Posts tagged Furio

2 out of 3 Bains surveyed were enjoying their Saturday night. [Sorry for consecutive sofa posts]

2 out of 3 Bains surveyed were enjoying their Saturday night. [Sorry for consecutive sofa posts]

It’s a crowded couch in the Bain house.

It’s a crowded couch in the Bain house.

Furio’s pretty excited about the new iPad… box.

Furio’s pretty excited about the new iPad… box.

Watching Lost. Furio’s blocking The Situation from watching the scary show :-)

Watching Lost. Furio’s blocking The Situation from watching the scary show :-)

The 2009 Furiowards

Our cat was hard at work this year:

  • He endured a cross-country move without missing a beat
  • His monthly visitors rose from ~500 to ~1000
  • His Facebook fan page, launched in January, has found a steady audience of ~610
  • He’s hosted numerous reader meet-ups, bringing his message to the community
  • He turned pro, lending his wit and charm to the Molly Meow brand, and negotiating the terms of other deals you’ll hear about soon

2009 was the year Furio “tipped”. I’ve seen his roadmap for 2010, and it may be even bigger :-)

furio

furio:

Last night got a little crazy. I’m still putting the pieces of my birthday back together, but I remember:

  • A special seafood dinner
  • Too many catnip bubbles
  • A huge new tree to climb
  • Getting to pick the family movie, and choosing The Cat from Outer Space

I got a little carried away at the start of Furio’s 3rd (or 28th) birthday party last night, but mellowed out as the night went on. My mother-in-law’s in the video, and you can see that she hand-crafted a card for him, including calligraphy on the front.

I’m starting to think this cat might be spoiled :-)

[And if you think “Alex has too much free time”, well, yes, my commute is a total of 3 hours]

furio

Tumblr has created a fun metric combining traffic, popularity, and readership called Tumblarity™, and while my scores never approach those of most the blogs I read, I was proud yesterday to have hit a new high: 50. This was mostly because Peter “The King of Tumblr” Knox reblogged me. Then I checked my cat’s page today to discover his tumblarity went from 7 yesterday to 142 today, on the strength of all the above likes, follows, and reblogs. He was featured on SaveTheKitties.net, and on Fuck Yeah Kitties (a slightly risqué title of a hysterical site). There comes a moment in every man’s life when his cat’s blog is more popular than his own, and right now, I’m living out that timeless cliché. I’m dealing with it well, I think, but it’s served as a wake up call that I need to read more interesting articles, take great pictures in more interesting places, and perhaps ask Furio to plug my site on his from time to time.

Tumblr has created a fun metric combining traffic, popularity, and readership called Tumblarity™, and while my scores never approach those of most the blogs I read, I was proud yesterday to have hit a new high: 50. This was mostly because Peter “The King of Tumblr” Knox reblogged me.

Then I checked my cat’s page today to discover his tumblarity went from 7 yesterday to 142 today, on the strength of all the above likes, follows, and reblogs. He was featured on SaveTheKitties.net, and on Fuck Yeah Kitties (a slightly risqué title of a hysterical site).

There comes a moment in every man’s life when his cat’s blog is more popular than his own, and right now, I’m living out that timeless cliché. I’m dealing with it well, I think, but it’s served as a wake up call that I need to read more interesting articles, take great pictures in more interesting places, and perhaps ask Furio to plug my site on his from time to time.

I checked out the stats on Furio’s surprisingly popular Facebook fan page, and noticed that 60% of his fans are abroad, you have to go to #6 on the list of top cities before you find anything American, and that the 3rd most popular language among his fans is “pirate”. Should he start catering more to the pirate demo? I’ll bring this up with him.

I checked out the stats on Furio’s surprisingly popular Facebook fan page, and noticed that 60% of his fans are abroad, you have to go to #6 on the list of top cities before you find anything American, and that the 3rd most popular language among his fans is “pirate”.

Should he start catering more to the pirate demo? I’ll bring this up with him.

This is devotion. One of Furio’s fan’s set up a blog simply to get his attention.

This is devotion. One of Furio’s fan’s set up a blog simply to get his attention.

Cetaceans are probably self-aware. When a mark is stuck on the body of a dolphin such that it can’t see the mark, it will position itself in front of a mirror so that it can.

It’s not unreasonable to think that whales would do the same — but finding a mirror big enough to reflect the body of a whale has stopped biologists from doing the experiment.

A large mirror has been found for elephants. When a mark is stuck on their heads, elephants given a mirror will touch their trunks to the mark, passing the same test for self-awareness. When presented with a mirror, most animals — such as cats, dogs and birds — do not realize that they are seeing their own reflection. Even “lesser” apes such as gibbons are not self-aware by this measure.

The animals that pass the mirror test have in common the fact that they live in groups. They all have complex methods of communication, they form cooperative units, transmit information culturally — and several species use tools.

Neat 3 year old piece from the Japan Times. I stumbled across it while looking to learn more about my new favorite bit of science, spindle cells. I thought I remembered hearing that elephants also mourned their dead.

As someone with a recently discovered love of pets, I’ve been asking smart people about what makes pets tick, and I’d been told that dogs and cats lack the portion of the brain that enabled “complex emotions”. The fantastic book “It’s a Cat’s World, You Just Live In It” taught me that cats don’t poop on your bed after a prolonged absence because they’re frustrated, mad, or jealous. They do so as a primal response to stress. (Side note: every cat lover should read this book. It’s a hysterical page-turner, and extremely informative)

The better I understand the differences between our brains, the easier my interactions have become with Furio. His behavior is almost entirely determined by 2 factors: instinct and stress. With this knowledge, I don’t waste time interpreting his actions. He likes to smell things, so I open up spice jars for him to experience different sniffs. He likes to hunt, so rather than handing him a treat, I launch it across the room for him to track down. He’s weary of significant changes to his environment, so I’ve tried to ease him into our cross-country move, surrounding him with familiar items and activities.

As interested as I am to learn more about spindle cells, I’m equally interested to improve my understanding of the extent to which stress, and not consciousness, dictates our behavior. For anyone interested in this topic, there’s a terrific lecture from Stanford’s Professor Sapolsky titled “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” available for free on iTunes. It borders on stand up comedy at times, but his message is clear that stress plays a massive role in the human condition, and that evolution has left us ill-equipped to cope properly with persistent stress.

#758 Celebrating your pet’s birthday even though they have no idea what’s going on

I love this site, but they seem to be sarcastically honoring the tradition of pet birthdays. Furio’s had some ragers, and Beast’s 3rd b- day got completely out of control, in a good way.

furio: What’s surprising about this is not that she encountered one of my fans, but that this happened in Cambridge. I’ve done very little local promotion, but I’m big in Japan. If Lisa did an away rotation at the University of Tokyo hospital’s NICU, she’d be mobbed by my fans on a daily basis. This is the last thing my cat’s ego needed.

furio:

What’s surprising about this is not that she encountered one of my fans, but that this happened in Cambridge. I’ve done very little local promotion, but I’m big in Japan.

If Lisa did an away rotation at the University of Tokyo hospital’s NICU, she’d be mobbed by my fans on a daily basis.

This is the last thing my cat’s ego needed.

furio

With Lisa gone saving lives, I’m spending the night on the couch, under a blanket, fighting for control of the Kindle with the cat.

With Lisa gone saving lives, I’m spending the night on the couch, under a blanket, fighting for control of the Kindle with the cat.

furio:

I’m really excited about the debut of Slumcat Millionaire.

Here’s the press release that was put out by the film’s producers:

In Slumcat, Furio shows his range, playing all 3 roles and carrying the film on his back with panache.

While the action and drama are both, at times, a bit gritty, he acted within his abilities, and didn’t take any risks with which he wasn’t perfectly comfortable.

Not only did he have the time of his life making this movie, he also had quite a few treats.

Lisa and I helped Furio with some of the direction and lighting, but the whole thing was his vision from beginning to end.

I got the same three questions over and over again when Furio released Brokecat, so let me answer them here:

  1. Dude, how much free time do you have? Well, Lisa and I goofed around with the cat for 20-30 minutes on Saturday, which we do most nights anyway, we just don’t usually film it, and our cat doesn’t usually have such a sense of purpose. I spent another 20-30 minutes chopping it up in iMovie last night, while watching the Oscars and with the Little Man curled up next to me on the sofa. If 1 hour split over 2 nights is a big waste of time, then so be it.
  2. Does Furio do his own stunts? Yeah, he basically puts on a parkour performance every night in our apartment at about 8PM. I think he’d be miserable if we ever move to a place that’s not built like a treehouse. Seriously, though, he wasn’t hurt at all with any of those jumps.
  3. Why has he set both of his movies in your apartment? Because of tax breaks and to avoid unions.

furio

I can only imagine how many times they had to go back and forth before this sunk in; like the time when I was 12 and my older brother had to explain why Pee-Wee Herman was in the news.

I can only imagine how many times they had to go back and forth before this sunk in; like the time when I was 12 and my older brother had to explain why Pee-Wee Herman was in the news.