Surely There’s More Than One Way to Skin a Cat?

If you’ve read my tweet a few days ago, you would be aware that I had been sick. Again. Hmm…

My doctor suggested that I may be allergic to my cats. Of course, the obvious solution is to remove the offensive allergen. But you see, I’m very, very fond of my cats. Apart from vacuuming and wiping all the corners of my small apartment, washing all the sheets and upholstery and keeping the windows open, I don’t know what else I can do to make living with 7 giant furballs more tolerable. Should I shave them bald? Keep them locked in the bathroom during the hours when I’m awake? Ok, just kidding!

Are you allergic to your pets but still live with them? How do you cope?

The Fragility of Life

Like all our other cats, we didn’t choose to have our Princess, she chose us.

She just appeared at my apartment door one day and slowly eased herself into the house. At first she only stayed for the food but then her stays grew longer and longer. She figured it’s more convenient to take a dump in our bathroom instead of going downstairs every evening. She also found out that for the small price of a lazy purr there are people willing to massage her royal body. After awhile, she stopped going outdoors and without realising it, we had unknowingly signed ourselves to a life of feline servitude.

And today, just as suddenly as she’d arrived, she left.

Rest in peace, dear friend.

Road to Success - The Right Attitude and Hunger

Positive thinking plays a big part in determining whether you will be successful and this is how I’d chart their relation:

The more positive you are the more likely your are to succeed.

I came across a graph from one of my newspaper clippings collection and promptly pin it up because I like how it outlines another key factor — success is not only determined by the kind of attitude you have but also by how bad you want it (which is to be followed by a plan of action).

Through purely unscientific inference, I conclude that if we solely depend on positivity, we’ll likely fall into the “I think I might” to “I think I can” spectrum. Therefore, to increase our chances of success, we’ll need to rise to the next level. When you’re at “I can” or “I will”, a natural question that follows will be, “How can I make this work?” and you will be on your way to writing you own blueprint to success.

Of course, there are other factors that would influence your chance of success - connections, luck, fate, cats (having too many cats greatly reduce my chances of a spontaneous getaway — who’s gonna feed all the cats?!) — but as they say, success is 99% perspiration, so get sweating and good luck!

The Power of A Dream
Pangea Day and A Doodle of A Daydreaming Cat

10th May was Pangea Day.

“Pangea Day is a global event bringing the world together through film. In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it’s easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that – to help people see themselves in others – through the power of film.”

[Read more....]

The Heat is On, It’s On the Street
Good Things in a Hot Situation

It’s been scorching hot the past few weeks on this sunny island. Three weeks ago, I was waiting for a bus in the middle of the afternoon sun. By the time the bus arrived (some 30 minutes later!), my skin had been burnt to a golden brown crisp. I suffered a terrible headache which didn’t go away until the next day (I suffered two daylong headaches this week alone just by walking 10 minutes in the sun). [Read more....]

Saved by a Sketchbook

I have a lot of sketchbooks which I alternate between, depending on my mood or where I’m going to, but for a few months now, I’ve stuck to an A5-sized sketchbook with brown pages that resemble kraft paper. It is now my favourite sketchbook. I’d be very pissed if anything were to happen to it.

For no reason whatsoever, I decided to bring along a second sketchbook with me as I go out for breakfast today. I wolfed down my breakfast, did a few quick sketches and then decided to go home. I’d usually take my time to eat, draw, write and soak in the sights and sounds around me. But I needed to use the bathroom and since I really hate dirty toilets (I don’t know for sure if the toilet there was actually dirty, I just assumed it was), coupled with the fact that my home is only 2 minutes away, I decided to rush home.

Back home, I put my shopper bag on the dining room table, did my “business”, and then proceeded to play with one of the cats for awhile. When I came back to the dining area to get my bag, I found it dripping wet. With pee. Lots of pee.

To say that I’m annoyed at the situation would be the understatement of the century. I took out the contents of my bag and assessed the damage. My coin purse, a birthday present which I only started using recently, was soaked. My wallet and everything inside it was marinated with Eau de Chat. Among other things, 10,000 yen (money left from my Tokyo trip which I’ve totally forgotten about until now), business cards, pieces of paper containing ideas for my projects, a stack of receipts I needed as part of my business records, all tainted with the yellow tint of urine.

As I pulled out one wet item after another, I found my favourite sketchbook intact, dry as can be, wrapped between the pages of my second sketchbook, which took the brunt of the pee-age. Ha ha! Lucky me!

I spent the next hour cleaning, disinfecting and laying out things to dry. But let’s not focus on that. :|

Losing It for a Minute

At 630pm yesterday I realised I had not spoken to my black cat, Spooky Angel, the whole day. She’s a very talkative cat who can answer most of life’s important questions, sometimes, with great wisdom, wit and intelligence, so it was unusual that a day would pass without us engaging in serious conversation.

She was sleeping beside me when I was reading a publication at 8 in the morning. Being the affectionate lap cat that she is, she’d wanted to sit well, on my lap, but I wasn’t in the mood to entertain the fuzz ball as I had to concentrate on an article, so I nudged her away.

A few minutes would pass and I’d fallen asleep sitting. When I woke up, I found the little Angel asleep, beside my right thigh. Aaaaw… I felt a little guilty for not letting her take a nap on my lap, especially when I was more asleep than doing anything else, but then she woke up and looked at me with the look — yeah-you-know-you-want-me look– anticipating that I’d take her and place her on her rightful human cushion. I thwarted her happiness by pushing her off the couch! Ha ha ha! So evil of me!

Anyway, it was 630pm and I’d not seen her since then so I called her name. There was no answer. I looked around the house. Under the couch, in the kitchen, in the bathrooms, under the beds, on top of cupboards, everywhere. She was nowhere to be found. And then it hit me that she might have slipped out when I went out at about 10am.

I went to search for her outside, bracing for the worst - she might have been ran over by a car, eaten by a pack of wild dogs or was taken by someone - someone better, someone who wouldn’t mind her sitting on his/her lap all day. Strangely, only the last thought made me wanna cry.

I got very worried because she’s a black kitty and it would be very difficult to find her in the dark . And then all that I felt was guilt. Guilt. Guilt. GUILT. Am I being punished for being mean to her? Will she forever remember me as the evil witch that pushed her off the couch?! Do I have to live with this guilt forever?!!!

.

.

.

It took me all of two minutes to find her. She was asleep at my neighbour’s steps. When I called her name, she just opened one eye, and looked slightly annoyed, like “Wha? Don’t be disturbing my sleep, woman”.

She was very calm when I carried her back home. I smothered her in kisses and showered her with words of love but when I tried to put her on my lap, she sneered at me and went off to eat instead. Oh well… Thank God I found her. I’ll never deprive a cat of my lap again.

Related links
I can has cheezburger
Cute Overload

Related posts
Power Control
Happiness Is…
Tablet Do’s and Don’ts
Pencil Thief and A Little Faith

Power Control

There was a power failure just now. When I got the power back up, there was a *bzz…bzz* sound coming from the mess of cables under my desk. Upon inspection I found out that the failure was due to…. my cat.

One of my cats had peed onto my multi-plug extension outlet rendering it wet and useless. I’m thinking of banning them from entering the room. I know I’ve thought of this a hundred times before but AAARGH! this time it’s too much!

I’m typing all this on a UMPC with an uncomfortably small keyboard. I can’t do any work now. My computer refuses to start up after the power went off just now. So very, very annoying!

The “No Cats in the Room” rule will be on with immediate effect. At least until one of them gives me the Puss in Boots dilated-pupils, I’m-so-cute-and-innocent look.

Happiness is…

Today, happiness is:

Seeing my little cat falling asleep in the middle of playing with a measuring tape
Warm coffee that tastes like golden sunshine, sweet cinnamon and roasted chestnuts
Squeezing the tummy of my fat cat, who was asleep on its back
My room resplendent in the rich glow of a warm morning

Tablet Do’s and Don’ts

As you’d remember, my table is now clean and tidy. But since I have only a tiny space to put my things on (the cat is still occupying a good half of the desk), I tend to place my folder on top of my Wacom tablet. I’d usually move the folder away when I need to use the tablet.

You know what? I just discovered that I can use my tablet with the folder full of paper on top of it! How great is that? How can I not know this before? I’ve used a tablet while working in another company years ago and the most I did was to trace a thin sheet of paper with my sketch on.

I tried piling different things on top of the tablet to see how much it can take before losing sensitivity. Results vary with different material. It can safely take up to 1.5cm of copy paper. One CD case if fine, but not two. It didn’t work over a sachet of instant coffee. It worked up to page 328 of W magazine (the one with Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman on the cover). It even worked over a box of chocolates! What else is there to try?

Naturally I thought of experimenting on things more… desk-related…like…the cat. Yes the one that’s always sleeping on my desk (not Moo Moo, she’d be stealing my stylus if I were to try that).

Result? Apparently cats are allowed to take up any amount of space they desire, but one should never, ever attempt to poke a sleeping cat with a stylus.