It's the first Friday of October, which means once again, it's Catmas!

Back in 2003, Ross and I declared that the first Friday of every October should be a day when people indulge in that most "bloggy" of activities, posting a picture of a cat on your blog. Last October, we gave Catmas its own site here at Catmas.com, a domain name as an example name in Tucows documentation.

Have a great Catmas, everyone, and if you've got a blog and some cat photos handy, you know what to do...

Today, I've got two versions of the same kitty pic for you.

One with a caption, ready for you to forward to all your friends...

...and for those of you who are feeling creative, one without the caption, ready for you to take into Photoshop and add your own:

Whenever I'm feeling annoyed -- usually when I can't figure out why the program I'm writing isn't working -- I set the desktop background on my Windows desktop computer to the image below. With a couple of clicks, you can have it on your own desktop for your own primal scream therapy.

Click the picture to see it at full size.
Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

This animation of a "David versus Goliath" confrontation between a black cat and a black bear made my wife laugh. Click the photo below to see the animation:

I think the cat's trying to tell us something...

This one's from the webcomic xkcd:

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

This remix of a Garfield made me laugh for reasons I can't yet explain:

Click the picture to see it at full size.

Cats like sleeping in warm places, and an often-used computer monitor is a warm place...

If you've got a cat like this, I've got a desktop wallpaper for you! I've created a desktop wallpaper that's a close approximation of the desktop wallpaper in the photo above. Click here to view it, after which you can right-click on the wallpaper and select "Save as desktop image".

Click to see the picture at full size.

This one's for you synthpop fans!

Click the picture to see it at full size.

Here's a bonus for you: a cute little synthpop tune by the Washington, D.C. synthpop band Barcelona called I Have the Password to Your Shell Account [4.52 MB MP3 file]. Load it on your iPod and enjoy!

(Be sure to check out Barcelona's other fun tunes on their MySpace page.)

If you're tired of your current desktop background and you like cats, you'll love this:

Click the image to see the desktop background at full size.

This is a big desktop image -- it's 1600 pixels wide and 1200 pixels high, which should be good enough for all but the most giant of monitors.

If you're not familiar with changing your desktop background, here's an easy set of instructions:

1. Click on the image above. It'll take you to the full-size version.
2. Right-click on the full-size image (if you're on a Mac with only one mouse button, hold down the ctrl key while clicking on the image. A little menu will pop up. Click on the menu item that says Set as Background, Set as Desktop Background or Save Image to the Desktop.

Remember Monorail Cat from last month? It's animated now...

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Here's a poster that does a good job of summarizing the right and wrong ways to pet a cat. Click the image below to see it at full size:

It's been a while since we've posted a cat picture, but we're back!

I have to admit that my sense of humour sometimes leans towards the dark side...

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

We'd like thank thank all of you who joined us in the Catmas celebrations, whether it was by posting pictures of cats to your blogs, or just visiting this site and taking a look at the cute, funny or disturbing cat pictures here. We hope you had as much fun as we did!

Although Catmas 2007 is a year away, that doesn't mean that this site will lie fallow. From time to time -- say, about once a week -- whenever we run into a cat picture that catches our fancy, we'll post it here. If you've got a cat picture that you think belongs here, you'll be able to send it to us -- simply email it to catmas@catmas.com and we'll put it up for the world to see.

In the spirit of moving onward from Catmas 2006, we present the photo below, titled Adventure Kitten Sets Off. You can click it to see it at full size.

Click on the photo to see it at full size. Photo courtesy of gruverja and Miss Fipi Lele.

We'd like to thank the local city blog Torontoist for pointing to us and joining us in the Catmas celebration! They've also done something nice: they're also pointing their readers at Toronto Cat Rescue, an rescue and adoption agency for unwanted or abandoned cats. Here's the featured cat of the month, a cute kitten named "Ollie":

Here's a video of a cat circus -- I have no idea where it is, but judging by the music style, I'd say Central or Eastern Europe.

I'm told that this is a "don't miss" show if you're ever passing through Finland:

Today is the first Friday of October, which since 2003 has been "Post a Picture of a Cat to Your Blog" day, or "Catmas" for short. Here's a quick list of Catmas participants thus far:

• Velveteen Rabbi
• SarahLaughed.net
• My Name is Kate
  
• Norasee
• All the World's a Lie
• The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind
• NiNjASLICE
• Popagandhi
• The Older I Get, the More I Wonder
• Urban Principessa
• Aurora Walking Vacation
• Hourly Update Humor
• Neatorama
• Kuratkull
• Bellalicious
• All the Good Titles Were Taken
• Jon Watson's Tales from the Motherboard
• foaf
  

This is the cat from the image in the previous entry...

Click the photo to see it at full size.

The little alien creatures are from the Nintendo game Pikmin.

Here's another victim of the day gravity reversed itself:

Hallowe'en less than a month away, and there's no reason your cat can't join in the fun...

Okay, how about some non-disturbing kitty photos for a change? Let's start with Mr. Jingles. You can click on his picture to see it at full size.

Click the photo to see it at full size.

Here's a classic from Catmas 2003: a Flash animation of evil eye cats, complete with creepy soundtrack. Click the image below to experience the full-on cat horror:

A strange 'net-speak construct is the expression of the form "IM IN UR x, yING UR z". One example is "IM IN UR BASE, KILLING UR DOODZ". It's usually written in capital letters and the words are usually written in the mispelled manner of instant-message shorthand.

Combine this popular internet sentence construct with the popular internet photo topic of cats, and you've got the hot meme for the coming year!

Here's an animation showing the meme in action. It's about 1.2 megs in size, so you might have to wait a tiny bit. Click the photo below to see it in its full glory:

Today is the first Friday of October, which means that Catmas has finally come! We'll start the celebrations with mesmerizing animated graphics, starting with "Radon", the kitty pictured to the right. To see Radon in his full seizure-inducing flashing animated glory, click his picture or click here.

An unreleased scene from the movie Commando:

Rae Dawn Chong: Where's the cat?

Arnie: I let him go.

We've seen cat vs. bear, now how about cat vs. Domo-kun?

(For those of you who aren't up on your Japanese pop culture, Domo-kun is the mascot of the Japanese television station NHK. Here's the Wikipedia entry on Domo-kun; here's what the Domo-kun FAQ has to say.)

Stop him before he uses up all your minutes!

Kittenwar! is an "Am I Hot or Not?"-style site for kittens. When you visit the site, you're shown two randomly-selected pictures of kittens. You vote for the cuter one by clicking on its picture, and the kitten rankings are based on your votes. Knowing how cat people are, I'm sure the competition gets pretty fierce.

Malgosia emailed me to say that she has a kitten on the site, and he needs your votes! Won't you help her (and her kitten) out?

Click the photo to see it at full size.

You'd think that a cat vs. bear confrontation would end up with the bear winning, but that's not always the case.

Working on the internet, you quickly learn that there's a site for just about every topic. Case in point: Cats in Sinks, a site that features pictures of...well, guess.

Although this photo doesn't feature a cat, it has something to do with cats:

I wish I knew what this was all about.

Click the photo to see the video [1.8 MB MPEG]

Click the photo to see it at full size.

I know a number of cats who enjoy taking a nap in the tub, but only when it's empty:

Click the photo to see it at full size.

Let's get the cat pictures started, shall we? First one: DJ Kitty!

Back around the fall of 2003, Ross and I wanted to come up with a little event to commemorate the launch of Blogware, the software with which our blogs (and this blog) are built. It didn't take long for us to settle on "Post a Picture of a Cat to Your Blog Day", an unwieldy title that refers to the cliche that bloggers always post pictures of their cat on their blogs. The day took place on Friday, October 3rd, 2003 and enough blogs participated for us to call it a success. From that day forth, we declared that the first Friday in October would be the official day on which you should partake in that most bloggy of blog activities: posting a picture of a cat on your blog.

The following year, we gave the day a pithier name: BlogACatMas, and more people participated. By 2005, BlogACatMas had caught the attention of the Canadian national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, which made mention of our holiday in an article titled The Truth About Cats and Blogs.

This year marks the fourth instance of our special holiday, whose name we've shortened to Catmas (although "BlogACatMas" is still an acceptable usage) and registered as its own domain, Catmas.com, the home of this blog, whose purpose is to keep the Catmas spirit alive all year 'round.

Catmas 2006 will take place this Friday, October 6th. We encourage you to post pictures of cats -- they don't have to be your cats, any ol' cat will do -- to your blog and tell us about it in the comments of this blog! Just remember: the funnier or cuter the picture of the cat, the better.