cat friends

[081003] two damn attitude cats on St John's Island:



[151003]

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress
can be judged by the way its animals are treated
~ Mahatma Gandhi
e cats that had names:

• Tommy was Andrea's good-natured & fat ginger & white tom cat that ate chocolate & lazed around e letterboxes of Aquamarine Tower in Bayshore Park before he passed away.
  
• Kopi-o, Milk Tea & San1 He2 Yi1 are e black, ginger & tricolour black+brown+white kittens that were born in e garden, named by my sis, but have since disappeared.
  
• Bumpy was e grey & white KE7 tabby cat that hung around B & C blocks of East Wing, came into my room at night & walked all over my notes on my desk, & was fed by Chiew Boon next door.
  
• Meow meow is e affectionate white tabby cat with a few black & brown patches & blue eyes that was named by my mum & sis, used to sleep on e rug outside e front door, & was adopted & taken away by Jasmine when she moved out of e neighbourhood.

e cats that had no names:

• e fragile ci2 dun4 ginger kitten that was born in e garden, appeared to be deaf & dumb & oblivious to e roar of car engines, runt of e litter that had to be fed milk, that died before dawn & had its tiny stiff body placed (before we rushed off for school) in a Teva shoebox for burial, but was thrown away by e time we got home from school.
  
• e black & white cat along Telok Kurau Road that followed my sis so closely after she patted it that she freaked out & I had to carry it away.
  
• e black & white cat along e alley linking Martia Road & Jalan Tamban, that freaked my sis out in e exact same way.
  
• e black kitten with yellow eyes that hid from e rain by sleeping under my dad's car or on e towel outside e front door.
  
• e too-cute-for-its-own-good white kitten with sapphire blue eyes that was born in e garden, attracted so much attention from everyone who walked past e house - was kidnapped & never seen again when a car suddenly stopped by e gate & a pair of hands reached out to pick it up before zooming off.
  
• e friendly brownish-grey mother cat that led me to her 4 kittens in e longkang along Martia Road.
  
• e grey & white 'bus stop' cat that always crossed East Coast Road using e overhead bridge.
  
• e grey & white kitten that followed my sis & I home on our way back from e Shell petrol station.
  
• e quiet Russian Blue cat with yellow eyes that invited herself into e Bayshore house one night as we were preparing dinner & toured e rooms & stopped to admire herself in e mirror.
  
• e friendly brown & white, black & white, tricolour black+brown+white & ginger kittens that lived along e alley linking Martia Road & Jalan Tamban & in e garden of e corner house & drank Cream of Campbell's oxtail soup.
  
• e kittens that used to play in e old tables of NUS Science canteen.
  countless other cats & kittens that have come up to me or were spotted from e bus on long bus journeys.
  

[ filed under: cats1 + thewonderingstraycat + 9_lives_2003 ]

aug - sep 2003

[010803] was reading a Nature article about a protein named Elmo, & started thinking of Sesame Street, Jim Henson's muppets, & my favourite TV show that I watched as a kid, Fraggle Rock. somehow most people seem to remember Sesame Street but not Fraggle Rock - click on e image below to learn more:



[180803] 'I remember everyone who leaves.' - Lilo in Lilo & Stitch

I like airports. departure halls. arrival halls. viewing galleries. transit lounges. glass panels through which people wave to someone as (s)he walks away, until they are left waving to their own reflections. giant overhead boards that display arrival & departure schedules that are constantly updated ever so frequently, banishing away all traces of previous arrivals & departures. baggage claim belts that trundle on endlessly long after the last bag has been picked up. a blurring of time zones, the imperceptible merging of night into day & back into night again. a sense of timelessness, seamlessness. arrivals & departures. comings & goings. meetings & partings. beginnings & endings. somehow airports are like a microcosm of life?

[300803] I lost this guy....so sad. & I didn't get a chance to take a photo of it before it was gone. wonder if people fear loss cos they fear that memory will fade with time, & that they will forget how something looked/felt/smelt/sounded like?



once upon a time I had no clue that this unidentifiable species had a name, or that it was Korean, or that it loves food & lives in a refrigerator munching on watermelon slices, doughnuts & other stuff. just knew that its eyes were e perfect reflection of how I appear during lectures. had a little stuffed toy version of this guy (hugging a pink & white bolster, hence e name 'sleepyhead')....until it disappeared on 270803. resulted in a trip to Heeren to search for a replacement, & that's how I came to discover so much more about it - only after I lost it. ironic. by e way this guy's called Foody.

[081003] discovered that sleepyhead aka. Foody had modeled in two photos of Guanghao's birthday gift - sitting on e tail of a model F-16 fighter jet - & here are e edited pics =)



[180903] for Rhan, laoda, css, LKY, Ling, mr doraemon, liangyeo, limkokfa, Samuel, littlesunshine, Indonesian penguin, lauweeli, kuan, limgekho, 'uh-oh!', Kelken, sootty, Huegesh, Gaurav, Hoi Nam & all other SPSians who have helped me (& many others) in one way or another with comp stuff:



[190903] my black friend used to weigh more than 10 times my weight & tower above me when we first got to know each other. almost 20 years later, this friend now weighs roughly four times my weight & I've finally emerged as e taller-but-still-not-so-tall one. we've grown up together & over e years, its teeth have yellowed & voice has changed. if this friend of mine sounds like a victim of some long-term weight loss program gone wrong, well its a Yamaha upright piano. till this day I still cannot make sense of dried tadpoles stranded across swimming pools lane markers (i.e. read music scores), but this has never stopped my friend & I from spending endless hours together lost in our own world. have spent bits of time with my friend's counterparts in e RGS school hall, VJC LT4 & backstage of e KE7 comm hall, but none of them can share e happy memories of e times when my feet could finally reach e pedals or fingers could stretch an octave or I could finally see my own reflection above e open keyboard lid =)

[ filed under: thewonderingstraycat + 9_lives_2003 + music1 ]