Greater Hartford Fat Cat Fat-Off '08

One of the nice things about Twitter is the sense of community that it has created for me. A very small number of the people that I "follow" on Twitter are people that I know personally, in a real-time, three-dimensional (four-dimensional?) flesh-and-blood sort of way. Nonetheless, the majority of the people that I follow on Twitter are within a ten or twenty mile radius of me.

It was with this in mind that I eagerly volunteered to be the judge for the first annual "Greater Hartford Fat Cat Fat-Off." Seven different people have submitted pics of kittehs that are really "pushing maximum density." It's my pleasure to choose the fattest feline of them all, which is a task that was much harder than I anticipated. (It was so hard that I had to make a "cat-centric" playlist to ease the judging.)

Below are my six favorite pics (w/ comments) in no particular order, except that the conquering cat is pulling up the rear, so as to speak.

The first two pics are actually not eligible for the grand prize (because they were taken before the announcement of the competition, and one was submitted a wee bit after the deadline, methinks). Pity that, because these are some fat feckin' kittehs!

Napoleon, striking the classic "monorail-cat" pose, is overlarge. And his girth is no doubt increased be the flattening effect of gravity.

Gravity plays a part in this pic's success, too. Nonetheless, that is a flabbytabby, and the pic gets extra points for composition, but alas is disqualified by strict FCFO official rules.

Heddafeddah had a few cats in contention, but they were, um, largely underweight (though Luigi has some impressive neck fat goin' on). I was impressed by Butter, though. He seems proud of his paunch, even if he is busy concentrating on playing his invisible sitar.

Miles looks massive, but I wonder how massive he is under all that fur.

In that case, all hail the short-hair! Flawlesswalrus' cat is clearly one solid mass of kitteh, and gets extra points for sheer roundness of face. This cat is decidedly big-boned.

But it was this pic that tipped the scales. Dinky is anything but, and she has a certain sense of existential complexity that I found to be endearing (this cat reads Poe!). Iow, she is weighty in more ways than one. I declare her to be the fattest cat in all the land!

Congrats to all cats and their owners. You've really let yourselves go.

(Now I'm going to go pray to the Gods of literary restraint for all of the horrible puns I let loose in this post...)

Labels: fatcat, twitter