We’ve had several cats come in and out of this house and the apartment we lived in previously; ten cats, to be exact. Some were with us for as little as two weeks, some as many as the full five years that we have called Maryland home.

We have been able to identify the breed of each and every one of these cats immediately by looking at them; calicos, tortoise shells, tabbies, etc., which are all domestic short hair breeds. However, we could never identify one of them: Sara. Her breed has always eluded us. When asked what kind of cat she is, we’d either say, “I think she’s some type of domestic medium hair” or “whatever the hell Sara is.”

Until recently, that is.

I contend that the internet knows everything. You just need to ask it a question via Google, Yahoo, or some other good search engine. I prefer the former, but the latter can turn up some good stuff too.

A former employeer of Nad referred to Sara as a “van cat”, a term I never heard before. I typed that into Google and was surprised to find sites that featured cats just like my Sara.

The Cat Fanciers Association’s site is the first that came up. Their description of the turkish van breed matches Sara almost exactly:

The coloration of the Turkish Van, which is considered by many to be the original breed to carry the piebald gene, calls for a white, semi-longhaired cat with colored markings restricted primarily to the head and tail.

Now that I’m writing this update, I can’t seem to find the site which stated “turkish vans have what is called The Mark of Allah, which is a single dark spot that disrupts their white fur.” Sara’s got one of those, on her rear right leg.

There are a couple of things about her that suggest that she is not a purebreed. For one, her “helmet” and tail are colored grey, not cream or auburn. Her eyes are yellow, not the amber or blue described in the breed standard. Also, her hair is a bit shorter than the other turkish vans pictured, especially the hair on her tail. Lastly, Sara doesn’t swim.

I’m happy that we have finally identified her breed, as it is something that I’ve always wanted to know.

I just finished uploading 119 pictures of our platoon of cats and the remaing 113 of our wedding album.

That brings our online gallery to 1,219 pictures. While I knew that we have a lot of digital pictures, I was still surprised to see such a large number. Amazingly, that is a small fraction of the many pics that have not found their way to this site yet. They are all sitting on Nad’s hard drive, just waiting to be uploaded.

Some of you (perhaps 2 of our 3 visitors) may have noticed that the images on this site are considerably smaller than the old site. To be exact, the old site’s pics had a resolution of 640×480 pixels (width x height), while this site’s images have a resolution of 400×383 pixels. This smaller size saves us a lot of space on our webhost’s server, which also allows us to have many more images in the gallery. Expect to see pics of our cars, more of the cats, Nad’s garden, and her cards in the gallery in the coming weeks.

Some of the images are coming up as all black. I don’t know what the problem is with those images at the moment. It seems that the upload script that I use to add the images to the gallery is a bit picky. Those images will have to be updated manually, which I’ll get around to eventually.

I set out to do as little as possible this weekend, and Nad was on the same page. I think we got close to meeting that goal.

Friday night we watched Madagascar. It was a funny movie, but had a lot more slapstick-style humor than I expected. I suppose I was expecting the animal version of Shrek. Still, I enjoyed the movie. Especially the penguins.

I should quickly mention that Nad and I watched The Longest Yard last weekend. It was much better than I expected it to be. Check out Kevin’s review of the movie.

Other than the trip to the movies, we generally stayed at home. I played several games over the weekend, but the bulk of my attention was focused on Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (Xbox) and Paper Mario (N64). San Andreas fixes a lot of the controller issues I had with Vice City, namely the use of the right analog stick. VC uses the right analog to go into first person, while SA uses it to pan the camera around the main character (CJ). This improvement also makes drive-bys damn near impossible for me - now the Black and White buttons are used to look left and right while driving. I can’t right Black (or White) and B (to fire) at the same time. The buttons are right next to each other, but I still can’t do it.

Nad has a bit of a beef with the game. After watching me play for about an hour, she was unhappy with the negative stereotypes that the game reinforces. She specifically cited the language used (I think it is a lot dirtier and more racial than VC), but I believe there are several other aspects of the game that bother her. I’ll let her go into more detail about it, if she chooses to discuss it.

At least she enjoys watching a biker get hit by a car and get launched into the distance!

The other game I played, Paper Mario, really couldn’t be more “anti-GTA”. No realstic violence, no cussing, no voice-acting, but just as much fun, if not more. I’ve been working on the original because I want to get the sequel, but I’ve decided to finish the first before doing so. I did the same thing before getting Burnout 3 and KOTOR II.