Guina/Kodkod

Guina is another wildcat that is in the running for the smallest wildcat in the Americas. They're smaller and more compact than the Oncilla, but their weight range is pretty similar. 

In my case, they're the same size as everyone else, but just as adorable. 

 

As with most cats this size, not a lot is known because who, exactly, is going to successfully watch them, or catch one to study in a lab? Plus, it's unlikely that they'd be allowed to catch one to put in a lab because that's mean. So, they avoid people and people don't know much about them. We'll learn more as we get better at the watching and studying thing, but not immediately. 

Picture from the Great Cats World Park link below. 

Guina are also known as Kodkod, or Chilean Cat. They're mainly found in Chile and a bit over the border of other countries, so it makes sense. These guys are small, but they do have some pretty dense fur that keeps them warm in the wet and cold. 

Interestingly, these guys usually eat small rodents, but sometimes they sneak onto farms and steal a chicken. According to local lore, they might also bring death, famine, and disease. There are also superstitions about them being magical and bulletproof, and their reputation has led to some communities referring to shady people as guinas. 

It's reputation is getting an overhaul though, because they're getting known outside of South America, and everyone loves how adorable they are. 

Aside from looking adorable though, they also sound adorable. One article describes the sounds they make, which we have some evidence of now, as a chirp. There are very few recordings of them because they're shy, so most of what we can get are pictures from camera traps. This time though, they got a bit of sound. I'd like to share it, but I can only suggest that you go to this link, which is repeated below as Live Science. 

There are lots of people trying to help these adorable kittens, so please consider joining their efforts. or at least looking at and sharing their adorable pictures so that people know they're around and need help. 

Considering their rodent hunting prowess, I hope my kittens take this as inspiration and try to rid my home of similar small rodents. If they aren't interested though, I hope they at least stay as cute as these guys. 

Thanks for your time, I'll see you soon to finish the wildcat litter's namesakes. 

Sources:

Great Cats World Park-- Guina

Atlas Obscura--The cutest Harbinger of Doom

Wild Cat Family- Guina

Wild Cat Family-- Cat 5 of 13 in the Leopardus Family of Cats

Big Cats Wild Cats-- Kodkod/Guina

Wild Cat Conservation-- Kodkod

Live Science-- Guina Sounds

Oncilla

 Continuing on with the plan of telling you about the kitten names, today is Oncilla. 

Aren't they all adorable? 

Well, I guess I should say, the usual Oncilla is this guy, pics from the Fact Animal link below. 

Still pretty adorable. As anyone that knows me would guess, yes, I would love to cuddle. Considering that this guy is actually a bit smaller than my usual housecats, I might even survive the encounter. Well, as long as my Mini-Mistress Squirrel doesn't find out ang get upset that I'm cuddling someone that isn't her, or her family who I am allowed to cuddle half as much for all of them as I cuddle her. It took a bit for her to accept that I do still pet other cats, even if I do recognize that I am her chosen servant. 

Back to Oncillas though. 

They're the smallest of the South American wild cats, weighing about 5 pounds and measuring about 2 feet long, which makes them longer and lighter than most house cats. There might be two species of Oncilla, though it's still a bit weird because it doesn't seem like there are a lot of differences, but there might be evidence that they can't interbreed, which is one of the big markers for species being separate. 

Interestingly, it seems like Melanistic Oncillas aren't uncommon. Melanism means that they are differently colored, more black. In this case, they go from miniature leopards to miniature panthers, such as this picture from the Panthera link below. 

These guys are small and agile, and they tend to go after rodents or whatever small animals they can find, and they tend to find areas that are low in larger cats so that they can fill the gap, such as places that don't have enough food for the larger cats, or are closer to humans than an ocelot would like. Because of their small size, agile nature, and hiding, some consider them to be the least studied wild cat in the Americas. I know I say that a lot, but there is a lot of things that aren't studied enough yet, and that's probably not going to change soon since the list keeps growing as we learn of more things to look into. 

There's a quote from a podcast I really like, the Infinite Monkey Cage, and it paraphrases as 'Science doesn't answer questions. It just helps us find better questions.' Which means, to me at least, that the more science tells us, the more we understand what we don't know and therefore the more questions we know to ask. 

But, that's ok. We'll learn more as we study the new questions, and I look forward to what comes next. 

Right now though, it's more kitten pictures and another wild cat that gave it's name to my adorable little beasties. To end this particular post though, I'll share a real kitten picture of a wild Oncilla, instead of more of my 'tamed' Oncilla. 

Animalia link below for this pic. I just had to use it. 

Sources:

Fact Animal-- Oncilla

Kiddle- Oncilla

Wild Ark-- Oncilla

Animalia-- Oncilla

Panthera-- Oncilla

Animal Diversity Web-- Oncilla

Wild Cat Conservation--Leopardus ID; Ocelot, Margay, Oncilla

Oncilla Conservation Fund--About Oncillas

Felidae Conservation Fund-- Oncilla

Margay

 Hi. Sorry for disappearing again for a bit. Things got a bit hectic and...problematic recently. I volunteered to help my Aunt move to her new house, but the timing of things went wrong and we had to have the Pod she got filled up on Friday, then we got the large Uhaul truck to load up, but we couldn't go to the new house until Tuesday morning, which was also the day that I was supposed to be back home for things, and she had to be out of the house by Wednesday, so we had to get everything loaded, unloaded, reloaded, and re-unloaded on Tuesday so that we could load up the stuff that wouldn't fit into her new house and get home, which was a three hour drive, and after arriving at home at 1 am on Wednesday, I, my mother, and my brother, had to unload everything so that we could get it back to the Uhaul people before they opened Thursday morning. Which means I spent the last week tired from moving an entire house's worth of furniture around twice, including her large collection of plants, a dozen of whom were in 15 gallon pots and weighed a half-ton, or trying to get things dealt with but being stopped by my aunt because she has a few health issues but wanted to be the one doing a lot of things even though she didn't actually do things because she didn't have the energy/ability, but she wouldn't let us do it because she needed to be the one going through things...and just making things really annoying. 

Because of  that, I didn't have the energy or care to write about something without being really grumpy, and I needed some time cuddling my babies again for a bit to get back the energy and care to write this without being grumpy.

Pic from We Love Catz below. 

Today, I want to tell you about Margays. They're a kind of wild cat that I would definitely cuddle, but would probably try to kill me if they could. In case you were wondering, no, that wouldn't stop me from trying if I meet one. Look at the picture above and tell me you wouldn't pet that. 

This picture comes from A-Z Animals, link below. These lovely cats are often mistaken for ocelots, which live in the same area, but there are a few key differences that you might be able to use to keep them separate. Ocelots are larger, and Margays have larger eyes and feet, proportionally. 

These guys are about the size of a house-cat and live in the thick rainforests of South America. They haven't been studied a lot because they're small and fast, plus they spend a lot of time in the trees and are nocturnal, so it's hard to count them or keep an eye on them for long. 

One of the unique things about Margays is that they can actually go down a tree headfirst, like a squirrel, because their ankles can turn to support them. I know you're probably thinking about cats going up and down tall things all the time, but they usually do something more like a slide and leap, rather than a controlled descent. These guys are adapted to life in the trees more than most-- which doesn't mean they're always in the trees, but they still spend a lot of time up there, and have trouble if their environment suddenly doesn't have trees. Picture below from We Love Catz. 

Another thing that's interesting and unique about these guys is that they have what could be called a mating dance. The female makes long whining calls, and the male, once they find the female, roar and trill while shaking his head. This hasn't been seen in other cats, and might not be something all Margays do, because they are under-studied due to being small and shy. 

This picture of what I assume is grumpy mama and curious baby, is from We Love Catz. They've got some really nice pictures. 

My Margay looks a lot like them, don't you think? Or, at least, my Margay looks adorable and cuddly...and sleepy. 

I hope you enjoyed learning about adorable wild cats, and my same-name adorable tamed kitty. I'll try to be back soon with news about another adorable wild/tame kitten. 

Sources:

Wild Cat Conservation-- Margay

Soft School-- Margay Facts

Animal Diversity Web-- Margay

A-Z Animals-- Margay

Encyclopedia Britannica-- Margay

Earth's Endangered Creatures-- Margay

Big Cat Rescue- Margay

We Love Catz-- 6 Facts about Margays

Fact Animal-- 14 Margay Facts

Pampas Cat/Colocolo

 I started telling you all about my kittens before June happened, so I'll tell you about all the others. Well, not all the the others. 

We had four litters of Kittens and they all got named by themes from their mothers names. 

Bearnie had her second litter. Last year, her kittens were Polar, Panda, Sunny, and Ursa. This year, they're famous movie bears, Paddington, Fozzie, Pooh, and Smokey. I'm probably not going to do posts about them, but maybe. 

Cathy had her babies, who got named after wild Cats. Oncilla, Guina, Margay, Caracal, Colocolo, and BB (Borneo Bay Cat). 

Wallaby had the last litter of the year and her babies are the Aussies, our little Echidna, Quokka, Emu, and Cassowary. 

Please look forward to these 9-13 posts about my baby kittens. Since most of them have the same coat pattern, I apologize that my kitten pictures are just going to be adorable babies overall instead of the single specific kitten. 

The first kitten I'm going to talk about is Colocolo, or the Pampas Cat. 

These guys are from South America and pretty widespread. The pictures of them just look like extra-fluffy cats, which supports the suggestion that they eat anything meaty they come across. 

This picture is taken from the Felidae Fund link below. As you can see, this is a very cute and fluffy kitten. 

These guys are mainly nocturnal and terrestrial, so they hunt at night on the ground, but there are actual studies suggesting that they're 'cathemeral', which means around any time. That fits with the cats I've got around that love being noisy brats day and night. Interestingly, this isn't an attempted pun about cats being equally likely to be awake or asleep at any given time, but actually comes from Greek for 'through the day'. 

From what I've seen, it seems like Colocolo is the scientific name for the species, and one of the names in use in some areas for a cat that they think is all one species, or possibly has been considered the same species but might be getting split into three, five, or seven different subspecies or entirely separate species. I'm not sure what the state of this debate is, I'm pretty sure half the sites I can check for these things don't know the state of the debate, and I'm just going to tell you that there is one, and it's up to you if you want to check this further. 

 

The name Pampas Cat is from their habits of hanging around in the grass, since Pampas is a local word for grass. It's believed that Colocolo comes from the name of a warrior chief that lived in the area they're found, but I don't know a lot about that one. 

Like a lot of things, these guys aren't studied a lot in the wild because, like a lot of cats, they know how to disappear into their habitat and avoid notice. Plus, there are a lot of things in South America that don't have nearly as much study on them as you'd think. There's a lot that scientists haven't investigated yet, the lazy brats. 

In case you're wondering, these are on the list of creatures that might kill me but I would absolutely cuddle if I got the opportunity. 

And now for my, admittedly more cuddly, versions, then I'll be back soon with information about the namesake of a sibling. 

Sources:

Great Cats World Park-- Pampas Cat

Animal Diversity Web-- Pampas Cat

Felidae Fund-- Pampas Cat

Wildcat Conservation-- Pampas

iNaturalist-- Pampas Cat

Wild Cat Family-- Colocolo

Big Cat Rescue-- Pampas Cat

Animalia-- Pampas Cat

Kiddle-- Pampas Facts for Kids

Uglyography

Bad handwriting or Spelling. Used from 1800-1835

I saw this word and definition on the Lost Words site below,  and it made me laugh. It's literally Ugly Calligraphy, smashed together. 

Next time you have to write something down, say you have uglyography instead of bad handwriting, and laugh at the face of whoever you say it to. I wouldn't suggest using it as a word to make people feel better about their writing skills overall though, because it does start with ugly. 

Interestingly, this actually came back in the name of a band. I didn't investigate that side of things, but they do describe themselves as 'Quirkadelic', so they might be interesting. 

Either way, have fun with this word, and I'll see you again soon. 

Sources:

Lost Words-- S-Z

World English Historical Dictionary-- Uglyography

Song Bar-- Word of the Week-- Uglyography

Reading Addicts-- Word of the Day-- Uglyography

Jurassic Pork

 Sorry, I just came across this research paper and I thought it was pretty awesome. I have a strong love for the weird people that you find in scientific communities, in part because one of the things to get a doctorate is to write up a thesis on something in their subject and defend it. Since they, at least most of the time, have to come up with a new idea and new study/experiment, it can lead to some very weird things as they attempt to study a new aspect of the world. One such example is the guy who spent a decade studying the physics of pouring honey. A lot of their research is interesting, a bunch of could be considered amusing, and some of it...some of it is just awesome. 

This particular paper is one of those where, even if you're not scientifically minded, you have to love it. 

Roy E. Plotnick, Jessica M. Theodor and Thomas R. Holtz Jr. created a detailed and well discussed paper titled "Jurassic Pork: What Could A Jewish Time Traveler Eat?"

This paper discusses the rules of Kosher and what kind of animals could be found in the past. Reading this is both a lesson on what animals count as Kosher, along with a discussion about what kinds of animals fit those rules. I kind of love that this paper comes from people actually asking if various types of extinct animals are kosher. It's all purely hypothetical, of course, but amusing nonetheless. 

Some things are easier than others to figure out from fossil records. Cud-chewing is hard, if not impossible, to figure out from bones, whereas the presence of scales and fins on fish can be found a bit more easily. 

The first rule discussed is that kosher mammals chew cud and have hooves. Paws are apparently unclean. Part of me is glad that my pup isn't kosher, but I'm not sure I like calling her unclean either, even if she hasn't had a bath in forever. For fish, they are required to have fins and scales, specifically scales that can be seen with the naked eye and removed without tearing the skin. Birds are listed specifically to one side or the other, but there are some guidelines for that. Strangely, bats are birds according to the Torah, and Ostriches are labelled as not ok. It's not in the Torah, but discussions among rabbis say that birds aren't kosher if they are predators, or if they are flightless, and they are kosher if they have a gizzard that can be peeled, a crop, and an extra toe. Both the crop and the peelable gizzard are pretty impossible to check through the fossils, but they do their best. 

The authors then discussed past creatures and how the differing applications of the Kosher rules might apply to the creatures paleontologists find. The point of the paper, as they say in the end, is that they want to shift the discussion from being that science and religion don't work because evolution v creationism have problems, to how they can make the other more interesting to people. 

I'll leave the rest for you to read in the report if you're interested, or to ignore if you're not. 

I think it's a pretty awesome and I hope you have fun with it. Let me know what you think. 

St. Barbara

 Patron Saint of Fireworks. 

I'm not Catholic and actually tend to waver more towards agnostic/atheist than anything, but that doesn't matter much. I just like the stories, even if I don't pray to them. So, I will discuss mythology and patron saints and various gods from various places, because they're fun and interesting. 

St. Barbara is the patron saint of things that go boom because the pair of people who tortured and killed her were struck by lightning. Or sky-fire, whichever. 

St. Barbara, from the Catholic Online link below. 

Barbara was born in the third century to a pagan father. She was really pretty, so her father locked her in a tower to keep her safe. She looked out the window at the world and decided that there must be a single god that created it all, not the pagan ones her father and teachers worshipped. She became Christian and swore that she'd die a virgin, pure for her god. 

When she was old enough, her father started trying to find her a husband, but she rejected them all. He decided to give her a bit more freedom in hopes she'd understand and accept a husband, including creating a bathhouse for her. He planned for it to have two windows, but she added in a third for the Trinity, and some claim that miracles happened there. 

After a while, she did tell him that she was a Christian and he tried to get her to let go of those silly ideas. She didn't. When he couldn't get her to let go of it all, he turned her in to the government, who tortured her to try to get her to reject Christianity. Supposedly, all her wounds healed up when she prayed though, which was one of her miracles. She also got dragged through town while naked, and had an angel show up to give her a robe and heal her again. When she got threatened with fire, it went out before it got close to her. That might be part of it. 

They eventually gave up and she was beheaded by her father, who was then struck by lightning/sky fire. That is most of the reason that she was given the title of patron saint of fireworks, along with artillery and most things that go boom. The other reason is that some say that she got struck by lightning also, but wasn't hurt. Since that supposedly happened at the moment of death and only in half the sources I found, I'm not sure about that one. 

It just seemed to fit to post about her right before one of the days with the most fireworks. Her story isn't nearly as interesting as some others, but still worth a few minutes to consider. I hope you'll remember to stay safe when you use fireworks, lest you accidentally become a martyr alongside her, or get burned up like her father. 

Have fun. I'll be back soon with something else fun. 

Sources:

Catholic News Archive-- St. Barbara

National Catholics Register-- St. Barbara

Christian Apostles-- St. Barbara

Kate Antiquity-- Patron Saint of Fireworks

Catholic Online-- St. Barbara

Kuebiko

This seemed like something that...I resonate with a lot more than I'd like. 

Kuebiko is both a Japanese Deity and a description of a state of being that I think half the world can agree they understand. 

As a Deity, Kuebiko is a god of agriculture and wisdom. He's a scarecrow, who can't move but has a lot of knowledge about how the world around him goes. His name means 'crumbling prince' or something similar. A man falling apart. 

As a feeling, Kuebiko is meant to refer to a state of exhaustion caused by the senseless violence of the world. One of the more poetic descriptions of it, from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, link below:

n. a state of exhaustion inspired by senseless tragedies and acts of violence, which force you to abruptly revise your expectations of what can happen in this world, trying to prop yourself up like an old scarecrow, who’s bursting at the seams yet powerless to do anything but stand there and watch.

It makes sense that this word was reimagined by an author from the Japanese God into this feeling. 

After Pride Month and the...issues...that have been caused by bigots, and after the issues politics keeps causing by demonizing a minority to give us all someone to blame, and after the number of times that we've all been so sure we were going to end up in a war...

I can understand this feeling. I'm not sure if it's better or worse that there is a word for it, but there is. 

Please, take a moment to think about this for you, and if there is anything you can do to try to stop the feeling of powerlessness at least. I know no one can stop it all, but if you can stop a single act, it may be worth it. 

Either way, I'll see you again soon. 

Sources:

Red Tree Times-- Kuebiko

Emotions Wiki-- Kuebiko

Quartz-- A Japanese Word for the News Generated Sadness You're Feeling

Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows-- Kuebiko

Old World Gods-- Kuebiko

Japanese Mythology and Folklore-- Kuebiko