On the topic of lolcats, bar-studying law grads really shouldn’t miss the Bar Exam Lolcats Facebook group. A few samples:

Heh. (Hat tip: Anonymous.)

Time.com catches up with the lolcat phenomenon:

Fans can watch the layers pile up in real time. I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? has already begotten a gray cat licking its chops and saying I DID HAS CHEEZBURGER–and has jumped species to include a white bunny, its mouth open wide, saying INVISIBLE CHEEZBURGER. Further interspecies hybridization has produced loldogs, lolbirds, lolhamsters, lolmice and–a little masterpiece of verbal economy–the tusked, amphibious lolrus. (The I HAS A BUCKET lolrus, starring a tragic walrus deprived of its only possession, is threatening to spin off into a freestanding meme in its own right.) Humans are also fair game: there are lolgeeks, lolgays and lolbrarians. A popular image of Nancy Pelosi being sworn in as Speaker of the House has been given the caption I’M IN UR HOUSE IMPEACHING UR DOODZ.

See for yourself here. Personally, I prefer this:

Many more lolcats at I Can Has Cheezburger.

The bed sheets are in the wash, so naturally, Sasha sees this as an ideal opportunity to get as much cat hair as possible on the mattress pad:

Heh. Aww.

A near calamity was just averted. Becky noticed that the little water-circulator thingy in Pug the Goldfish’s tank wasn’t running. Turns out, its cord had been yanked out of the electrical socket behind the couch. The space between the couch and the wall is easily large enough to fit a cat, so I suspect feline foul play. This was obviously part of a plot to deprive poor Pug of oxygen, thus making him easier prey. Unsatisfied with tuna scraps, the kitties are plotting to obtain some fresh fish, by any means necessary. Sasha’s futile pawing at the glass door previously seemed cute and harmless, but now I realize she was actually training for an assault on the fishtank. All she has to do is figure out how to scratch through solid glass (or plastic, as the case may be), and Pug is in real trouble…

P.S. Earlier today, Becky noticed Robbie taking a long, hard look at Pug. Hmm. Could this be a multi-species anti-fish terrorist conspiracy? Hey, if Sunnis and Shiites can work together against a common enemy, maybe cats and dogs can, too. Though I’m thinking Robbie is probably a mercenary: I bet the cats have promised him a share of their dry food (he loves cat food) in return for his cooperation. Come to think of it, he ate some of their food while we were at Target this evening!! They meowed plaintively when we got home, whining like he’d stolen it and they were oh-so-hungry, and I foolishly obliged by refilling their bowl… little did I know they were plotting against us the whole time!

;)

High above the kitchen is more like it, actually:

That would be one of Butter’s favorite spots in the new apartment: on top of the kitchen cabinets. (She gets there with a three-step jump: up onto the counter, then up onto the top of the fridge, and finally up onto the cabinet-top.) We’ve been trying to keep the cats off the kitchen surfaces, but it’s hard to catch her jumping up there, and nearly impossible to get her down once she succeeds; even I can barely reach that high, and she can easily squirm out of my reach if she wants to (which she generally does, since my reach means I’m trying to get her down from her favorite spot!).

Oh well, if you can’t fight ‘em, join ‘em, or in this case, take pictures of ‘em and admire their cuteness. Aww.

P.S. Just now, as I was cutting up a watermelon on the kitchen counter, Butter walked up to me and started meowing loudly and vociferously. Becky walked into the kitchen and carried Butter into the living room, trying to calm her down. But when the thunder from a passing storm rumbled again, Butter bolted back to the kitchen and resumed meowing at me. At that point, Becky realized what was wrong: Butter wanted to jump up to her “safe spot” on top of the kitchen cabinets to hide from the storm, but she couldn’t get there because I was blocking the kitchen counter (her jumping-off point). So I picked her up and plopped her in her spot. She immediately calmed down, and has been hanging out there ever since. Heh.

When I read this article about the “lolcat” phenomenon (which I’d been previously unaware of), my first reaction was, “Wow, that’s stupid and pointless.” And it is. So naturally, I had to join in the fun:

We decided to give our kitties a wee taste of freedom and adventure today. While sitting out on our front porch — Becky typing away on her iBook, me studying for the bar — we deliberately left about a slight opening in the sliding door, just wide enough for a cat to slip through.

Butter, perhaps having heard horror stories about the dangers that curiosity poses for her species, stayed safely ensconced inside the apartment. But both Sasha and Toby ventured out into the great unknown:

We kept a close eye on them, of course, and didn’t let them stray too far from the porch. Toby seemed right at home, which isn’t surprising, considering she spent a good deal of time outside during her kittenhood: in the yard, garden and driveway at Becky’s parents’ old house in Buffalo, across the street in Bassett Park, and even at more exotic, faraway locales like Mount Rainier and the Oregon Sand Dunes. Anyway, today she happily took advantage of the opportunity to use concrete to scratch an itch, and then went merrily exploring in the nearby bushes.

Sasha, on the other hand, has been an almost-exclusively indoor cat for her entire life, so she was a bit more skittish, wandering no more than a few feet from the fence (as the top picture suggests) and quickly scampering back when she got too spooked. Indeed, she ran back inside the house after maybe 10 or 15 minutes, having apparently had enough of the great outdoors. (At this point, Toby was still wandering through the shrubbery.) But of course, in stereotypical cat fashion, she decided she wanted to come back outside as soon as we shut the door. I couldn’t resist videotaping her adorable efforts to paw through the glass:

Heh.

* * * * *

In light of our baby news, this post reminds me of a classic Loomer-Loy family story — one of my all-time favorites, actually.

Before my parents had me, they had two cats: Shirin and The Pooka. And of course, as “cat people” are wont to do, they would constantly regale their friends and relatives with tales of all the amusing things their cats were doing. (Sound familiar?)

Then, in 1981, they got pregnant with their first (and, as it turned out, only) child. They had been married for almost four years when they sat my dad’s parents down and gave them the big, long-awaited news: a baby was on the way! Naturally, Papa and Nana Loy were excited and thrilled. But after the initial expressions of joy and congratulations, Nana — a.k.a. Helen McNamara Loy, she of the famously sharp tongue and acerbic Irish wit — muttered out of the side of her mouth, “Thank God, now we can stop hearing so much about those G**-damn cats.”

I wonder if, up in Heaven right now, she’s saying the same thing about me and Becky. I’d be a little disappointed if she wasn’t, actually. :)

* * * * *

Speaking of Nana Loy, it so happens that my mom just sent us a photo album — it arrived in the mail today — with a bunch of great pictures of me and Nana. She died when I was very young, so I don’t really remember her. But I was her only grandchild, and I’m told I was the great joy of the waning years of her life. You can tell that from the pictures, actually. Here’s one of me on Nana’s lap:

I mentioned before that Nana was Irish. She was, in fact, 100% Irish, and is the source of all my Irish blood (that I know of). She wasn’t fresh off the boat, though: her family had been in this country for quite a few generations, since at least the era of the Great Famine, if not before, from what we understand. But anyway, you can credit (or blame) the McNamaras for my red hair — which, as you can see, hasn’t really changed color, or style, since I was a toddler — and my total inability to get a tan. :)

Nana was prominent in Connecticut political circles. Indeed, occasionally somebody from Connecticut will recognize my name and figure out that I’m Helen Loy’s grandson. I bet this post will get a few Google hits from folks who remember her. Among her many endeavors, she won the Republican nomination for Secretary of the State in 1962 (losing the general election to incumbent Ella Grasso, who would go on to become the first female governor in the U.S. who was not the wife or widow of a former governor).

Through the magic of Google News Archives, you can read excerpts of some Hartford Courant articles from the 1950s and 1960s that mention her — just search for “Helen McNamara Loy.” (You can find a few others if you search for just “Helen Loy,” without the “McNamara.” She normally went by just “Helen Loy,” but she included the “McNamara” on the ballot because she wanted the Irish vote!! Heh. The European ethnic communities in Hartford used to be very important voting blocs.)

Even cooler, from 1945, Papa and Nana’s wedding announcement! Man, Google rocks.

Anyway, here’s a photo of me with both my parents and all four of my grandparents — from left, Papa and Nana Loy and Grandma and Grandpa Loomer:

Hard to believe we’ll soon be a full generation removed from that photo! In less than seven months, we’ll be able to take another picture like that, with me and Becky in the foreground holding our baby, and Papa Loy, Nana Loomer, Dziadzia Zak and Babçia Zak lined up behind us. What a life!

And to think, this started out as a post about cats. :)

I swear this picture isn’t a setup. We just walked into the living room and discovered Sasha like this:

Heh. Well, you know what they say. On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a cat.

P.S. In keeping with the “lolcats” phenomenon, perhaps the caption should be: “IM ON UR MAC RITIN UR BLOGZ.”

Just a random shot of Jay walking his basset hounds (a.k.a. Robbie’s short-legged buddies) the other day:

Release the hounds!! :)

Again with the terrorist squirrels!

I’m surprised Dave Barry isn’t all over this story.

Perhaps terrorist squirrels are also at fault for the computer problems on the international space station? Though the Russians seem more keen to blame us. To which I say, blame Canada.

Casey writes Pericles’s obituary.

The Mr. Lee CatCam: very cool. (Hat tip: Peter Evans.)

Casey’s super-cool octopus, Pericles Antikythera Irwin, has died.

Pout, pout. :(

Octopi are notoriously hard to keep alive in captivity, so Pericles’s death less than five months after his arrival isn’t a poor reflection on Casey’s skills as an aquarist. Nor is it a huge shock. Still, it sucks.

Well, I’m glad we made it up to Rochester in April to meet the little fella while he was still alive and kicking sucking! Here again are the awesome videos I posted previously:

Farewell, Pericles. As Casey says, “May the angels greet [you] with crabs and clams.”

Several years ago, before the realities of apartment-hunting with multiple pets set in, Becky promised to buy me a pug as a graduation present when I finished law school. But alas, given that we were barely able to find a place in Knoxville that would allow us to have three cats and a dog, and given that we may well be moving again in the next year or two, getting a second dog seemed exceedingly unwise at the moment. So yesterday, we found an alternative solution: we bought a goldfish and named it “Pug.”

So, there he is, ladies and gentlemen: my Pug. :) You can see a wider view, showing Pug’s tank, here.

The rare News story with a Happy ending :} ~

TORRINGTON, Conn. — A 10-foot-long yellow anaconda that escaped from its owner’s apartment more than a week ago didn’t get too far.

The snake, named Ana, was found alive in the basement of the apartment building on Birge Street Saturday by a state Department of Environmental Protection conservation officer. It had been missing since May 15.

…Officials warned neighbors to stay away from the snake if they came across it, because of its sharp teeth. Authorities were also concerned that the reptile would not survive long because of the cold nights.

Police Chief Robert Milano said possessing anacondas is only illegal when they create a nuisance to other animals…

Beauchesne gave the snake, which had its own room in his apartment and ate whole rotisserie chickens, to Massachusetts-based Rainforest Reptile Shows after it was found.

Although the foregoing excerpt is only slightly Constricted, here’s where you can writhe the whole Skinny, unless of course you conda Shed your ancient ancestral Fears & inhibitions. ;>