The A&J series that is running in newspapers this week about syncing wireless technology is based on true events, as was the lizard episode a few weeks back. You are right: I’ve not been leading a very exciting life of late. As for the lizard sequence, one commenter somewhere kept coming back day after day to snort (if one can snort online) derisively something like, “What’s the big deal? It’s just a harmless lizard.” I didn’t say anything then, but I would like to say on my—I mean Arlo’s—behalf that when a skink, a rather large and aerodynamic lizard, is running loose in one’s underwear, it becomes a matter not of fear but of urgency. Anyway, ponder Felix the French space cat. There seems to be some debate about whether the first French space cat was Felix or Felicette. If you’re truly interested, it’s an easy search. Sadly, a second French space cat was sent in suborbital space flight similar to Felix, or Felicette, but did not survive the recovery. Apparently, its name is unrecorded.
Far Out Cat
By Jimmy Johnson
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299 responses to “Far Out Cat”
Doesn’t Flyball count? He went to space in 1952, at least according to Ruthven Todd, who wrote about Flyball’s space adventures in his Space Cat book series.
They were fiction? I’m shocked. They seemed so real. I loved those books as a child. By pure luck I managed to acquire one for $20 a couple of years ago, but holy cow, are they expensive.
I’ve spooked my cat a few times and he came close to a sub-orbital trajectory. My current cats start howling when I put them in a car. I don’t think that they would like a rocket.
I do know that NASA sent a cat into a zero-G trajectory in the cockpit of a jet and filmed it to find out what it would do in free fall. As far as anybody could tell, it levitated back to the pilot’s chest so fast that they never did work out how it happened. As soon as the canopy was opened after the flight, the cat sensibly fled and wasn’t seen for weeks.
I always thought that they should have designed a special cage big enough to give room to let a cat move around (5’x5’x5′ let’s say) and taken it up on the shuttle. Yes, keeping it clean would be a problem, but they’ve solved worse ones.
Jimmy, on the skink, we have big blue skinks (or did) out in yard when I had a large stacked railroad tie fence there. They are BIG and scary looking, especially if you are pulling weeds and suddenly see one’s head poking out. Look like snakes.
If one got in my underwear (unlikely) there would be total nudity in the back yard instantly.
And don’t say you lead a boring life, I bet your neighbors are quite entertained if the strip is based on sometime real life.
Love, Jackie
On the cat in space, I have a writer friend who did a very funny chapter on trying to turn his cat into a boat cat, especially since the boat in question is 1) Small 2) Open 3) Dinghy. Cat ended up climbing tallest thing around which was my friend (he’s one of those tall Coasties that everyone makes fun of for being able to wade ashore) Then he wedged himself in a tiny hole of some kind like in fore deck area, yowling at top of his lungs.
I do have friends whose cats do sail with them on boats but they have cabins and litter boxes.
Did once fly with Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her pet monkey who was not in a cage and spent entire flight loose in cabin with Mrs. Lindbergh and the pilot, co-pilot, me and I think my mom and grandmother but despite remembering that monkey, I cannot remember which of my family was on the flight! Obviously, the monkey made impression. It was a company plane, we got to fly on it when there were seats available sometimes.
Love, Jackie
I wonder how many lives poor Felix used up in that trip?
Weightless cat video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9XtK6R1QAk
Our one and only trip (so far) to west Louisiana was almost exactly 1 year after hurricane Ike. My wife and I found one lonely rib shack open, somewhere near the Sabine Refuge. While we were relaxing after lunch, sitting under a tree behind the diner, a skink suddenly ran up my wife’s leg. She yelped and slapped it off just as it reached her knee, only to have it now run up her other leg, this time getting all the way up to under the hem of her shorts.
I laughed my silly self hoarse while she hopped about trying to get the lizard out from under her shorts. Once she recovered her shock she joined me in laughing!
It’s fortunate, actually, that you were outside. No mop needed.
A skeleton walks into a bar and says “I’ll have a beer and a mop please.”
I was sitting in class in about 3rd grade, and we had a film, which was great, because we could relax and the subject matter was usually interesting. This one was a film about the very early days of space exploration, and was narrated by Mike Wallace. (“Early days” being relative, because Project Gemini had not launched its first mission yet.) I was very interested in the story of Laika, the dog that the Soviet Union sent into space. They had a number of film clips of her and her training. She seemed like a cute and friendly dog. Then they got to her actual mission, which went on for about 30 seconds, then Mike Wallace intoned, “…and with no way to return, at such-and-such time on November 3rd… Laika died.”
I was horrified. They had sent Laika to a terrible and certain death. The Soviets had not even TRIED to get her back— they just shot her off, KNOWING she would die. I remembered that Ham the chimp, the first American in space, was launched ONLY after we were as sure as we could that we could return him safely. And we did. I had just assumed that everybody else operated under the same principles that we did. What a revelation!
Later discoveries continually validated the opinions I formed at that moment.
Au sujet de Felix, on peut se demander si ils ont jamais ouvrent de cette capsule. Ce n’était probablement pas un chat très heureux…
Mais dire ce que vous voulez sur les Français, au moins ils ont ramené Felix en toute sécurité. Les soviétiques savaient que Laika mourrait une mort cruelle. * crache *
Oh
The “trouble & strife” got us a card last week also – just forgot it Sunday.
For those inquiring minds it 46.
it is 46
From Wikipedia: “Laika died within hours from overheating, possibly caused by a failure of the central R-7 sustainer to separate from the payload. The true cause and time of her death were not made public until 2002; instead, it was widely reported that she died when her oxygen ran out on day six or, as the Soviet government initially claimed, she was euthanised prior to oxygen depletion.”
The Soviet government had little regard for human life (unless a member of the “more equal than others” class) or for the truth. No surprise they would have no regard for a canine life.
The yellow polka dot bikini song, done in more my style. And some eye candy for the ladies, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiVMmAk45oY
“The New Yorker” [24 Aug. issue] came today. Well done but puzzling cover: We’re obviously in the South, kudzu [I presume; I’ve been there and seen it], hint of Spanish moss in the tree, cute black kid playing a trumpet on a stoop, but with no house behind, an abandoned house behind and left, overgrown with vine [don’t know what kudzu looks like in flower, but doesn’t seem as riotous as kudzu]. Contents lists title as “Second Line.”
Had no idea what that meant, and first thought was to ask the Village for enlightenment. But decided to go to Metacrawler first. All kinds of info: sheet music, history, some videos. There are Second Line parades, white and black and maybe, now, mixed. Apparently it’s related to trad. black funeral music, slow en route to the cemetery, joyous afterward, but without the mourning aspect. Here’s one video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk3ZqYEdmYg
24 Aug. New Yorker is now at the back of the pile. As I age, more of its articles seem interesting. I’m now up to the 13 Apr. ’15 issue [quite different but great cover]: item on NYC and LI coyotes and an article on the correlation of increased earthquakes with the pumping into bedrock of wastewater from fracking. Correlation is not causation, of course, but there are multiple correlations.
Wrote an article for The Bemidji Pioneer in ’14 or early ’15 about notorious Brit. double agent Philby, who spent his later years in exile in Moscow, derived largely from a New Yorker article and refs.
Peace, emb
emb, if you had visited New Orleans’ 9th Ward, or indeed any place on the Gulf Coast from there east to Ocean Springs MS in the years following Hurricane Katrina, you’d immediately understand the significance of the “steps to nowhere”, as well as the relation to “Second Line”.
Debbe 😉 Also from American Graffiti, what would have been clue #4. (Remember when instrumentals were hits records?)
I was kinda hoping Ian would get the CC job, so he could tell you, and you us, what a $50 steak looks like.
Well, dang; where did the link go? There it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bpS-cOBK6Q
emb, this is the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, so cover reference to (probably) New Orleans.
Ghost, here’s the cover: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine
OK, I lived in New Orleans for many years, first in French Quarter and then in Garden District, both times in historic houses we renovated and decorated. I can tell you exactly what the cover means, it is a tribute to the death of New Orleans from Katrina.
The empty steps leading to a house vanished, the houses in the background abandoned and covered in vegetation. The little boy playing trumpet, as would be played in a Second Line funeral possession.
Yes, it is the anniversary of Katrina and New Orleans has not recovered or been restored in most places. Yes, a little bit has, the area that tourists are most likely to see but the neighborhoods that lie a little deeper than one block from the main tourists remain pretty dead, looking as bad or worse than they were left.
Sorry, it is an emotional subject with me and I can’t go back, too painful. Love, Jackie
On New Yorker covers I left here and went onto Bed Bath and Beyond to look for stuff for my redecorating of house project and lo and behold, there were dozens of New Yorker covers in form of beach towels! Good ones and some I actually remembered, all on close out. I didn’t buy any but they were lovely and memorable. Love, Jackie
Good morning Debbe, it is 4:20 so you should be getting up. I am going to bed, haven’t made it there yet!