Friday, March 31, 2006

Zoo Cats

Kate and her mum, Jo, took me to the Zoo for my birthday the other week. I was pretty excited because I hadn’t been there since I was a wee child, and I’d heard that the Zoo’s only been getting better.

My viewing priorities went a) Big Cats, b) Small Cats, c) sundries (time permitting). My love of cats is certainly not limited to domestic cats, and with the exception of feral cats, I pretty much love all cats, or, ‘members of the family Felidae’, as we people who type “cat family” into Wikipedia call them. They’re such an impressive species; proud and noble, elegant and graceful. I think the domestic cat comes out on top because you can actually engage and interact with them. They’re not just something to look at; they’re creatures that pretty much anyone can form a relationship with. Tigers are easily next on the list, followed by Cheetahs and then Jaguars and Leopards. Lions, I guess, would go next, although I think they’re a bit overrated. With those bouffy, hair-metal manes I think they’re more Kings of the Hairspray, than Kings of the Jungle. Tigers should be the Kings of the Jungle. I wonder who’d win in a ‘Tiger v Lion’ fight? Or ‘Tiger v Robocop’? Or even better, ‘Tiger v Paris Hilton’?! Now that’d be a ‘fight’ to see! After Lions I think I’d have to lump Snow Leopards, Pumas, Lynxes, Servals and Ocelots together because I don’t know too much about them. Except that Servals have enormous ears, Ocelets look stunning, and that Puma and Lynx are both brands I don’t like.

Anyway, Kate and Jo got to the Zoo before me, as I was heading there after work. When I called Kate to say I was almost there, she told me she was at the tiger’s enclosure and he was playing around in the water with a plastic ball. Brilliant; I said I’d be there in five minutes. A lot can happen in five minutes. Actually, a lot can happen in five seconds. This was Kate and Jo’s tiger experience.


And this was mine.


Fat lotta nuthin’. I waited and waited, but no amount of calling out like I was at the back door calling the cat in for dinner was going to draw Ramalon the proud Sumatran tiger out into the open. I eventually gave up and we headed to the Small Cats area, where we got a healthy serve of almost nuthin’. We got to see two Servals up quite close, which was excellent, and they were even talking to each other, but the only other cat out was the Fishing Cat. No Asiatic Golden Cat, no Bobcat, no Leopard Cat and no Ocelot.


Still, encouraged by the Servals, we hurried over the Big Cats and, guess what: more nuthin’. No Puma, no Snow Leopard and no Jaguar. Sorry, I tell a lie: I got to see the Jaguar’s rear end as he disappeared around a corner at the back of his cage. I thought I was on a timing winner as we were there at dusk, and isn’t that when cats are supposed to be most active? Yes, sure, they were actively moving out of sight, but that wasn’t what I was after.

My last hope were the Lions, and they were pretty cool. A couple of them got into a roaring match and I just could not believe how loud they were. It was intense! I went back a little later and found one lion standing up in a tree a short distance from the fence. We got into a staring match. He won. It was unnerving. Felt a bit like trying to stare down Aslan. Oh hey, I forgot about Aslan! I take back what I said before about Lions. Aslan’s magnificent even when he doesn’t sound like James Earl Jones.




So all up, pretty disappointing on the cat front, but we did get to see some other good animals and I did surprise an excitable keeper guy by correctly identifying a Potoroo when asked. I don’t think he was expecting anyone to know, and I didn’t tell him I designed a brochure for the Potoroo conservation scheme in East Gippsland. Sometimes it’s good to just be the King. My reward for getting the question right was being allowed into the enclosure to feed the Potoroo. Pretty cute.


We then stayed around for a picnic dinner and the final ‘Twilight Jazz at the Zoo’ for the summer. The jazz band was pretty good, and their final number was a classic Duke Ellington track that featured a pounding, extended drum solo that was doubly good because I’d only just complained that drum solos never go for long enough! Great way to finish a most enjoyable day.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

OS X goes to the dogs

Do you know those things that you take for granted, but when you stop and think about them you realise that they could have so easily been something else? I can only think of one, actually, but that’s ok because by happy coincidence that’s the only one I want to write about.

Since the introduction of OS X in 2001, Apple has been using cat breeds for each iteration’s pre-release codename. 10.0 was Cheetah, 10.1 Puma, 10.2 Jaguar, 10.3 Panther, 10.4 Tiger, and 10.5 will be Leopard. Apple has also registered Lynx and Cougar as trademarks, so I imagine we’ll see them eventually too. I find no mentions of Lion, but maybe they’re saving that for the final version of System 10: The King of the OS Jungle? Jaguar was the first release to be openly marketed with its codename, and has been the only one so far to use the cat’s coat as a part of its imagery.


So they’re using cats, brilliant, but how easily could it have been something else?! Just because I would have made it cats, doesn’t mean that anyone else would. I’d love to know how the decision was made. Was it the result of extensive polling and months of intensive focus groups, or did some guy in marketing just like cats? Lucky he didn’t like dogs. Not that that’d work though. No matter how you feel about dogs, who’d be able to pitch that successfully? Ok, we’ll start off with 10.0 Bloodhound, move onto 10.1 Pit Bull, followed by 10.2 Doberman, 10.3 Rottweiler and 10.4 German Shepherd-Dingo cross who’s really never done anything like that before and has always been so good around the children...

Alright, alright, let’s be gracious and go with your most popular, non-face eating breeds: Mac OS X 10.0 Collie, 10.1 Corgi, 10.2 Dalmatian, 10.3 Poodle, 10.4 Samoyed, and 10.5 Scottish Terrier from the Chum ads. Well I’m not impressed, although I guess those aren’t actually the equivalents of the majestic big cats, are they? So what would be? Umm… 10.0 Wolf, 10.1 Coyote, 10.2 Dingo, 10.3 Jackal, 10.4 Fox and… I think I’m out! Maybe we’d have to go back to wolves and have 10.5 Grey Wolf, 10.6 Red Wolf, and so on? Doesn’t make much of a difference though really. Doesn’t inspire me or fill me with confidence; just unease and suspicion. It’d possibly be enough to drive me back to Winblows!

Well, for whatever reason, I’m glad Apple went with cats for codenames. They’re better than Windows’ set of ski-resort inspired codenames (um, Longhorn, hello?), and they’re much, much better than dog names. It’s nice to have such an alignment of two of my favourite things.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Woman's Worst Friend?

The Catablog was started to celebrate what’s good in life, and not to dwell on the bad, but sometimes an issue gets off the leash and I can’t control where it ends up. Below is an extract from an article in The Age from February this year. I had heard about a French woman who’d had the first successful partial face transplant, but I hadn’t been aware of the reason she needed a new face in the first place. Be warned: reader discretion is advised.

Ms Dinoire, who still has difficulty moving or closing her mouth, described how she awoke last May to discover her horrible disfigurement after her Labrador chewed off the lower part of her face. She had been unconscious after taking sleeping pills in what many contend was a suicide attempt.
     “On May 27, after a very disturbing week and with lots of personal worries, I took drugs to forget,” Ms Dinoire said.
     “When I woke up, I tried to light a cigarette and didn’t understand why it wouldn’t stay between my lips. That’s when I saw the pool of blood and the dog.”
     She looked at herself in a mirror and “couldn’t believe what I was seeing, it was too horrible”.
     Her lips were gone, along with her chin and much of her nose, leaving her teeth and part of her lower jawbone exposed.
But maybe this is a happy story? Maybe, like Lassie, the Labrador realised its owner’s dire predicament and is actually responsible for saving her life? That’s what I’ll keep telling myself anyway, because the alternative is just too unpleasant to think about. The dog being a Labrador was the real surprise for me in this story; I mean, there’s a Rottweiler or a Pit Bull eating some toddler’s face off every second day, but I’ve never heard about a good old Labbie doing it, which is what makes me think it must have been trying to help. Either way, I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that the flesh-eating ambitions of my pet of choice begins and ends with the odd native bird, and that my face is way-hey-hey off-limits.