The London Mews Review

as they do

She’s a dancing cat. Or pretending to be one. I have my doubts. Lou Lou dances (or danced) (or pretended to dance) with a sort of performance-art Vaudeville thing called Bushwick Farms. It’s run by Tara Cuthbert and Stuart Solzberg, and it may have other cats involved besides Lou Lou, I don’t know. You’d have to ask them. They have a TeaRoom (alloneword) in Brooklyn, if you want to find them. Or it might be pretending to be a TeaRoom. I’m not sure.

Actually, Lou Lou isn’t a dancing cat at all. She’s an “incredible dancing cat”. Any old cat can be a dancing cat, but it takes a special dancing cat to be an incredible one.

Like Lou Lou.

I wonder what she’s doing now. She always talked of Paris…

So says Rene Knapp.

Curious people, says Rene, often ask her how a sphynx cat feels.

I describe it as warm suede. It is the most wonderful feeling to pet a sphynx or to have one sleep under the covers, against your body during a chilly night.

Here’s one.

Want to pet it?

Breaking cat headlines at the BBC news desk tell us that a domestic cat called Lynx has been reunited with her owner after being found no less than 60 miles away and over 10 years after going missing.

The BBC article glosses over a rather significant detail that friend of the Mews Review, June Hedges has pointed out to us - namely that an early snapshot of Lynx pre-breaking loose shows her in clear possession of a credit card:

After ten years on the run with a flexible friend, I expect Lynx isn’t so much glad to be back home as cursing the expensive but bodged back street operation to remove her microchip.

When reunited with Lynx, Patricia Charnet should brace herself for getting a furious (even feral?) foot in the face. And maybe some improved financial insurance.

A tiger-adoption-cuteness alert from Miss B…..

A zoo in China has managed to achieve an impressive cuteness rating of 8.6 by attaching three tiny tiger cubs to the teats of an amenable dog:

The mongrel bitch called Huani is suckling the tiger cubs, imaginatively named One, Two and Three by staff at Jinan Paomaling Wild Animal World, because their mother rejected them.

I rather like the names One, Two and Three. And not calling them Stripe or Tigger actually *is* imaginative. (Although the numerals are admittedly a bit Maoist). Or should I say Miaowist?

No.

For a while now, we’ve been on the look out for a diagram that clearly distinguishes between Michael Palin and a cat. This is the closest we’ve come across:

Overall, it’s reasonably unproblematic - although it does get a bit confusing around the top of Palin’s right ear (the only human ear visible in the image). If we come across anything better, we’ll get it to you without delay.

So, how do you take your cat for a walk, but keep it under maximum protection? You need one of these:

- a contraption created by Angela Gannon, who in turn was created by the makers of a short film called Venom:

Angela Gannon is an elderly widow who has lost more than she can bear… First a distant war took the husband she had only just married. Then a bee sting took the cat she loved more than life itself. Now, fearful and paranoid, she grows old in a decaying house with a new cat - Ziggy - for company, a cat she is determined to protect at all costs…

Here is her old cat:

Poor thing, never stood a chance.

The London Mews Review flag is hanging at half-mast today. News has just arrived that Dr James R. Richards, the internationally renowned expert in cat care, and director of the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine’s Feline Health Center, has died. He was 58.

According to police reports, the cat expert was riding his motorcycle west on Route 221 in Cortland County, when he came upon a cat in the road. He swerved instinctively to avoid the cat, and lost control of his motorcycle. He missed the cat, but hit a tree.

Sometimes, as we know, cat loving comes at a price. But the cost of this crash is not just the death of a good man. With this most eminent cat vet gone, who knows how many cats will suffer just so that the one cat on Route 221 in Cortland County could live? It is hard not to feel resentment towards that cat. Anger even. But these are feelings, no doubt, that the good Dr Richards would chide us for having.

Here, in happier times, Dr Richards, and former mascot of the Cornell Feline Health Center, Dr Mew:

Here’s a remarkable photograph, taken in Germany, of a tabby cat playing tennis with a giant lizard. In nature, of course, cats and lizards are friends, but on the tennis court, they’re arch rivals!

Photograph: David Finch.