Basti and Riley's World

Lookout Wiggie, here comes Nora

basticat — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:08:18 +0000

I’m not sure why, but that guy who feeds me listens to nothing but weird, noisy music. Last night, while he was sleeping, I bookmarked these videos of a real musician. When he woke up he just turned his head sideways and squinted. Silly boy.

He tried to share some Animal Collective band with me. I was greatly disappointed.

Inventor Michelson ate my balls

basticat — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:35:49 +0000

I pitty the fool who doesn’t respect this guy.

While Dr. Gary Michelson’s $75 million offer for a “safe, one-time non-surgical means to sterilize male and female cats and dogs” is well-intentioned, we here at Basti & Riley’s World would like to remind all of the crazy people on the Internet that this isn’t a license to run around poking and prodding our private bits, ’cause that’s just nuts.

On a personal note, I’d like to point out that Michelson is apparently channeling the ghost of the still-living Bob Barker.

Cat ninjas

basticat — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:24:26 +0000

Basti here. We cats are known for our ninja like abilities. We hide, we jump, we stalk, and we steal stringy things.

Here’s one of our operatives in the field:

I don’t mean to let the cat out of the bag on this one ::cough:: –sorry, hairball– but I think you know the truth, at least on an intuitive level. Being a ninja cat requires rigorous and extensive training. Here’s a clip from one of our many schools:

We also train operatives in the rudimentary use of video editing and sound effects.

We’d love to see your videos of skilled cat ninjas–comment above, if you can catch us on film that is.

Wiggling and Whimsy: The Porcupine Wiggler

basticat — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:46:47 +0000

I’ll play with just about anything. Sometimes my human brings home fancy toys but they rarely compare to the fun things he keeps around the house. There’s the crinkled paper, which has that thick swishing and staccato cracking sound; there’s the headphones he leaves dangling over the edge of counter, a teasing pendulum of motion; and don’t forget the toilet paper, oh the toilet paper, which he hangs in the over-the-top fashion just so I can unroll it easier. Every now and then though, he’ll cut the tags off of something that’s more entertaining than all of those.

Two weeks ago was one of those days. I saw the tag poking out of recycling bin: it was The Cat Fancier’s Association’s Porcupine Wiggler.

He pulled on its tail, set it on the ground, and the tiny beast stuttered forward across the floor with a low putter. I approached it slowly—it’s could move on its own, after all. I test-tapped it a few times to make sure it was dead, and then picked it up with both paws. It was love at first toss.

It makes this weird noise when I toss it around; there seems to be something inside of it. I love ripping at the fur. The bottom is all smooth, and great to bite if you don’t want to get a mouth full of fuzz. The only strange thing is it looks different now because I saw my human pull off the tail a few days ago then say a bunch of short loud words.

I still run every time he crumples up paper, but I keep returning to this porcupine. It’s great.

Basti’s rating: 4 paws and 1 tail