Sunday, February 3, 2008

Meet the Faultcats

So, Callan Bentley at NOVA Geoblog posted an incredibly cute picture of his feline lab assistant, which has inspired me to share photos of my own fuzzy seismically-inclined monsters.

This is Andreas:

He knows what he's named after, and he clearly feels it is his responsibility to learn as much about that namesake as he can.

He's had these tendencies from a very young age:

(Andreas and his five littermates were born in my apartment this past summer. Their mother was a stray that I took in, not knowing she was pregnant. The mommycat and four of the other babies have since been adopted, but I decided to keep Andreas and his brother Garlock. He's three weeks old in this photo, and he crawled onto the computer all by himself.)

While it's cute to see Andreas studying, it's not the most opportune thing when he decides to read the same thing I'm reading while I'm reading it.


Garlock has similar studious tendencies, though he seems to have taken more to ethnomusicology than to the earth sciences. However, he is afraid of my camera, so I have many fewer pictures of him in general, let alone while he's "working." This is one of the better ones (Garlock's the black one):

(The Siamese on the right is Jacinto, who is, believe it or not, part of the same litter as Andreas and Garlock. Guess what the other three kittens were named.)

6 comments:

Ron Schott said...

One of them certainly should have been named Gregorio. I'm not sure what name one would derive from Reliz-Rinconada, but the fault of that name would certainly be significant enough. The Sierra Nevada, Death Valley-Furnace Creek, and White Wolf-Kern Canyon faults are all important but don't strike(-slip) me as particularly feline. Lots of choices from the Mojave Desert region: Calico would be an obvious cat name, though the fault isn't on a par with these others, and I think Manix would be a great name for a cat. But if my money were on the line I'd guess you're focused on faults in the immediate LA area and the other cats names are Ynez, Susanna, and Gabriel. Elsinore would be my alternate.

BrianR said...

Yeah, I was thinking Gregorio as well ... or maybe Mendocino? Blanco? But, I guess then they'd be fracturezonecats :)

McMoots said...

Elsinore, Gregorio, Gorgonio? Hayward, Calaveras?

... apparently I've been away from SoCal too long, all the NoCal names sound way better.

Callan Bentley said...

Great cats! I love the igneous analogy.

Garry Hayes said...

I immediately thought of Hayward and Calaveras, constrained as I am by living in California's Central Valley. Melones is inactive, but then so are some cats. I like Ron's suggestion of Calico, since I did a senior exercise there many years ago. And for active cats, how about Landers and Hector?

Julian said...

Maria (I'm still trying to wrap my brain around calling you that...) nailed all three! The other kittens - three girls - were Hayward, Calaveras, and Elsinore. I guess I did make it seem like they were all SoCal faults by the three I did mention - oops!

If there had been more boys in the litter, Gregorio, Gabriel, and Raymond were names I was considering. And if one of the kittens had been a calico, I think I would have named it accordingly.

Manix is a fantastic name for a cat. That's one to remember for next time - though I hope I won't need it for a while, since Andreas and Garlock better be sticking around for a long time.