Inkblot: the original LOL Cat
I don’t know what it is about cats and the internet, but the relationship by this time is obvious. But before there were LOLCats and sleepy Youtube kittens and cheetah cub cams, there was Inkblot. The phenomenon of catblogging was invented by him (and his pet Kevin Drum.)
The New York Times first noticed him way back in 2004:
IN the vitriolic world of political Web logs, two polar extremes are Eschaton (atrios.blogspot.com), a liberal, often anti-Bush site with a passionate following, and Instapundit (www.instapundit.com), where an equally fervent readership goes for hearty praise of the Administration.
It would seem unlikely that the two blogs’ authors could see eye-to-eye about anything. Yet Eschaton’s Duncan Black (known as Atrios) and Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds have both taken part in a growing practice: turning over a blog on Friday to cat photographs.
“It brings people together,” said Kevin Drum, who began the cat spotlight last year on his own blog, Calpundit (www.calpundit.com). “Both Atrios and Instapundit have done Friday catblogging. It goes to show you can agree on at least a few things.”
Mr. Drum has moved on to write a blog for The Washington Monthly called Political Animal, which, despite its name, features no cats. But for him, watching bloggers step back from partisanship in favor of the warmth of cat pictures is a reminder of the March 2003 day when he discovered that his cats offered an antidote to stressful blogging.
“I’d just blogged a whole bunch of stuff about what was wrong with the world,” Mr. Drum said. “And I turned around and I looked out the window, and there was one of my cats, just plonked out, looking like nothing was wrong with the world at all.”
Grabbing his camera, Mr. Drum photographed his cat, Inkblot, and posted the picture (calpundit.com/archives/000597.html). He soon began doing it each Friday, attracting fans who just wanted to see the felines.
“I had a lot of people who were looking forward to it,” he said. “I started getting e-mails on Friday mornings where people were like, ‘Where’s catblogging? What’s going on?’ “
As often happens in the blogosphere, other people latched onto the idea and ran with it.
Sadly, Kevin shares the bad news:
I hate to write this post, but all of you have been part of Inkblot’s life for so long that I can hardly not do it. One of our neighbors saw the flyers we posted around the neighborhood and called a few minutes ago to tell us that she had seen the body of a cat nearby. We went out to look, and it was Inkblot. There wasn’t much question about the ID.
From the evidence, it looks like he got killed by a coyote. And he hadn’t wandered very far after all. The remains were only a couple hundred feet from our house.
This is sad, sad news. But I want to thank everyone who sent kind thoughts our way, either via comments or email. He will be remembered.
Indeed, he will be. RIP you gorgeous boy.
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