Saturday, April 17, 2010

Caturday

I realized yesterday that I have posted every single day this week—something that quite possibly hasn't happened ever, and certainly not since the heady early days of this humble blog.

Well, not one to want to break a streak, but not having anything burning that I need to share, here's some cute filler in the form of my cat. I haven't posted any Clarence pics in a while, so I figure I'm due. Here's my guy "helping" me grade essays:

On a sort of related note, I went to see How To Train Your Dragon last week, which is a film I heartily recommend for adults and children alike. The story is kind of straightforward and typical: set in a Viking village that has been at war with dragons for generations, the awkward misfit son of the chief, Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel, who is everywhere these days), befriends a dragon and learns to fly it; in the process, he realizes that the enmity between Vikings and dragons is entirely wrong-headed. More stuff happens, he and his dragon (whom he named "Toothless") save the day, etc. etc. It is charming and beautiful to watch, and inherently comical because the film made the aesthetic decision to give Vikings Scottish accents, and to cast Craig Ferguson as one of the voice actors besides.

I think my favourite aspect of the film however came in the certainty, when the dragon Toothless first appears, that whoever animated him owns a cat. This, for example, is pure feline pissed-offedness:

There is one scene in particular when Hiccup, still in the early stages of befriending the dragon, is looking for Toothless. We see the dragon before he does, hiding crouched behind a rock with only his narrowed eyes and folded ears showing. That gave me a little frisson—how many times have I looked up to see Clarence in exactly that pose, ready to pounce on my head?

And then of course there is the look I'm used to getting first thing in the morning, when I'm still groggy with sleep but my cat is awake and perched on my chest and wanting food and/or entertainment:

Ah, good times. This August I will have had Clarence for ten years.

3 comments:

sos said...

Clarence is one cute cat.

Clarence. Any stories behind that name?

Man, I love kitties.

kitteh said...

hooman iz not owns kitteh, kitteh iz owns hooman. k?

Jillian Butler said...

Isn't How to Train Your Dragon knock your socks off fantastic? I tend to get overly involved in kid's movies, on the rare occasion I watch them -- probably because they're designed to work on the most basic of emotions, unlike most of the ambiguous nonsense I usually overdose on (is there even a NAME for the emotion Wes Anderson keeps going back to? Hipancholy?)

In conclusion: Toothless is my dog. They're both black and they sleep the same way.