THE KUCHING CAT MUSEUM

A map of the state of Sarawak.
Kuching is way over on the left side.

Well, since I wrote about a dog museum before, I thought I should write about a cat museum, just so that my kitty readers will be happy and will keep following my blog!  This cat museum looks like it would be a very interesting place, but it is located much farther away from where most of us live than the AKC Museum of the Dog is.  And that's because it's in the city of Kuching, which is the capital of the state of Sarawak, in the country of Malaysia.

Kuching skyline with the Sarawak River

The reason that the people of Kuching decided to make a cat museum was because the name of their city,  Kucing, means "cat" in the Malay language.  The actual idea for a cat museum came from the Chief Minister of Sarawak, YAB Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Hj Abdul Taib Mahmud and his wife.  As you can see, the Chief Minister had a very long name, so if he had to spend time signing a lot of official papers, it is surprising that he also had time to think up the idea for a cat museum, but he did.  Or maybe his wife did, and he just said it was his idea, too.

The Cat Museum on the hill

Anyway, the Museum opened in 1993, and it is in a building that sits on a hill above Kuching.  The building has 1,035.9 square meters and 2,000 exhibits.  These exhibits are not so much fine art, like in the dog museum.  They are more like historical artifacts, legends, and stuff that tells about the meaning of the cat in different cultures.

Cat mummy

For instance, there is a mummy of a cat that lived in Ancient Egypt sometime between 3,000 BC and 3,500 BC.  The Egyptians thought cats were very special, and that's why they went to all the trouble to make mummies out of them after they died.  The reason they liked cats so much was because the Egyptians grew tons of grain and then stored it.  And cats liked to eat the mice and rats that liked to eat the grain, so the Egyptians were happy to have them around.  In fact, cats were so valuable that anybody who killed a cat was put to death.


Another thing you can see in the Kuching Cat Museum is the five types of wild cats that live in Borneo, including a stuffed example of the world's rarest cat, which is called Felis badia, and which lives in Borneo's rain forests.

There are lots of cat statues in Kuching

Cats are the most popular pets in Malaysia today, and it is mostly thought to be good luck to have cats around.  Except in tin mines, where cats are not allowed because they might bring bad luck.  Malaysian people used to believe that you could make it rain by soaking a cat in a pan of water.  I don't know if they still believe this or not, but I hope they don't because most of the cats I know wouldn't enjoy being soaked in a pan of water.

A whole bunch of wooden cats at the Cat Museum

So anyway, if you want to learn all sorts of interesting things about cats and also see all kinds of strange and crazy cat stuff, you can just take a little trip to Malaysia and visit the Kuching Cat Museum.  And if you go there, be sure to send me a postcard!

THE AKC MUSEUM OF THE DOG

If you like dogs and you also like art, you should go to this museum sometime, because you will probably like it.  The location of the museum is in St. Louis, which is not close to everybody, but at least it is in the middle of the country, so maybe if you are someday going on a trip across the country, you can stop in St. Louis to see the museum.

Ginjim's Royal Acres Mervyn
by Roy Anderson

The way the museum got started was that in 1971 a bunch of members of the Westminster Kennel Club got together and decided that besides having a really big, important dog show every year, they could also do something to teach people more about dogs, and about the history of dogs in art and books, and stuff like that.  So then they started asking other dog people for money, and lots of people gave a bunch of money, and by 1981, there was enough money to open The Dog Museum of America.  And it opened first in New York City at the AKC headquarters, because they had space for it there.  The first exhibit opened to the public on September 15, 1982, and it was called "Best of Friends:  The Dog and Art."

Lots of companies that make dog food and other things for dogs gave money for the museum, and that's how a lot of the artwork got purchased.  Plus people also donated artwork, or they left it to the museum in their wills.  So the number of pieces in the museum grew until there wasn't enough room anymore at the AKC offices.  After that, five cities asked the museum's board to think about moving the museum to their town, and the five were:  Denver; Los Angeles; Pebble Hill, GA; Orlando; and St. Louis).  So the board looked at these places, and in 1986 they voted to move to St. Louis.

Chickadee
Bronze by Louise Peterson

The building where the museum is in St. Louis is a big, old mansion called the Jarville House, which was built in 1853 by Edgar Monsanto Queeny.  Mr. Queeny was the president of the Monsanto chemical company from 1928 to 1960.  The house is 14,000 square feet in size, which means it is big enough for more than 500 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and watercolors.  Some of the paintings that are always on display at the museum are by Maud Earl and Sir Edwin Landseer, who are artists I have talked about before.

If you go to the Museum of the Dog, you can see all the artwork, and you can also go in the gift shop and buy things.  Or you can use the library to do research on dogs.  And another thing you can do is rent space for a business meeting or for your dog club event.  Oh, and guess what!  Dogs are allowed in the museum, too, along with their humans.

Harlequin Great Dane
Rosenthal

Every Sunday afternoon between March and October, there is this thing called "Guest Dog of the Week," where you can meet dogs of different breeds, and you can ask their owners about what that kind of dog is like.  Of course, the dogs that go to this event have to be on their good behavior, and they are not allowed to bite the museum guests.

Mom has been to the AKC Museum of the Dog a couple of times, but she hasn't been there recently.  Maybe sometime she will drive over to St. Louis to visit the museum again, and if she does that, maybe she will take me with her.  I think that would be fun, and educational, too!

LIFE IS SCARY! by Charlie

Mom keeps saying that I am a scaredy-cat, and I am proud to say that she is right.  However, I prefer the term "wisely cautious."  I have no other choice than to be this way, because here we are, two cats in a house with four dogs, and those are really terrible odds.  Anyone could see that.  And besides the worrisome presence of the dogs, there are plenty of other things to make a cat take cover.  For instance, there's the vacuum cleaner.  And sometimes there are Strange People who come into the house -- by which I mean anyone who is not Mom.

Sometimes I think my sister Chloe is totally lacking in good sense.  I have often seen her brazenly sashaying around, right under a dog's nose, as if she didn't understand that said canine could break her neck with one snap of his evil teeth.  And maybe she really doesn't understand this, because if she did, she would surely not be so foolhardy and imprudent.

On several occasions, Chloe has actually gone OUTSIDE, in the BACK YARD, even though she is not supposed to do this.  But Mom usually leaves the back door open when the stupid dogs are out there running around and twice Chloe actually got shut out because Mom didn't know she went out there.  Then when all the dogs came in, Mom closed the door.  So Chloe had to meow loudly and scratch the door to let Mom know that she wanted back in.

Oh, and here's another dumb thing Chloe did the other night.  It was bedtime, and Mom let the dogs out to potty, and then she ran down in the basement just to get a couple of things out of the dryer.  After that, everybody came upstairs, and Mom came in the Cat Room to brush me a little bit, which was nice of her, but I was kind of nervous because that Tall Dog was lurking in the hallway.  He's the one that scares me the most of all!  Anyway, after a while, Mom realized that Chloe didn't seem to be anywhere around, which was odd, because Chloe is always around, like sitting in Mom's lap or hanging out in the bathroom while Mom is brushing her teeth.

So Mom went looking for Chloe, and guess where she found her!  In the basement.  Yep, there she was, sitting on the basement steps in the dark, waiting for Mom to let her come back upstairs.  Of course, I will be the first to admit that the basement is a really cool place for exploring, with lots of mousy smells and cobwebs and all kinds of interesting stuff to see and do.  I like to go down in the basement as much as Chloe does, but I know that it's important to keep track of Mom while I'm there, so I can run back up the stairs whenever she decides to go back up.  Otherwise, I might get trapped down there like Chloe did.


Well, anyway, getting back to the dogs, I have to admit that I wasn't very sad when Mom took Gabe away that one day, and he never came back.  I know Mom was sad about it, and so was Piper, but frankly, Gabe was not a very nice dog.  At least, not to us cats.  Luckily, most of the time he didn't feel like chasing us, but he once told me that in his prime, he could catch any cat that scampered through the house, and chew it up pretty good, too.  Maybe he was exaggerating his prowess, but maybe not.

After Gabe went away, I really started feeling safe about coming out of the Cat Room and going anywhere I pleased in the house.  But then that Tall Dog, Nicholas, moved in.  Mom said he was a greyhound who was "cat safe," but I had my doubts about that.  So for my own security, I retreated to my safe space under the covers in the Cat Room, because I was afraid I would be eaten alive if I even came out to eat my cat food.  And I love cat food, but who can eat when he is terrified?

Well, Chloe, as usual, was out and about again within a day or so after the Tall Dog arrived -- sitting in Mom's lap, meowing for food in the kitchen, perching on the microwave, and hissing at Nicholas if he came too close.  She told me that she had called Nick's bluff more than once, and that I shouldn't be afraid to do the same thing.  But I am afraid -- that's the problem.  I'm getting bolder, really I am.  I mean, I can go downstairs in the evenings and sneak around through the kitchen while Nicholas is sleeping in the living room.  But if he starts to get up, I bolt for the stairs, and then he tries to follow me.  I'm faster than he is, though, even if he is a greyhound.  I can run up the stairs lickety-split, while he's still thinking about how to get his big, clumsy feet on the first step!

Okay, well, Piper says I have written more than enough for one blog entry -- especially a blog entry by a cat.  So I'm going to stop writing, but I will first say that I am grateful to have had this opportunity to express my views.  And just to summarize the main points I was trying to make, they are:  (1) There are way too many dogs in this house, and (2) Chloe keeps doing irresponsible things that I am afraid will result in her getting into a lot of trouble someday!  So there!

Godly Pics

MOUNTAIN LIONS IN MISSOURI!

Mountain lions are big, scary cats, kind of like tigers, except without the stripes.  They eat deer and elk and sheep and cows and basenjis and even greyhounds.  So that is why I was alarmed to learn that two mountain lions have been seen right here in Missouri during January.  And by "seen," I mean "shot and killed," so there is no question about whether they were really mountain lions.  Also, besides the two that were shot, another one was photographed this month near St. Louis by using one of those special cameras that goes off if something walks past it.  And another mountain lion was photographed in the same way last November in the county where the Kansas City airport is.

Back in the old days, mountain lions used to live all over North and South America, including in Missouri.  This was when there were just Indians living here.  But after the European settlers came, they shot the mountain lions and also the deer that the mountain lions ate.  So the mountain lions moved more to the west, which is where they mostly live today.

There are several other names for this big cat, like cougar, puma, panther, and catamount.  It is not a social animal, and it mostly hangs out by itself except when the season comes for making kittens.  Mountain lions have really big territories, and they are always moving around.  That's why you can find them all the way from Alaska to the south end of South America.  But you don't usually find them in Missouri.

An adult mountain lion can be anywhere from 60 to 102 inches long, and its tail is 21 to 35 inches long.  Males weigh 140 to 160 pounds, and females weigh 90 to 110 pounds.  There are 2 or 3 kittens in a litter, and they have cute little spots on them.  They hang out with their mom until they are about 18 months old, and then they go off to find a territory of their very own, especially if they are boys.

The places mountain lions like to live are either where the land is rough and rocky, or else where there are thick swamps.  They don't like to live near people, and they mostly only come out at night to slink around and hunt.  It's pretty rare for a mountain lion to attack a person, but sometimes they kill livestock or pets, and that's why people don't like to have them around.

In Missouri, it is illegal to kill a mountain lion, unless it is a danger to your livestock or to your life.  The lion that got killed on January 2 was in Ray County, which is just a little ways north of Kansas City.  Some men treed this mountain lion while they were hunting raccoons, and then they called the man who owned the land they were hunting on.  He came and shot the mountain lion because it had been eating his livestock, and it was legal for him to kill it.

Then this past Saturday, in northeast Missouri, some farmers who were hunting for coyotes were shocked when a mountain lion suddenly came out from under a cedar tree.  So they shot it.  This mountain lion weighed 128 pounds and measured more than 6 feet from head to tail.

Both of these animals were young males, and they were probably just here trying to make a territory for themselves because older males won't let them hang around.  The wildlife scientists are going to use DNA to find out where the dead mountain lions came from, but they think it was from North Dakota, South Dakota, or Texas.  People have been seeing mountain lions in Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma, so these are all probably young males looking for mates.

The people at the Missouri Department of Conservation say that there are no mountain lions breeding in the state, and there are no plans to bring any here to start a new population of mountain lions.  The reason they don't want to do this is because they decided there would be too much danger to people and livestock here if we had a whole bunch of mountain lions.  So the ones that come to Missouri are probably just passing through.  It's kind of sad when they get shot, though.  I think it would be better just to give them a nice bus ticket so they could go back out west someplace to live.

I'm glad we won't have a whole bunch of mountain lions moving in around here because I don't want to worry about getting eaten by one whenever I go out in the back yard.  Of course, if there was a mountain lion in our back yard, it would be legal for Mom to shoot it, but she wouldn't because (1) she doesn't have a gun, and (2) she doesn't know how to shoot a gun -- except that her dad let her shoot a rifle a few times when she was a kid, and (3) she would probably be too busy running into the house to get away from the mountain lion, and (4) if she and all of us dogs were already safe in the house, Mom would probably feel sorry for the mountain lion and wouldn't want to kill it anyway.

Okay, so that's pretty much all I have to say on the subject of mountain lions in Missouri.  Except I will just add that if there are any mountain lions reading this, you should be warned that farmers shoot mountain lions here, so maybe you had better stay away!

My fashion has changed

Avril Lavigne - My fashion has changed'

Avril Lavigne
and new fashion..

Avril Lavigne has revealed that her fashion sense has changed as she's grown up. Avril Lavigne has revealed her tastes in clothing have evolved over the years. The Canadian singer - who released her clothing range 'Abbey Dawn' last year - found fame at 17 with her hit Complicated, when she was famed for her tomboy skater look. But now aged 26, Avril Lavigne said she has moved on to more feminine styles.


BTW.... Avril Lavigne's 'What the Hell' Video.. The pop-punk princess released her first single in four years earlier in January, an anthem called 'What the Hell,' and the video for the tune hit the web on Sunday. The latest video by the "Sk8er Boi" singer, for her new single "What the Hell," has found its way onto the Internet. In it, Lavigne frolics in bed with her beau, only to lock him in their apartment and abandon him for a little "her" time as he follows in vain pursuit. "What the Hell" is the first single from Lavigne's upcoming album, Goodbye Lullaby (out on March 2).

Roads -Water - And More