Pictures of Cats With Funny Expressions on their Faces

Last week during my blog I discovered the secret of life. Somewhat surprisingly I found it in a car park in Louisville, Kentucky. It is strange the links that are made in life that eventually lead to self actualisation, but there it is. Alas rumour has it that this will now form the plot for Dan Brown's next novel. So I can only apologise to the car park users as I expect the lot to be full with tourists from now on (once they find it).

Anyway, this week I promised pictures of cats with funny expressions on their faces.

This is my cat Lulu, named after the diminutive Scottish teen pop singer from the 60s. Why? I suppose you haven't heard my cat sing.

Happy Lulu

Serious Lulu

Reflective Lulu

Angry Lulu

Lulu in love

Can I go now?

Taking cat photos was not as easy as I expected. Just google 'cat' and millions of cute felines suddenly appear - how is that possible? I follow my cat for days taking photographs and nothing cute happens. Although I did rip my trousers falling out of a tree in the local park, and the old lady I fell on didn't find the experience cute at all. It was only when the policeman examined the boring cat images on the camera was I allowed to leave the station - 4 hours later.

Frustrated, I took action. When I attempted to put a clown's nose on Lulu, she objected. It wasn't a fair fight. She was young, quick, angry and well armed and I wasn't. I beat a hasty retreat as I didn't want to go into work with mysterious marks on my face again. So I ended up with these photos - and from this moment on let it be known that all other cat pictures on the internet have been Photoshopped - do not believe them.

This incident confirmed what I had always suspected - I had a small dose of ailurophobia*, but also made me realise I had a big dose of amychophobia**. This got me thinking about phobias. It is well known that Alfred Mosher Butts invented Scrabble to overcome his hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia***. I'm not sure I've spelt that correctly because my word processor's angry caterpillar immediately underlined it. I then realised it was set at U.S. English so took out any unnecessary 'u's and swapped the 's's for 'z's - that didn't help at all - the caterpillar just got angrier. So I set my spellchecker to 'English' English and ignored the caterpillar confident in the knowledge that machines don't know everything.

Anyway, all this got me thinking about phobias. Then it got me thinking about phobias in museums. It is thought that the director of a certain farming museum is an agoraphobe****, and rumour has it that the Visitor Services Manager at the People's History Museum is an alektorophobe*****.

So this week I will be conducting a survey at the Museum of Unreason to discover and then report on the ten most common phobias in the heritage world  - watch this space (unless, of course, you are an astrophobe).

* fear of cats
** fear of being scratched
*** fear of long words
**** fear of tractors - probably
***** fear of chickens

Five Management Secrets I Learned From My Cat

As an enlightened museum manager always on the lookout to improve upon my innate genius. The other day my eye was caught by an article on '5 Management Secrets I Learned From My Dog'

http://blog.hootsuite.com/5-management-secrets-i-learned-from-my-dog/

Needless to say I took the view that you can't teach an old dog new tricks and did not bother to read it. But having spent my lunchtime in the local park I decided to indulge in some action research on dog 'management' behaviours that could be put into practice in that afternoon's Trustees meeting.

The meeting turned out to be a short but turbulent affair. The Trustees objected to me licking their hands on arrival and the Secretary refused to throw my copy of the agenda across the room so that I could go and fetch it. Although I growled quite convincingly when anyone went near my sandwiches, the meeting ended abruptly when I tried to hump the Chairman's leg.

Clearly having canine related management strategies is the work of the unhinged. Yet it may be that it is just the wrong pet. Cats lead, dogs follow. I perused the internet to find out what the great minds of human history thought and they agree with me. Carl Van Vechten puts it beautifully and concisely, "There is no single quality of the cat that man could not emulate to his advantage."

So learning management skills from a dog is plainly stupid. Much more sensible is to learn from cats.  As Jeff Valdez observed, " Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through the snow."

The clear lesson here is: managers are cats, staff are dogs.

So I thought I would impart the wisdom of cats to the put upon museum manager. Follow these five tips and you can't go wrong.

Five Management Secrets I Learned from My Cat. (Her name is Lulu by the way)

1. Prioritisation
"Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you later." Mary Bly

2. Pragmatic Motivation
"Essentially, you do not so much teach your cat as bribe him." Lynn Hollyn

3. Self Confidence
"Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are God." Anon

4. Assertiveness
"Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want." Joseph Wood Krutch.

5. Ruthlessness
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." Bruce Graham.


TOO ERR IS HUMAN TO PURR FELINE


All quotes sourced from maxellah.tripod.com/catquo.htm