My favorite store cat

Bookcourt has long been my favorite book store – they have a great selection, free readings, friendly staff, a convenient location, reasonable hours… the list goes on. It’s hard for me to resist buying a book whenever I walk by or go in (my husband and I are hopeless book addicts… I try to use the library, but Bookcourt gets to me). A while back, they expanded, which delighted me. Then I found out they had acquired a cat! I was told that the cat’s name is Francis, and he appeared one day during renovations. First the mice came, then the cat. Francis, an adorable tabby, made himself useful chasing the mice away, then ingratiated himself with the folks at the store, and then the customers. He’s now a permanent fixture, often found lounging on the books or walking around getting petted. I’d been meaning to blog about Francis for a while, but Racked beat me to it, in their wonderful “Store Sidekicks” series. At any rate, I hope Bookcourt and Francis have many more happy years together!

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Beautiful pictures of the boys

My friend Jimmy took these great photos of the boys. I think they really capture their personalities. Plus, it’s really difficult for me to get a picture of Thurston while he’s awake, because he keeps trying to nuzzle my hand while it’s holding the camera. Jimmy insists on calling Charley “Charles” for some reason, and here he is peeking out from behind his favorite lamp.

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Chatterwauling

My husband loves to point out neologisms to me, and recently came up with a good one of his own.

Charley, our always peppy tuxedo cat, likes to run around chattering (this sounds something like “meowmeowmeow, meow mow mrrr mow mow mrr meow” – maybe I’ll attempt to get an audio recording at some point and post it), and occasionally he will let out a caterwaul (usually in the middle of the night). The other day, he seemed to be especially chatty AND caterwaul-y, and my husband said to him, “Charley, stop chatterwauling.”  Voila! A neologism.

“Who or what is Ugly Bat Boy?”

Last night, I went to the World Famous Pub Quiz at Rocky Sullivan’s in Brooklyn, accompanied by my husband and some friends. Imagine my pleasant surprise when the very first question was “Who or what is Ugly Bat Boy?” I got (probably a little too) excited, because not only did I know the answer, I had blogged about Ugly Bat Boy on this very website! (The answer, of course, is “World’s Ugliest Cat.”)

The host of the pub quiz, Scott, announced that he was obsessed with Ugly Bat Boy, which I appreciated. I told him about menandcats.com and he was kind enough to mention it during the evening. I tried to impress my trivia team with even MORE Ugly Bat Boy trivia (“He lives in New Hampshire!”) but alas, Scott and I may have been the only two people present who were obsessed with the alleged world’s ugliest cat.

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Ugly Bat Boy in his full glory