Yin Is Not Too Happy

Today is not a good day for Yin. Well, it's not a good day for me either, but I take it like a man, chin up. Yin, she's just such a pussy over it.


First, our human decided that despite her bad arm she is going to subject us to a bath. Before I even suspect anything, she had scooped all 8kg of me into her arms and took me inside the bathroom, locking the door behind her. 


Yin had no excuse, the fur brain should have realised what the game of the day was and put herself out of our human's reach. What did she think I was yowling at the top of my voice in the bathroom for?? Practising for the choir??


Look at her, after her bath. She's not very pleased.

And then, to cap it off, streaks of electricity lit up the sky while someone moved some really big and heavy furniture up there. Boom! Boom! Crack! 


I'm used to hearing this thunderous noise, and am rather nonchalant but Yin absolutely hates it. Forgetting her displeasure at our human, she ran and tucked herself between her legs.

Could someone please tell her how undignified it is for a cat to tuck itself against a human slave? How are we gonna rule the world if we fear the moving of furniture somewhere up in the sky?

We Are Pawticipating In The Cat-Olympics 2012!

Soon it'll be the Olympics again and we are pawticipating in it even if our humans aren't.


Yin and I are entering for the Synchronized Snoozing hosted by The Island Cats.

We are also taking part in Snoopendous-Sniff-A-Thon hosted by Luna and Cynder.

I am going for Couch Potato Peeling hosted by Lilly Belle and Muffin.

Yin is trying for Best Nippy Faces hosted by Callie and Sassy. 

She has also decided to go for Balancing Beam hosted by Cory and Company.

If you are a cat or dog, do join in the fun at The Pet Olympics. For more details on the events, check out their Official Events and Sponsors Page.

Blackie Bond: How To Deprive Your Human Slave Of Sleep

If you are a cat, you would know how frustrating it is when your human slave sleeps when you want to play. They not only sleep like the dead but they sleep like, forever, while you languish in boredom. Such inefficient bodies they have.


To prevent my human slave from a sound sleep, I have devised a fool-proof strategy. It has yet to fail me. Here is a step-by-step guide.


1. Shortly after the bedroom is plunged into darkness, scratch open the wardrobe door, go inside, and start a mournful howl. This will make your human slave think you're trapped inside the wardrobe, get up from bed and retrieved you.


2. Once she has settled back into bed, walk to the bedroom door and meowed. She'll think you want to go out of the room. When she gets up and opens the door for you, trot back to the wardrobe.


3. Wait until she has snuggled under her comforter again, then hop onto the bed and swipe her hand. If she does not respond, give it a quick, hard bite. That bite is guaranteed to get her to open her eyes and talk to you.


4. If she still goes back to sleep, lie down next to her. Position your body in such a way that she has no room to turn without squashing you. Lying stiff on her back, she'll be too uncomfortable to fall asleep.


5. If she still manages to fall asleep, bite and pull her hair. 


6. If that still doesn't work, jump on her like a trampoline.


You know you have succeeded in depriving her of a sound sleep when she staggers out of bed the next morning bleary-eyed and brain-dead.

And now, I must take a cat nap to refresh myself for my exercise in keeping my human slave awake tonight.

Blackie Bond: We Have Been Cartoonized!

Some humans will do anything to be immortalized.....

Some cat slaves will do anything to have their cats cartoonized.....

Thanks to Katz And Other Tales who shared about this fun cat cartoon program, 

we felines are now in the 'annals' of cat cartoons....

Our human isn't talented artistically, and I can't say we look too much like the cartoons.Well, to be fair to her, she got our mouths right, and I have to admit that my cartoon character resembles me a lot more than Yin's. Even my face looks almost like mine, I think. 

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

This is the first Haruki Murakami novel that I've ever read, and I would never have touched this book with a long pole if not for the fact that it was in the New York Times Bestseller list on 4th December 2011. Yes, I had downloaded that book into my Kindle since December last year, but was only able to start reading it early last month.

A 3-volume work that was written in Japanese, the books were combined into a huge single-volume monster when translated into English. A friend told me that I would be eighty by the time I finished the book. She was almost right. It took me more than a month to finish the 1000-page novel. But hang on....I've read 1000+ pages novel in one-eighth of the time it took me to finish '1Q84'. 'Under the Dome' by Stephen King comes to mind. So, what gives?

'1Q84' was a long, tedious novel. If 'Under the Dome' was a home-made burger of 100% beef patty, then '1Q84' was a cheap mass-produced burger with lots of fillers added. Hundreds of prosaic pages that did not move the story along were filled for no other reason than to contribute to the wealth of the timber tycoons. I would not have bothered completing the novel except that I was curious to find out if the two protagonists, Aomame and Tengo,  would ever meet and if they had wandered into an alternate reality or living in a parallel universe.

The plot vacillates between Aomame and Tengo with Tokyo as the setting....a Tokyo with two moons and 'Little People' who emerged from the mouth of a dead goat. Little people that came out as two inches tall but shook themselves up to twenty-eight inches. They plucked thin threads from the air and made air chrysalises. 

Those little people, we were told, were intelligent and powerful with long arms. Intelligent....ok, the most intelligent words that came out of their mouths were, "Ho, ho.". As for powerful.....they can't directly harm the protagonists (read: limited powers), and they kept shifting their focus like a short-attention-span five-year-old. 

Last, but not least, four whole months were dedicated to Aomame not doing anything except cook, eat, read, sleep and exercise. A more depressing book I have yet to come across. Each reading left me feeling dejected to the point of being suicidal. Die-hard fans of Haruki Murakami are probably going to slay me for this criticism, but I welcome their putting an end to my misery. '1Q84' is nothing more than a long, painful verbal diarrhea. 

We are busy....

Yes, very busy. So busy that we are sitting there, waiting and watching the printer spit out the paper.

Blackie's Chinese New Year Wish List.....

.......is for a bigger cat-sofa for his, ahem, enhanced body.

Micro by Michael Crichton & Richard Preston

Micro, a nano-technology thriller, was one-third written when Michael Crichton died. His agent looked for a co-writer to finish the novel based on Crichton's notes , files and two drawn maps. Richard Preston was eventually selected to complete the novel, based on his science background and bioterrorism work. The book was published in November 2011. 

Micro is set in the rainforest of Hawaii and features a villainous entrepreneur, Harvard graduate students shrunk to half an inch tall (though the scientists in the novel referred to them as dimensionally changed), small insects like ants which saw them as food, and micro-robots programmed to kill. In short, it's like a miniature version of Jurassic Park.

The plot opened with a private investigator being hired to check out the nanotechnology organisation which resulted in three mysterious deaths in an office, one of them being the private investigator himself. The police was baffled, as the only clues were ultra-fine, sharp razor cuts all over their bodies. The doors and windows to the office were locked from within and there was no signs of struggles of any kind. They just plopped down dead. 

Besides the action-packed story, the novel also contains a lot of rich details on the flora and fauna, insect life and their anatomy and biotechnology. One of the characters, Rick Hutter, an ethnobotanist, reminded me of my late grandmother. He believed that you could fight venom with venom. My late grandmother would catch centipedes and pickled them in vinegar, or was it wine, I don't remember. I was just a young kid then. Each centipede that crawled in our garden was perceived as priceless treasure and would be carefully picked up with a pair of tweezer before being lowered into a jar of vinegar/wine. She said the venom of the centipede would counteract the venom of a snake bite.   

But I digress....anyway, this novel educates as well as entertains. I was hooked right from the beginning and finished the 424-pages book in one and a half days (read: no productive work was done during that period).

11/22/63 by Stephen King

This is Stephen King's first attempt at a time travel piece, even though the idea for 11/22/63 came to him in 1971. King said that "back then, the wound was still raw and it would require too much research and literary talent" that he didn't think he had. When he returned to the project later, King had to read a lot of historical documents and archives in preparation for the novel. He even found out how much drinks and food cost at that time.

11.22.63 centres on Jake Epping, a high school English teacher at Lisbon Falls, Maine, who travelled back in time to try to prevent the assassination of JKF. The time bubble was at the back pantry of a diner. And the time in the past was 9 September, 1958 at 11:58am, Lisbon Falls, Maine. 

In order to prevent the assassination, Jake would have to stay in the past for four years. And the past is obdurate. It refused to be changed, and would do anything to prevent Jake from changing it. 

The concept was fascinating but somehow, the plot did not hold me in its grip. There wasn't enough tension or action and it was one of the few Stephen King novels that I was able to put down to attend to other things. It wasn't a poorly written novel. But it wasn't one of his better ones either. 

That said, anybody who enjoys reading as a pastime should try to lay their hands on a copy. There's a lot of interesting trivial data, like how women in that era were different from today's women. 

Why I want to be a cat....

Advanced Breast Cancer and Palliative Care

Acute pain is what we think of when we think of advanced cancer. We have all heard or seen with our own eyes how advanced cancer patients were gripped in intense pain in their last stage. My late mum's sister-in-law was one example. She died of advanced breast carcinoma and I remember how my uncle had to stay awake each night to rub Chinese analgesic lotion on her. She described her pain as being set on fire.


And that was the pain I feared for my mum in October last year. But thankfully, after my mum was given palliative care, she was comfortable. Her pain was so intense that the specialists gave her the Fentanyl patch so as to not overdose on morphine. She did not experience any pain at all from the moment she used the Fentanyl patch. (Fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morhpine ~  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl)


Her tumor had grown and spread to her bones, lungs, chest wall, liver and brain. But she did not experience any pain. Not even up to her last conscious day. When I asked her if she was in pain, she'd shake her head. By that time, she could no longer speak. 


Her discomfort came from breathlessness. Although oxygen mask and additional morphine were given, she was still gasping like a fish out of water. (Morphine helps to relieve breathlessness.)


I know this post is so out of "character", no one wants to read such topics. It's boring. Why did I write it? So that anyone whose family member has cancer would know that they do not need to suffer the pain. Ask your oncologists/surgeons to refer you to palliative care. 

Goodbye 2011, Hello 2012......

It has been more than two months since I last visited my own blog, let alone type a few lines. 2011 has not been a good year for me. I shall always remember 2011 as the year that took my beloved mum from me. 


For the first time in my life I can no longer go to my mum and tell her what I did, ate, or what I saw. Last night I cried myself to sleep as memories of my mum washed over me. Were she still alive, she would have been amused to see Yin dressed up in the party hat and mask I brought home from the new year eve dinner we had earlier.


But enough of that....I know I should move on....and on that note, happy new year to everyone!

Yin wearing the party hat and mask from Jarrod & Rawlins

Fireworks viewed from our balcony

OWC - Obedient Wives Club OR Orgy Wives Club??

I can't believe someone, and a club at that, would provide me with so much entertainment and amusement that I am now writing a fourth installment on the same social issue. To refresh our memories, here's my third and second write-up.

OWC, a controversial women's club, has just released a book that is probably the most outrageous ever written by a Malaysian. The book encourages a Muslim husband to have sex simultaneously with all his wives. 

First, a good wife should be like a high class prostitute. Now, a good wife should team up with her husband's other wives for orgy sessions. Wow! 

I don't really care what they do behind closed doors, but really, don't they think they are degrading themselves by seeing themselves as sex workers rather than a wife? The status of a wife and sex worker is as different as night from day, so why would they want to sink to the level of a prostitute, and encourage other wives to do that, too??  

Could it be because they have no brains, no personality, no character whatsoever that would hold the interest of their husbands, and sex is the only way they could sustain their husband's interest? 

Check out this report in The Star today.

Yin Is 6!!

Happy birthday, my dearest Yin.

We're having a little kitties party to celebrate Yin's birthday......tuna, dried salmon, Greenies and crab sticks, for both Blackie & Yin.   :)

When Euthanasia Is Merciful......

Ever since mum showed me a sudden appearance of a lump the size of a golf ball in her left breast in May this year, her cancer has been advancing  aggressively. 


In early August, every single night without fail, she felt intense tearing pain at her back, where the rib cage bones are located. She could not sleep and started taking Panadol for pain relief. The pain accelerated quickly, and by the middle of August, she was in pain more often than not. I had to give her 600mg of Ibuprofen twice a day plus rubbed her back with Counterpain, an analgesic cream.


By September, none of those helped relieve her pain and she finally agreed to see the oncologist for pain management. At the hospital, mum asked if she could be put to sleep painlessly (euthanasia), which, of course, is against the law in Malaysia. Needless to say, the specialist declined to help her along that path.


I had thought that stronger drugs like Tramadol or morphine would effectively mask mum's pain, but apparently, those narcotic drugs only take the edge off the pain, not mask it completely. 


With mum opting for no treatment, we suddenly found that there are many people who chose not to be treated, too. Her church friends started to share about their own family members who opted for no treatment while my cousin shared about her friend in US who did not want treatment and opted for palliative care instead. Why did mum and those people chose to have no treatment, preferring to eventually die from their disease or condition?


Mum had invasive ductal carcinoma stage IIIB in 1999. She had mastectomy plus chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormonal therapy. She completed the treatment but it traumatized her greatly. 


Those who has had treatment for life-threatening diseases or conditions, or knew someone who has had those treatments, are very aware of the pain and suffering the treatments bring. 


My late father-in-law was a diabetic and when the time came for him to have dialysis, he chose not to do it. He had seen his brother, also a diabetic, who went for dialysis three times a week, and he knew of the pain his brother went through. Needless to say, my late father-in-law died in his sleep four years ago, but he did not suffer.


And so, comes the point of this post. It got me thinking of animals that are sick and suffering. Is it kinder to put them through invasive treatment or to put them out of their misery? Many of my friends, animal lovers and rescuers, are against euthanasia. Just mention the word and you'd be flamed. 


But, if our pets could speak, what would they choose for themselves? Would they want invasive treatment, or would they choose euthanasia? Are we being selfish, reluctant to let our pet go when we choose to hold on to them by prolonging their life and thus, suffering? Euthanasia is after all, the most painful decision a pet owner has ever had to make. 


I had to make such a decision once. And it wasn't easy. Up to 10 o'clock at night, the vet from UPM was still calling me, telling me I had to make a decision, whether to put Brownie out of his misery or to let him continue to suffer. The vet assured me that Brownie would definitely be in pain, and that it was more merciful to let him go peacefully. It was the most heartbreaking decision I had ever made and I hope no pet owner has to ever make that decision.

It's Mo-Cats Day!!

What is Mo-cats' day? It's a day when all the cats raise their paws for more cats, in response to someone who declared 09.09 as a No-cats day. Below is a lovely poster made by Momoandco. Do visit them and raise your paws for more cats. 

Good morning, everyone!

Ms Sunshine and Mr Grumpy

The Four Don'ts at Nirvana Memorial Centre

I was at Nirvana Memorial Centre to pay my last respects to a good friend's late father last night. Despite the sad event, it was a great time of fellowship, with lots of laughter, some at my expense. I was teased about being an ugly girl with a magnifying glass on her nose by friends who had not seen me in my myopic glasses before. (I wear contact lens during the day.) It was all good-natured teasing, of course. Like all good friends, we could never resist poking fun at each other.


Oh yeah, and there was lots of food....the most incredible spread I had ever seen at a funeral parlour. And in the midst of chatting, laughing and enjoying the food, something caught hubby's and my eye......a sign with four don'ts....

1) No food allowed.....huh??!!.....the food galore was part of the package, ain't it??
2) Silence....oops, guilty
3) No smoking....ok, checked. Nobody smoked here.
4) No camera.....that, too, was OK, until I saw that sign and had to fish my camera out of my bag and commit the final blunder.....

A "Cure" For Catty Black Moods

Blackie is moody this morning. A typical morning sees him jumping onto tables, chairs, bed and dashing from one end of the apartment to the other end, much like a mini horse in a horse race. But this morning he just sits there glaring at anyone who passes by. None of the games and toys interest him. 


He was in a black mood since yesterday evening, too. Usually, he is rather docile around Yin, although he does like to play rough with her. But when Yin has enough and hisses at him, he would stop. Yesterday, he didn't. Instead, he continued to whap her with his paw. And this morning, he pounced on her shoulder and pulled another large tuff of fur from the back of her neck. Gosh....I'm beginning to see a small, tiny bald patch there....I first noticed it -- less fur at the back of her neck, just between the shoulder blades -- when I got back from my holiday in Cherating. So, how to bring him out of the black mood?


A catnip pillow! It's supposed to be cat ecstasy, right?  And it worked! Blackie picked up the pillow and ran off with it. The only thing he has shown interest in this morning.

When Yin tried to grab it from him, he whapped her hard. I could hear the loud thud as paw landed on skull. Ouch. Poor Yin, she isn't used to being whacked by Blackie, or having Blackie fight with her over anything. Blackie has always let her grab toys or food right off his paws. 

I'll have to get another catnip pillow from sillylupie so they'll have one each. Anything to keep them happy and out of black moods.

Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper

The first time I heard of Homer's Odyssey was in July 2009, when Random House contacted me to write a review on it. 

Random House, its publisher, had come across my review on Dewey The Library Cat and offered me a free advance copy of Homer's Odyssey, with the view that I would read and write a review on it. All I was told was that it's a true story about a remarkable blind cat. I was very glad to accept the offer, but after I gave them my address in Malaysia, Random House found that they "could not send to an international address due to distribution restriction policy" whatever that meant. 

I was disappointed, but after some time, forgot all about it. Yup, I forgot entirely about Homer's Odyssey even though I promised myself that when the book is available in local bookshops, I would buy a copy and read it.

It was not until last week, when I was browsing around the Kindle ebooks that I saw Homer's Odyssey. The title rang a bell, and I was pretty sure that this was the book I had promised myself that I would read when it's made available. I immediately looked through my emails (thanks to gmail's easy search feature), and yes, it was Homer's Odyssey alright.

Homer was found and taken to a vet when he was merely two weeks old, with eye infection so bad that the vet had to remove both his eyes. The couple who found him asked Patty, the vet, to euthanize him. Unwilling to do that, Patty tried to find a home for him but no one would take a young, blind kitten, even when it was obvious that he would pull through. The author, Gwen Cooper, was the last one on Patty's list.

photo taken from Gwen Cooper's photo gallery --> http://www.gwencooper.com/photo.php

Despite his visual handicap, Homer is a furry bundle of affection and action. He's as active as 5 cats put together, and can leap as high as 5 feet in the air to catch flies in midair, and to climb and jump like a normal, seeing cat. The author attributed his skills to Scarlett, the oldest feline in the house. Homer would try to keep up with Scarlett, and however high Scarlett could jump or climb, Homer figured he could do so, too. 

His antics are truly amusing, although those who met him for the first time without any warning are usually nonplussed. This was one of my favourite image.....

"Homer, in those days, was particularly enamored of playing with tampons. Having encountered one by chance, he was fascinated by the way they'd roll around, and by the string at the end. He liked them so much, he figured out where I kept them stored in the cabinet below the bathroom sink and - with unerring 

Last  night, in bed, hubby said, "So, your dream came true." He was referring to my dream and wish that Adam Lambert would come to Malaysia and perform. Ever since Adam Lambert auditioned for the American Idol season 8 competition with a rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody", I had hoped that he would one day go on a world concert tour. (Simon Cowell, I have more foresight than you, LOL!!) He has such an amazing vocal range and is so energetic that all other contestants fell short. Very, very short.

 and accuracy - mastered the task of forcing open the cabinet door and raiding the tampon box.

When I walked in with my date, Homer ran to greet me at the door. And there, hanging from his mouth was a tampon. The whiteness of it stood out against his black fur in vivid, mortifying rellief. He scampered around in gleeful triumph for a moment, then promptly ran over and sat expectantly on his haunches in front of me, tampon clutched between his jaws like a dog with a rawhide bone."

But Homer is more than just pure entertainment. He saved the author from an intruder at 4am one morning, but more than that, he taught the author that she should not live her life in fear. Homer had no fear. 

"Every leap from a chair back or table-top is taken on faith, a potential leap into the abyss. Every ball chased down a hallway is an act of implicit bravery. Every curtain or counter top climbed, every overture of friendship to a new person, every step forward taken without guidance into the dark void of the world around him is a miracle of courage. He has no guide dog, no cane, no language in which he can be reassured or made to understand the shape and nature of the hurdles he encounters."

It is a heart-warming book that makes you laugh and cry. Every pet owner would be able to relate to the author when for a few days she was prevented from returning to her apartment near the World Trade Centre during 9/11, and how she feared for the survival and safety of her cats, especially Homer, who is blind.

The author's success is, in a large part, owed to Homer. She was a struggling 24-year-old with two cats and squatting in a friend's spare bedroom when she took Homer. Realising she can't afford to get her own place and keep Homer was what spurred her on to find a more lucrative career.

This book, like Dewey, is a must-read for all ailurophiles. It can be downloaded at Amazon UK, or purchased from  MPH Online, although I would recommend downloading it from Amazon UK, as it would only cost you RM25, as opposed to downloading it at Amazon dot com, which would cost you RM33, or RM60 from MPH Online. 

Random House, if you are reading this, you ought to do something about your distribution restriction policy and reward me for this post.....LOL!!!