Heavy metal cat

This photo is from just after Christmas. Every year as the festive season approaches and friends and family inevitably ask what I want for Christmas, the response I give is always the same: gift vouchers from record stores

My birthday is close to Christmas so I often manage to accumulate a critical mass of vouchers — and no, in case you were wondering, I don’t get double the amount of presents. I can (if I’m especially well behaved) get away with combining both days into one 150 per cent above average size gift, but twice the volume would be greedy.

Still, it all makes for what is every music collector’s dream of awesomeness, that being a record store shopping spree.

While my preferred source of vouchers from those who are generous enough to get one (or more) for me is from HeartlandRecords, just outside of the Melbourne CBD, not everyone is able to go there in person, so I often end up with vouchers from elsewhere. In this instance I ended up with $100 in JB Hi Fi vouchers, resulting in the following album haul (read on why the cat's in the shot).

• ·         Judas Priest: Painkiller
• ·         Eizbrecher: Eiszeit
• ·         Devin Townsend Project: Epicloud
• ·         A six-pack of early Motörhead albums (what's not to love about Motörhead?
• ·         Manowar: Hail To England
• ·         Megadeth: Th1rt3en

Heavy metal cat.

As I was laying out the CDs for the pic I managed to snap all of one photo before Patapuss generously decided to ‘help’.

Now he’s a lovely cat and after stretching out and announcing his presence with a meow (he does that) he then decided he’d have a little scent of selected CDs.

I noticed the Devin Townsend Epicloud album received most of his attention, and a little bit also went to the Manowar album.

Just heavy metal.

I pointed this out on a Facebook post and the person who recommend Epicloud to me in the first place remarked that this was evidence of Devin Townsend’s awesomeness. I then pointed out that Patapuss didn’t so much as even touch Dave Mustaine's Megadeth CD.

“Clearly a cat of discrimination and good taste,” was the response.

Ouch!