The Third Annual Toughest Cat Competition

Long time followers of the Under The Paw blog will be familiar with the Toughest Cat competition (see previous winners Grebo and Rufus Bugcat, above). It's simple: you send in pictures of your cats looking really hard, then my cats and I decide which is the hardest, while you try to (and sometimes do) sway the judging process by getting your friends to post enthusiastic comments like, "Oooh, I wouldn't want to come across him on a dark night!" This year the drill is the same: post a pic of your hard cat looking hard on the Facebook event page (preferable), or, if you're not on Facebook, send it to underthepaw@tom-cox.com*.

For 2011's toughest cats, there are better prizes than ever before. The winner will not only receive a £100 HAMPER of the addictive Applaws cat food, but a signed copy of Talk To The Tail, including within it an EXCLUSIVE illustration by the brilliant Jackie Morris of Kiffer, her sadly departed hard cat (see below). I met Kiffer in 2009, when I went cat-walking at Jackie's place in Pembrokeshire, formed an instant bond with him, and, upon hearing he had passed away, dedicated Talk To The Tail to him. You can read Jackie's wonderful blog here, and find plenty of pictures celebrating his life. Second and third place tough cats will each both also received a signed copy of Talk To The Tail. Entries close on March 31st, so don't waste any time in forcing your cats down to their local weight room, or perhaps just making them really irritated by withholding their favourite snacks for twenty minutes or so...


* NB: This email isn't in permanent use: I only open it up for comps such as this.

Giant Foxes

There is some stuff in the news today about giant foxes. It has got lots of people thinking, and talking. It has got me thinking, too. What it has specifically got me thinking is that I would very much like a giant fox, called "Ken".

(Check out more of Jackie Morris' artwork here.)

My Favourite Cat Photo Of This Week - By About 77770000 Miles

My friend Jackie Morris - with whom I went feline-walking earlier this year - always takes the best cat photos in the world, but I think she might have surpassed herself with this one of her ginger clan...

Cat Walking With Jackie Morris

A piece I wrote for today's Financial Times Weekend Magazine.

For more info on Jackie, Kiffer, Elmo, Maurice, Martha, Pixie and Max, visit her excellent We Three Cats blog.




Photographs by David Barnes.

Walking With The Gingers

Earlier this week, I was in St Davids, on the Welsh coast, with the artist Jackie Morris, who writes We Three Cats, which is paws down the most visually stunning mogblog on the Interwebs. Jackie doesn't actually have three cats; she has six, like me, and early on Wednesday morning, the more intrepid individuals amongst them, Jackie, a very nice photographer from the FT called David Barnes, Jackie's three dogs and I strolled up the hill from her brilliantly ramshackle storybook artist's cottage, passing standing stones and curious cows, to the huge lichen-covered rocks overlooking the sea. I won't say too much about it here, as Jackie has already posted about our day, and I'll be writing about it in more detail in my capacity as occasional walking correspondent for the FT, but it was an experience every bit as magical as I'd hoped, and a lesson in the often misunderstood sociability of cats. I wouldn't like to pick a favourite of Jackie's cats, as they each have their own strong, winning personalities, but I did particularly enjoy meeting Kiffer, her most recent rescue, who likes to kiss cows, play exaggerated games of hide and seek with humans, and - owing to a kittenhood ear infection - walks and stalks with his head tilted to one side.