About

The Cattery

The Cattery started out as Diary of a Kiwi Bookcrosser (itself born out of an even earlier blog1, now lost in the mists of time2), and, as the name implies, was initially intended to be a blog about the art of Bookcrossing.  But, as blogs tend to do3, the focus began to drift and widen, until today, when it’s become more of a vehicle for showing off progress on FutureCat’s latest quilt (and other crafty experimentations), random ramblings, hopelessly out-of-date travelogues4, and the occasional recipe, rant, or cat photo.

FutureCat

FutureCat5 is not actually a cat6.  They7 just play one on the internet8.  They have been variously described as a linguist, a quilter, a cross-stitcher, a Bookcrosser, a reader, a traveller, a photographer, a Toastmaster, a cat-owner/ee, a board-gamer, a digital archivist, a baker, a computer geek, a unionist, a perpetual student, and a person completely incapable of describing themself succinctly9.  What they enjoy most in life is learning new things, which explains a lot of the above.

The actual cat

The Cattery is home to one actual cat right now: a crazy tortiseshell named Parsnips10 who is extremely timid and extremely curious in approximately equal measures.  This mix leads to some very odd behaviours.  Especially when it comes to interactions with other neighbourhood cats.  Who love to hang out in the garden of the Cattery.  Parsnips does not love the other neighbourhood cats, but is also not brave enough to chase them off, so is reduced to sitting on the windowsill howling loudly and being completely ignored by her foes.

How to contact the cat(s)

If you wish to contact FutureCat11, leave a private comment with your email address, and they will get back to you.  Or just do a bit of Googling – it’s not that hard to track down FutureCat’s secret identity.  If you want to contact the actual cat12, you could maybe try standing in the garden dressed as a neighbourhood cat?  Or open the fridge door, that usually gets her attention.

Notes

  1. Except it wasn’t called blogging back then – it was just “keeping an online diary”.  (Insert muttering here about you whippersnappers and your fancy new-fangled words…)
  2. Or the internet.  Which is kind of the same thing.
  3. Unless they’re those terribly professional single-subject blogs that probably make their owners vast amounts of money and free stuff, but must be incredibly boring to write.
  4. No, seriously.  On every trip, FutureCat writes long and detailed travel blogs in a notebook, then comes home and runs out of time to post them.  Very occasionally they’ll get round to typing up a page or two and posting them, but actual travel blog posts are much less frequent than their apologies for not posting.
  5. The Future bit comes in because FutureCat lives in New Zealand, which is in a time zone that sounds like the future to most of the rest of the world.  They cannot confirm nor deny whether living in the future gives them any insight to tomorrow’s winning lotto numbers, but you can draw your own conclusions from the fact that they do not live a life of luxury.
  6. This may come as a surprise to some of you.  It shouldn’t, really.  Cats are not well-known for their ability to type, or to operate a camera.  You should therefore have logically come to the conclusion that there must be a human of some variety hiding behind the cat.
  7. FutureCat is only one person, but prefers to be referred to by they/them pronouns. To anyone who wishes to argue that this is ungrammatical, they will point out that (a) Shakespeare frequently used singular they in his writing, and if it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for you, and anyway, (b) do you really want to argue grammatical correctness with a linguist?
  8. Mostly.  Though FutureCat does sometimes go by that name in real life too, mostly in Bookcrossing circles.
  9. They are also incapable of thinking in a straight line, especially when writing.  Hence their love of parentheses.  And footnotes.  Because it’s the asides that make life interesting.
  10. Parsnips was named after a sheep.  In Minecraft.  This may or may not make the name make more sense.  Probably not.
  11. Especially if you want to offer the aforementioned vast amounts of money and free stuff.
  12. Although I’m not sure why you would – see the note above about real cats not being able to type.