Cute Cat Pictures -- When is a Cat a Ham?

Cute Cat Pictures

or, When is a Cat a Ham?

Check these out, are they cute cat pictures -- or not.

No, they're not cute cat pictures. They're just pictures of Sammy, who is, for a cat, a real ham.

He somehow manages to always insinuate himself into every photo shoot. All you have to do is point a camera -- and he's right there. You'd think he was mugging for cute cat pictures.

For instance, one day Sammy's guardian decided she'd shoot photos of a beautiful tree in front of her house.

As she walked out with her camera, she saw Sammy streak past her. He raced ahead of her, and with one leap, jumped up on the tree.

Before she could position her camera, Sammy climbed up the trunk the tree and was soon balancing himself on the branches of the tree.

It wasn't her intention to take cute cat pictures -- all she wanted was pictures of the tree! -- but she ended up with shot after shot of Sammy.

She failed to take a single picture of the tree alone.

The funny thing is, until his guardian showed up with her camera, Sammy had never taken the slightest interest in the tree.

And he hasn't since.

It seems that all he wanted was to have his pictures taken.

Do they confer any evolutionary advantages? Do wild cats go around looking for photo ops?

Cute cat pictures, indeed.

Funny Cats

For cat lovers, here are some anecdotes about three funny cats. They're cool cats.

Pixie, the friend I've been staying with temporarily, owns these three funny cats -- Sammy, the alpha male, Dash, the beta male (very beta), and Mittens, the "omega" female (bottom of the totem pole). Now that we've bonded with each other, it's going to be very hard for me to leave them.

Cats can be seriously funny.

I was brushing my teeth this morning when I heard Dash meowing most piteously outside the bathroom door, as if he'd been adrift on a stormy sea for a fortnight. When I poked my head out, he immediately perked up. With excited meows and frequent glances up at me to make sure I was following him, he lured me to his food dish, which sits on the kitchen counter. (They're on the countertop to prevent Pixie's two dogs from gobbling the cat food.)

The automatic cat food dispenser is always overflowing with cat food. So Dash wasn't trying to get me to feed him.

He just happened to have a diabolic mission in his little cat brain: Get me to watch him eat. Dash ate with a single-minded concentration that I wish I could emulate. He still managed to check up on me every few minutes to make sure that I was still watching him.

Sammy does the same thing too, lure me to the food dish and get me to watch him eat.

Mittens doesn't give a hoot if I watch her or not. What she does do is prance around, emitting urgent meows, encouraging me to pat and stroke her before she hunkers down to the serious business of eating a meal.

Poor Mittens, when she engaged in her preprandial ritual yesterday -- enjoying her feline version of aperitif -- Sammy showed up and chased her away. I had to dig up another bowl for Mittens and feed her secretly, out of sight of Sammy. No wonder I never get any work done aorund here.

Such funny cats. Why would any cat want to have a human watch it eat?

A Japanese cat magazine had a story about just such a funny cat. He was a black and white cat that just had to have the owner watch him eat. Or else he wouldn't eat.

I posed this question to a few cat lovers, but no one had a plausible answer.

Are they trying to entertain humans by being funny cats?

Does anyone know facts about cats?