Invasion of cats!

Over the past couple of days, I seem to have been stumbling across stuff to do with cats all over the place.

The other day, on CBC radio, I heard about Oscar the cat. Oscar lives at a nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island, and can apparently sense when people are going to die. He regularly curls up next to patients a few hours before they pass away. For a harbinger of death, he's incredibly adorable.

I also stumbled upon this site of pictures taken by a "CatCam" hung around the neck of Mr. Lee the feline. It takes shots randomly throughout his day.

I'm not sure if this is frightening or hilarious - a little bit of both, I think. Those tiny, cute kittens look terrified - as they should be. No doubt, the next legislation Harper introduces will endeavour to help the homeless by feeding them those kittens. (Sorry, that's going a bit too far - Harper clearly doesn't care that much about poor people.)

Luckily, as far as I know, despite all of these cat-related phenomena, no cats have been struck by lightning recently. The same, however, can't be said for caribou.

Anyway, here's a picture of Minty, one of my brother's cats, who I miss terribly (although I can't say I miss her shedding).

My Simpsons avatar

The new Simpsons movie isn't playing in Iqaluit, but that didn't stop me from making myself a Simpsons avatar.

Foggy summer

The fog and cold this week have been hanging onto Frobisher Bay this week like the swarms of giant Nunavut mosquitos on my exposed skin. The forecast isn't calling for sun or temperatures above 10 degrees for the forecastable future. The last nice day we had was Parks Day on Saturday, which was fun. You can check out Kate Nova's great photos here. I ate bannock from the bannock-making competition, took a geology walk, listened to throat-singing (super cool!), and watched inuit games, such as the high-kick:Saturday night I got to hang out by a campfire with fellow members of the Iqaluit Rank Amateur Fishing Society (IRAFS). The interesting thing about campfires up here is that you scavenge for scrap wood in town, instead of for twigs in the forest - since there are no forests - so the fire was made up largely of old two-by-fours with nails in them. It looked like this:Speaking of fishing, I did make it out again on Sunday to fish, but it was cold and windy, and once again the only bites I had were getting my lure snagged on the rocks. We have found a new fishing spot, which is pretty nice. Here's some photos from about a week and a half ago:

Accidental modern art

The other day I took a walk along the industrial road that I can see from my apartment, and leads to the prison. Not exactly a touristy route, but I did find some neat industrial waste, including this big, twisted bit of metal that looked like a modern art sculpture. I liked it so much, I took a picture of it from different angles: