Our 3.5 cats are specialists when it comes to their prey. Lucy, who will eat our food but won't come in the house and so is only half ours, slays rats. Shia likes to dismember bunnies. Medianoche is a lizard-dispatcher, and Pat takes out birds (or used to -- he is now an elderly gentleman and so lets Shia patrol his turf). They leave their devotional daily kills on the backyard picnic table. These offerings are increasingly gruesome.
Recently the mother of one of Iz's friends visited for the first time. As we were doing the obligatory tour of the backyard (ooh, look, the red-roofed tower, yes if Iz goes to that university we will communicate via semaphore, laugh track), we found that Lucy had left a rat on the picnic table. Nasty and embarrassing enough, except Lucy is also going through a Jack the Ripper phase: the rat was lying on its back, intact unless you count its disembowelment, and its innards had been carefully placed next to it on the table. It was a blast-furnace day, so the rat even came with stench, as did I'm sure our first impression on that nice lady.
But I have a plan. I'm going to channel my teen goth past, embrace the spirit of both Awkward Family Photos and the scraper sites that keep stealing my BlogHer posts, set up an ad-filled blog, and post a daily offerings photo. I just need a name, something that will appeal to both black-fingernail-wearing aficionados of Faces of Death, and cat lovers. As naming is not my forte, I'm open to suggestions. A Certain (Feline) Sacrifice? Faster Pussycat: Killed Killled Killed? What say we all?
Exquisite Corpse: Too obvious? Not obscure enough? Not pet-related enough?
ReplyDeleteOMG- laughing so hard as I'm picturing the victim droning, "I'm dead, I'm dead...".
ReplyDeleteGotta find some Bauhaus now. Thanks-
Somebody beat you to it:
ReplyDeletehttp://whatjeffkilled.com/
how about putting a bell on your cats, so their prey will hear them coming?
ReplyDelete@dee. If I were serious, that would be a contending name. The art could express the feline component.
ReplyDelete@Mommy~Dearest: Have to warn you that Bauhaus doesn't age well.
@anonymous: Jeff is definitely in our cats' league, his staff photographer is totally out of mine. I could never take those close-ups without hurling.
@Captain Blog, the cats learn to move without ringing the bell. Tried it.
Porch Cadavers? Morbid Meow?
ReplyDeleteYour blog rocks!
western mama-Mom of an NLD child
Some variant on LOL cats?
ReplyDeleteThe pagan(!!???!!!) Classicist in me is coming out and thinking, well, the cats are providing offerings (victums) for sacrifice and that rat with its innards laid out alongside it would be one to "scry" to divine the future...... and Apollo is also known as the Sminthian, "Mouse God".,,..guess the rat et al. are offerings to him.
I meant victims, ahem.
ReplyDelete@grasshopper we could channel E. Gorey for the title, certainly: "The Malevolent Meow" might be a winner.
ReplyDelete@kristina, sounds like we may have an Apollonian, feline version of The Secret History right in my back yard. Will have to watch those cats more closely. Perhaps we should enlist you to do the scrying? I'm a bit out of practice with the rat innards, usually use a crystal ball.
Thanks, I haven't had a Bauhaus wedgie since, oh, 1987.
ReplyDeleteI used to have a t-shirt for this song. How sad is that?
E