arm. As in, "Hey, pal, make with the wet food or you’re next!"
gypsy howell
Are we sure that’s not Scut Farkus reincarnated as a cat?
Josh Hueco
Narrator: "While Mr. Cole’s killer has not yet been found, this camera found at the scene allows detectives to see what he saw in his final moments alive."
Laura W Darling
@Chuck Butcher: Her markings are so lovely, especially around her eyes. And yes, she is a big-boned gal, ain’t she?
I really think she may be Tunch’s soulmate. Can’t you just imagine them side-by-side? Nice lookin’ pair, there.
gypsy howell
That would be Scut Farkus.
EEH
John, pay no mind to what they say about Tunch. Not only is he a handsome fellow with his lovely red tail, he is a fine figure of a cat.
valdivia
@Polish the Guillotines:
both my boys are very very mellow (except when hungry). I personally would not bet on either of them to fight anything anytime.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Comrade Stuck:
That twat needs to be taken out behind the bike sheds and beaten. It must be nice being covered by government paid health insurance talking trash about government paid health insurance, what a f**king hypocrit! All the rest of the populace are asking for is what you get, you know you f**king representative of the people how hard is that to comprehend? I like how the reporter took him to task "you have cancer and treatment is a privilege?" What is his response? Well its a right for some and a privilege for others. I have said this before and will repeat it here health care for its citizens in a government OBLIGATION. What this twat (and many others) do not realize is that socialized health care (a la UK and Canada) would be the biggest boon to small businesses EVER, my boss pays $1,600 per month for just me and him, someone posted on here the other day that their firm pays $20,000 a month for 16 employees, can you imagine what the success rate of small businesses would be if that burden were lifted from their shoulders? The posters profit margin would increase by $224,000.00 per year this is not rocket science people, health insurance costs are crippling this country, and bankrupting small businesses. Harumph.
Litlebritdifrnt
@JL:
Our heat pump went out last year during the deep freeze of winter, we have a fireplace and a sofabed in the living room so we built a fire from hell and slept on the sofa bed, the boxers thought that was the best idea ever in the universe cause it meant they got to sleep with us, (you can keep them out of the bedroom but it is hard to keep them out of the living room) it is kind of hard to sleep under 200lbs of boxer, but we were warm at least!
That One - Cain
@Terri:
That made me almost laugh out loud. haha.
cain
Litlebritdifrnt
@valdivia:
I have one like that too, with the wet food though, Tigger will sit by the food bowls (while the rest of the cats are chowing down) with the canned food in there and stick in his paw, grab a glob and put it in his mouth, it is very strange.
John Cole
Re: Zach Wamp
Tennessee is the absolute ignorant rump of the GOP. The state is one of I believe two that got MORE conservative the last ten years. Look no farther than the state party antics during the election year.
Trust me. It is a good thing for the Democrats to let those fools lead the opposition to health care reform. They will only shrink the GOP with repeated exposure.
That One - Cain
@Chuck Butcher:
My younger one is a bit like that. She puts on ‘the show’ if the bowl looks like it’s on it’s way to empty. Running around, scratching my legs. Eventually she gives up and tries to snuggle with me or sit by me and pretend to sleep. The other one doesn’t care, and will eat what’s left and then lick the bowl even if it’s empty. But he has such a heart rending look on his face when he comes back from outside and the bowl is empty. I always end up filling the bowl.
I don’t want to fill their bowl since the younger one starts bugging me at night. For some dumb reason, she wakes me up between 5am – 6:45am and wants me to escort her to her food bowl and wat ch her eat. Sometimes multiple times. I end up sleeping on the couch so that she doesnt disturb my wife. So I starve her a bit and then let her eat so she’ll sleep through the night. Our oldest really spoiled us. Never finicky and never uses his claws on us and everybody in the neighborhood loves him. He’s my superstar.
cain
josefina
Man, you can almost hear Tunch!
Cat’s don’t seem to be adaptable to change. With a dog, you just show them the bed and they are happy.
I read somewhere (it was on the intertubes! it must be true!) that cats get attached to places in a way that dogs don’t. Certainly that’s been my experience. The cats I’ve had objected if I moved furniture while the dogs are happy being the same room, any room, with their people.
That One - Cain
@Atanarjuat:
Nice photo editing, it looks a lot better.
cain
That One - Cain
None of mine are like that. I move the kitty litter, or food bowl and it’s all good. As long as it’s serviceable, they are good.
cain
Cris
@josefina: Unfortunately, I’ve heard people cite that claim to justify leaving their cat behind when they move to another house.
passerby
@Comrade Stuck:
Zach Wamp, raving, hair-on-fire, fear monger, is my Congressional Rep. He also voted for the bank bailout last fall which now makes him a hypocrite. He did not acknowledge my emails. Next election I’ll be beating the drum for whoever runs against him.
Litlebritdifrnt
@passerby:
Good on you, and let him know the same, all the people are asking is the same health care that HE as US representative gets, is that too much to ask?
Mnemosyne
I’m sure everyone who has a cat has already seen this, but just in case:
Feed the Cat
jake 4 that 1
Your big fat cat and my big fat cat have a lot in common, so I can tell you exactly what he’s saying:
"Am I gonna hafta choke a bitch?!"
This concludes another edition of "Pets – If we could understand what they’re saying we’d still be living in trees."
Litlebritdifrnt
@Cris:
Sad but true, we are a marine town here, and unfortunately they get themselves pets which they either choose or cannot take with them when they get orders. I have two cats that I appear to have acquired right now, eating at my front door, living under my deck, both appear nicely kept (collars etc) but for some reason they are now mine. Go figure.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Mnemosyne:
I LOVe Simon’s Cat, never fails to get me giggling.
OniHanzo
My cat is a sweetheart of an alarm clock. She’ll jump onto the bed and lay on my chest, meowing as loudly as possible. It’s not because her bowl is empty… it’s her subtle way of saying "Get up, primate. You can’t make my food bill if you’ve lost your job! LET’SMOVEMONKEYMAN!"
And yet for all that care and concern, I know deep down, she’d make a pup tent of my bones if I went a day without feeding her.
Pure adorable evil.
raff
Dude, please. I used to have a room-mate who had five siamese cats… three of them female. If you’ve ever heard a siamese cat yowl, you have an inkling (& only an inkling) of what a ‘loud’ cat is. Until you’ve lived through three siamese cats going through ‘heat’ simultaneously, you don’t know loud — cat or otherwise.
One of the cats, a white chocolate-point named Sheda, took a fancy to me. If I wouldn’t let her into my room, she’d yowl non-stop until I opened the door & let her in.
On top of the un-naturally sheer, piercing volume of a siamese’s yowl, it also has a creepily human-baby-esque quality that even nails-on-a-chalkboard can’t compete with.
Mike in Denmark
Why do people feed their cats like that? My two indoor cats just have a bowl of Royal Canine dry food which I fill when it gets low. And they’re very slim, so slim in fact that we checked with the vet who just said that we were just so used to seeing fat cats that our normal cats looked too skinny to us.
josefina
Unfortunately, I’ve heard people cite that claim to justify leaving their cat behind when they move to another house.
Yeah, it’s probably 99% bullsh*t — and even if it were 100% true, it wouldn’t justify that sort of clueless cruelty.
A friend used to volunteer at the ASPCA here. At first she was on the intake desk but she started cleaning cages instead because she was afraid she’d leap across the desk and throttle the next person who came in and dropped off their cat because "We got a new couch" or "He sheds too much" or "She makes too much noise" or "The litterbox smells really bad" or "He’s not as cute as I wanted." Seriously. And these were people one step up the asshole hierarchy; at least they weren’t just dumping the creatures somewhere.
AhabTRuler
@Mnemosyne: That video freaked Momo out, and furthermore, she stridently denies any resemblance whatsoever!
Delia
@Mike in Denmark:
Not all cats can be fed freely. I used to have a pair of cats for whom I could leave dry food out all the time and they would never overeat. Now I have one who would be fine with that if she were an only, and one, who was originally a stray, who turns into a little tub if I don’t monitor the food very closely. I have to put the first one’s leftovers in a high, closed cupboard so the second one doesn’t scarf it up. The first one gets very annoyed when I do it, but the second one would get like Tunch if I didn’t.
Kevin K.
@KRK: Yeah, they thought our cat had renal failure, but it turned out to be a rare form of heart failure. Your solution sounds good but we’re in a semi-tiny Brooklyn apartment. A local barkeep told me he has some fancy litter box that collects the pee in a catch basin. We may have to shell out for one of those. I don’t know how much longer I can deal with shoveling out huge clumps of scoopable litter that are nearly as big as Antarctica. I think I could have built a brownstone out of the ones she’s created so far.
Chuck Butcher
Marlin’s food bowl was moved 5 feet to the right, she spen 3 month mewing where it used to be for food that was in the bowl.
I do not know why my wife does this stuff, but she bought Gus (dog) a new food bowl, he refused to eat for 4 days and she gave in. We have owned many rather expensive experiments of that nature, Gus doesn’t like experiments.
The entire point of the Pyrenese breed is to not accept anything out of the ordinary and react to it. With Gus that includes food or water bowls through yard decorations up to absolute fury regarding wild animals. Watching me put houses up hits a lot of buttons on him.
Marlin is plump but as she shows no sign of going farther it isn’t worth diet.
J. Michael Neal
The boys pester for food, and would blimp out if I left a full bowl of food around all the time. The girls don’t eat much. I can’t feed them at the same time as the boys, because all of their food would disappear before they wanted it. So, they have food bowls that I keep under Rubbermaid tubs, with girl cat sized holes in the side.
Monster, on the other hand, is an attention whore of the worst sort.
Wile E. Quixote
We need to turn Zach Wamp’s fucked up name into an expletive the way Dan Savage turned Rick Santorum’s last name into a sexual neologism. I think that the word "zachwamp" should be used to describe any foul noisome substance, such as "that’s a flaming pile of zachwamp" or "Dude, that’s some nasty zachwamp you stepped in there".
John Cole
Yeah, but at the same time, there is no right to “health care” in the Constitution. All of that is just nonsense to cloudy the discussion, though, over whether or not health care for everyone is something we should be striving for.
Capelza Gradenko
Oh my, what sharp little teeth Tunch has. Handsome gent.
My hungry evil beast harasses me by knocking things of of tables, like pencils, seashells, anything…usually far enough away from me that I can’t reach her. Or climbing onto a shelf with nice breakable things on it, check that, swingin from said shelf.
She always wins.
FoxinSocks
Last week, I was late feeding the kitties and they were hanging out in the bedroom with the beagle, with the door closed.
Being about an hour late to feed them, I open the door and the beagle comes racing out, the cats trying to wrap their paws around her as if to hold her back. I think they were planning on eating the dog if I didn’t get them food right there and then.
Skepticat
Kevin K, once you have your diabetic cat regulated, the box-flooding stops (unless there also are kidney issues).
Faux News
I think Tunch was clearly saying to John: "GET IN MY BELLY!"
Genine
Wow, Tunch looks pretty pissed there.
I think I love Tunch.
AhabTRuler
@John Cole: Amendment IX (many machines on Ix) – What’s your take?
Any Constitutional scholars in the house?
aschup
Let’s see, where have I seen that look befo––
http://i2.iofferphoto.com/img/1162713600/_i/15185954/1.jpg
GOJIRA!
mandarama, Eager Minion
passerby–
I’m in TN too, and I just want to express my sympathy. I don’t have Wamp (who had better by-God not be our Governor anytime soon), but I have Marsha Blackburn and she brings the crazy-dressed-up-like-a-realtor vibe. My county went overwhelmingly for Obama and we worked hard for him…but TN in general is wingnut central. I wish Tunch would come over here like Godzilla and rid us of some of them.
ETA: aschup provides the perfect visual!
Laura W Darling
@mandarama, Eager Minion:
Having known 100 too many realtors in my life, that is freakin’ funny.
Ellid
Wow. He really *does* look like he’s ready to eat you.
mama whiskers
This is the first time I’ve seen Tunch vocally pissed. Action shot indeed! He looks mah-velous!