I share a house with 3 cats.  It gets hairy around the house — in more ways than one.  Weekly vacuuming is a necessity.  So are several kitty alcoves scattered throughout the house.

A few months ago I saw a hack for the IKEA lack wall shelf: by rotating the zigzag-shaped shelf 45 degrees the the left, a cat-sized stairway is created.  The vertically-oriented cat, Arlis, has been very finicky about her hangouts.  I took a chance with this LACK shelf idea, and luckly it worked out!  She spends a fair amount of time on what are exclusively her steps; the other two cats are not “arboreal”, and prefer to spend their down time in dark cavernous areas close to the ground.

Arlis on the IKEA LACK mod

I’ve been thinking about ways to create more indoor cat microhabitats.  So when I came across a link to The Cats’ House on Apartment Therapy today, it was as though inspiration dropped into my lap from the clouds* up above:

Feline lovers, get ready for some pie-in-the-sky dreams come true: The Cats’ House designed by Japanese architecture firm Fauna+DeSIGN is dizzying in the amount of playful, yet tastefully designed, details created to amuse 16 very fortunate felines. Rounded corners throughout, bookcase steps, tunnels, skylights, ceiling catwalks and a floor to ceiling scratching post make this possibly the coolest pet-centric home we’ve ever seen.

A clever way to fit 16 cats into one house

Check out the full details (but in Japanese) over at The Cats’ House website.

*Pun intended.  It’s too easy to spin off the cloud computing concept sometimes.

I’ve been working at my current job harder than I ever have in my life.  I wake up, drive (carpool!) for over an hour, get to work, and focus on “work”.  After 8 or 9 hours, I get back into the car and decompress.  When I get home, I pull up my email and dash off replies to any new messages, and push through any tasks of my own to keep the projects I manage on schedule.

Whew.

When I can steal a minute in between meetings (like now!) I like to check out My Parents Were Awesome.  NPR described the blog with a question: “How did your folks look before they were parents?”  A hard question to answer, unless you have evidence…like pre-digital photographs.  For those of us in a certain age bracket, that is.

Paul (submitted by Chris)

To do:  Scan pre-digital camera pictures to share with the world.  The past can be awesome.

Dream job alert: being a full-time, professional fun-maker.  The Fun Theory is an initiative of Volkswagen, and the following sums up the purpose of their website:

This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.

Check out this short video showing the genius of how adding fun to function can have a huge effect on behavior:

Juniper "Joon" Pearl

Nearly 4 years ago my cat Joon disappeared.  He was an innie-outie and didn’t show up for dinner one night.  Or brekkie the next morning.  Or any other meal, ever again.

Time passed; I moved into SF, around SF, and back into the house Joon and I once shared.  All the while, I frequented animal shelters looking for Joon among the dozens of cats waiting for a new chance.

Joon would be a hard cat to mistake.  When he was a sturdy young cat at the age of 2y, he weighed in around 16 pounds.  He stood at least 6-8″ taller than the other cat he grew up with.  Joon was also incredibly long, and was covered with long buff-colored fluff.  In colder months he had a thick mane surrounding his head and running down his chest.

His personality was just as unique as his build.  He was born of a partially feral cat mama, so he was on the shy side.  One of his favorite places to hang out was under a circular table that suffered from a skirt.  While the table may have languished beneath the skirt, Joon thrived; the skirt served as a one-way veil between him and the world.  He could be detected at night, slinking around the house and chirping his curious song.

I randomly stopped by the neighborhood animal shelter this afternoon to touch kittens.   Cute kittens stuck wee paws out through crate doors.  Adult cats snoozed.  I did a quick scan of the room, without knowing what I was looking for until I saw this mass of fluffy buff-colored cat crammed into the far corner of a crate.  The stats on his door matched those of a would-be Joon.  A volunteer removed the guy from his crate and put us into an introduction room together.  I sat in awe, struggling to reconcile this new cat with my memories of Joon.  I left the shelter with the intention of digging up old photographs of Joon and getting copies of his vet records for more information.

At the end of the day, I ask myself if it matters whether that cat is the same Joon I raised from kitten-hood.  He is a 6yo cat at an animal shelter that will euthanize him if he stays there long enough, isn’t that reason enough to rescue him?  But how can I communicate that gem to the critters I live with?

Among my dreams is to have a backyard shed.  The best way to describe my ideal shed is as an adult playhouse.  My shed would have concrete floors, an expansive desk, power tools, art supplies, a high-end sound system and windows with coverings that allow the space to be drenched in light or choked with blackness, even on the sunniest day.  I might throw in some central heat and A/C for comfort.

Considering my fondness for sheds, I was pleased to find Shedsploitation, the blog of SF Bay Arean Seth Boor.

Shedsploitation

Modern Cabana (10 x 12)

While precious, at 10′ x 12′ their smallest shed is just large enough to require a city permit to build.  I’m a good citizen and will stay within code.  I’m also averse to city intervention, so I’ll stay small.   So the shed search continues.

Ruby

That’s Ruby, or what Barbie would look like if she were a size 12/14.  There’s an interesting story behind Ruby, who is now banned from appearing in advertisements.

I wonder what it would have been like to play with Ruby dolls as a child.  Instead I had hand-me-down Barbies.  One day I discovered I could use the cement curb as a form of sand paper; I ground Barbie’s chest down to nubs.  After making significant progress toward “correcting” the small collection of Barbies we had, the post-op dolls were discovered, and  I was reprimanded for mistreating my toys.

Interacting with Barbie was a perfect introduction to the concept of “supermodel”.  While I no longer have dolls, I see Barbie everywhere.  Mostly she is a walking, size zero androgynous waif who, like Barbie, has the sole purpose of modeling how clothing should look.

A size 12 model leads the final walk-out at the Mark Fast catwalk show at London Fashion Week. The designer used size 12 and 14 girls alongside more conventional-sized models to showcase his knitted dresses

I was intrigued when I saw a post in femail about knitwear designer Mark Fast and his decision to use curvy women to model his new line of dresses.  A deliberate move, Fast intended to challenge the obsession with size zero models by showing how “fuller” women may actually look better in his slinky creations.

It’s impossible to ever be a perfect women, it seems.  I certainly can’t walk around airbrushed and flawless from every angle.  I’m glad there are voices challenging the way women are represented in society, voices like AnyBody who are anchors to help ease into accepting the body we have:

Remind yourself that the images in magazines are all digitally touched up, stretched and lit in extraordinary ways and that they are there to make us buy products rather than being pictures of real women.

(Thanks for the links, Sadie and Kat!)

I arrived home from work yesterday to find a box from Amazon on the porch.  Inside was a layer of newfangled bubble wrap (the kind made of a several large areas inflated with air, not the kind with an expanse of little pustules full of air, ripe for the popping).  Beneath the bubble wrap was a gift wrapped in cheerful yellow paper with a wide white ribbon around the middle.

I was intrigued.

Having no idea what the package was, I picked it up and thoroughly inspected its shape, heft and thing-ness.  I concluded it was likely a book, but I had no idea which one.  Returning to the wrapping, I found a small card; a small blank card.  It was clearly a present, so I decided to open it.

It was indeed a book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, by Alain de Botton.  I considered the book.  As I had just arrived home from work, I was tuckered out and wanted nothing else than a glass of water and a nap.  Instead, I picked up the book-present and brought it with me as I climbed beneath the down comforter.  Hiding amid white pillows and fluff, I read the first chapter.  What I encountered was a homage to those invisible warriors who transport goods around the world to feed our whims and hungers.  Every other page held a photograph — brutal, real and entwined with the chapter’s theme of cargo shipping.  The experience was akin to reading exceptional pieces in Harper’s or Granta, or perhaps an eloquently crafted graphic novel.

Cargo ships (Richard Baker, 2008)

I read most of the second chapter, before sleep won me over and I was lost in another world entirely.

Dear Vacation Fairy,

For my next holiday from work I would love to volunteer with an animal rehabilitation program.  I have been working very hard at my office job and miss feeling the breeze in my hair and seeing the sun rise and set.  My love for animals continues to grow and I feel a yearning to help large wildlife.

Gratefully yours,

Morethangray

Morethangray!  So good to hear from you.  Have you seen this website?  It may guide you toward your next holiday.

Happy tails,

VF

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I’ve made the jump from eating simple veggie-matarian fare into the land of the big vee; I am only eating vegan food.  I still eat honey, which I’ve heard can be a controversial issue.

For some time now I’ve chosen non-leather products.  What was once known as vinyl is now green, and considered a vegan-friendly alternative to leather.  While I’ll purchase canvas and the occasional vinyl item, I’m not sold on the environmental aspect of using vinyl as an alternative to leather.  There are so many variables to consider when deeming something “green”, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn a graduate student was writing their PhD dissertation on the results of their analysis of the leather vs vinyl debate.

Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

Created as a critique of data mining, Personas is one part of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit on display at the MIT Museum through the month of September.  And what a critique it is — the Personas vector created based on my name has absolutely nothing to do with me.  I know because I watched as the Internet was scoured for characterizing statements to use in its analysis; all the information used came from other people who share my name.

Josh Witten Persona’d his name multiple times to get a sense of the reproducibility of the analysis.  While his Personas vector was created based on his own information, his analysis (of the analysis of him) indicates the Personas vector is generated randomly.  Josh ran three independent trials, resulting in three truly independent Personas vectors.

While I may not learn much about myself using Personas, the schematic is nice.  The clean appearance and abbreviated legend are what I would like to see in a Personas vector of my very own.  Until then, here is the first Personas vector I mapped to Morgan Gray:

Morgan Gray, as the Internet sees her