Heavy metal cat at it again

If you’re a cat lover you’ll totally understand this. Here is Patapuss, my four-legged feline house-friend showing off that natural talent that all cats have for parking themselves in the one spot they’re definitely not meant to be.

Seriously, of all the locations available to you in the not-overly-small house that I live in, the music collection was the spot that was most singularly comfortable over all others?

I suppose I should be grateful it’s not worse. My computer is going in for repairs because Patapuss threw up on it the other day (when you’re a cat owner, you no longer get angry when this happens; with a sigh or a groan you simply resign yourself to what the world is throwing at you). It wasn’t the thick, chunky chuck mind you, but the watery one-off after-chuck. It must have leaked into the inner workings of my machine because the fan now only functions on full bore and the clock has gone haywire, causing mayhem with my Last.fm scrobble stats

.

On another occasion, I came home to find our other cat, Tomato, sitting on one of my turntables. I wouldn’t have minded quite so much if he hadn’t of managed to turn the damn thing on. And talking of records, if you were to look closely at the spines of the cardboard LP sleeves you’d notice what looks like extensive damage. Turns out record sleeves are evidently the perfect claw-sharpening material.

So yes, it could be worse. In fact, it’s even a little endearing, what with Patapuss knowing good music when he comes across it (this makes him a  cat of discrimination and good taste).

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!