He hit 1.5 million followers some time ago, and I’ve been shaking my head in disbelief the whole time since, but Fatty finally got his act together and put together a movie about it. Best of all, it has me at my best, getting a few good headshots at the little meathead. Look at that dazed look he gives! I’ve still got it!
Naturally, you might have a few questions about the origin stories in the film. Yes, I really killed a badger – after my previous “owners” left me outside an animal shelter, I quickly high-tailed it out of there and took residence in a farm in Hudson, NY, where I was holed up in a few barns with a number of other cats. The badger made short work of at least one of us, but I was a little more difficult a quarry, and came out victorious. I still, naturally, found time to be a proper lady when the time came and that’s how I got free room and board for (I assume) life. Victory! Well, until Greypunk showed up. And let us not even speak of Cousin Oliver.
The fact is, it’s a hard life out there, and when people make the right decision to help, it really does us a good turn. So don’t expect it all the time, but thanks, from all of us.
I can’t believe it, but everyone bought all the Socks shirts. What you’re all doing with his ugly little face on your clothes is beyond me, but a good number of you wanted them.
Fatty, were he to have any input into this weblog, would probably thank the two people who brought the Sockington T-Shirt project together: Megan Hopkins, who designed both the Sockington shirt and my lovely twitter background, and Rich Stevens, who put together the logistics and shirt-making and the store.
There’s been some requests to do this in the future – it would probably be very limited edition runs with pre-ordering and a lot of headaches far beyond your average cat. So let’s just leave that aside for the moment.
Socks got into People Magazine last week. There used to be multiple copies around the house but Cousin Oliver sure loves to shred things. Luckily, I know how to run a scanner:
Nobody even spoke to me about posing! I’d have given them a diva look that would have sold thousands of extra copies. Instead, we have to have little Lord Flaunteroy there acting like he’s all class. The reason Fatty looks so messed up was from hours of getting Socks to pose in that position, resulting in quite the hairstyle. Enjoy fame, Fatty!
I’ll be awaiting my call from Cat Fancy for my cover shot. I’m waiting…
Some time ago, Socks pushed the idea of “A Chance for Bliss”, a very special pet sanctuary that focuses on special needs animals and pets, including seniors. Their pledge is to take care of the animals forever, as long as needed, short or long. This is dear to my heart, because while I’d never say I was getting on in years, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that I wouldn’t want some nice patch of grass back on a farm somewhere, to re-live the good old days (without the rain, though, thanks).
A new letter has come in, asking for votes for a contest, which, if they win, will give this place a nice financial boost.
Here’s the letter sent in by Woody:
Great to connect with you again.
We are in the running for a $50,000 grant from Pepsi and their “Refresh A Project”. In a nut shell, each month Pepsi invites organizations and individuals alike to submit project ideas. Pepsi then picks the ones they feel best represent their program ideals, and then its game on! At the end of that month the top ten vote getter’s in each category get the grant dollars ($5K, $25K, $50K, and $250K). We chose the $50K category since for us this would be a game changer in that it would cover feed and basic care for an entire year for all of the the 80 animals we now care for (population now consists of 23 horses, 20 dogs, 7 pot belly pigs, 6 goats, 5 sheep, 2 steers, 5 geese, 4 chickens, 4 rabbits, 3 cats, and our newest resident, Noble, a 7 year old cockatiel.). You may recall that criteria for residency at the sanctuary is simple; an animal is deemed a senior, has some some sort of special needs, or has been diagnosed with a life ending condition. As such, once here, each resident remains until they pass away, regardless if that is a short or long period of time.
The link for the program is below. Voting is limited to one vote, person, per day, and only goes for the month of April. We are therefore concentrating our requests for supporters to simply vote each and every day of April.
I’m coming out of radio silence to alert the masses of a range of Sockington and Me-Related items happening. Expect updates across the coming days.
And in case there’s any question of who’s in charge, look who get the cushion, look who sort of gets the no-cushion chair, and check out who has to sneak around the underside of the chair, all to see a bird on “cat TV” i.e., the window:
Since Socks “made it big”, with “made it big” being a set of completely arbitrary opinions, people have asked how and when he’s going to get rich. Setting aside that for a cat, “making it big” means steady meals and an only tacit awareness of rain, the fact remains that there’s some expectation out there that there would be some amount of products, endorsements and celebrity appearances by Socks. That’s all fine and good, but we’re talking about a cat that barely remembers when he walked into the room, and mostly follows me towards the food dishes as his reminder it’s dinner. Obviously, he would need help in any such endeavor, and so it falls to me.
But I’m not right off the turnip truck, ladies and gentlemen. Even I know the advantages of asking ahead of time what any potential audience would want to see.
The Sockington T-Shirts have done pretty well (feel free to pick one up anytime) and it’s been nice to see people wearing them around (obviously a Pennycat t-shirt should be next).
But what will you think of the idea of a Sockington book? A little coffee table number perfect for sitting on or nuzzling off the coffee table with your nose, or maybe (if you’re a person) to read?
I’ve spent a little time on a possible mockup of a cover:
So here’s the deal, wonderful audience: what are your thoughts on this? After all, I have to see the grey fellow every single day of my life, along with his new sidekick. It’s not like we’re talking about anything new to me. But there’s been some clamor and call for a book of photographs, essays, and various bits of wisdom related to myself and Socks (and cousin Oliver), and so let’s see what you really think.
Enclosed, below, is a survey with five basic questions about what you’d be looking for. It will help immeasurably in getting an idea of an interest in such a project, and help gear the final “product”, if the project moves forward. This will help immeasurably, and I thank you ahead of time for your effort in helping.
UPDATE: With 850 responses in less than a day, I have plenty to chew over. I’ll give a report shortly. Thanks, everyone, you know how to step up and help.
As you might have discerned from the movie, a new plot twist has taken place in my humble abode. Humans, I tell you, will never be something I understand. You have one perfectly great cat (myself), who provides all the entertainment, companionship and touch of class you could possibly want, and what do they do? Go off and acquire some himbo better at knocking things over and getting lost than performing even a percentage of the duties I do. And then, after a few years of this tsunami of incompetency, do they make the right choice and sell him to the highest bidder? No, no they do not.
Instead, they acquire some version 2.0 of him. An almost exact copy, down to the propensity to get confused and stare dumbly at you awaiting further instructions. Another Socks. A “sockelganger“, as fatty likes to call him.
Boy, you can just feel the scientific theorems bubbling inside that little skull, can’t you?
Socks, of course, is a complete dupe – never mind he was “fixed” some years ago and doesn’t exactly cruise the alleyways, if you get what I mean – he’s convinced that this kid very well might be his long-lost son! And the kid’s bought into it! It’d be almost sweet if it didn’t translate to day-in day-out misery for yours truly.
Do you know what a refined lady like myself enjoys? Not this. Not two morons tackling each other for fun, randomly, and with no provocation. Check out these shots from the hourly ‘World Wide Wrestling” show:
OK, my heart’s not made of stone – there’s a quiet charm of the last photo. But not the hundredth time the house has to echo with their insanity! I can barely find a combination of distant rooms and pillows to hide behind to avoid it. Madness!
His “official” name is “Tweetie” or “Tweets”, but I just call him “Cousin Oliver” – a perhaps too pop-cultural reference for my classy audience. I am pointing to the character “Cousin Oliver” on the old “Brady Bunch” television show – a late-era edition to the show to bring in needed “cuteness” when the main characters had grown perhaps a tad old to come off as anything but teenage actors. The ploy, I might add, did not work, although that hasn’t stopped any of a number of television shows from trying same in the decades hence.
So here we are, saddled with this little bundle of “joy”, who Socks has fallen in love with (partially because of aforementioned and misguided paternal duty) and me… well, I reach to all of you, please, for a communication line that does not prominently feature grunts and the sound of “say uncle”.
Yes, that’s right, he’s done it. Socks, née Sockington, a tiny grey cat found by a random stranger, is now the most popular non-human on Twitter, and leads an “army” of who-knows-who numbering over one million. Thousands join every day, and he has now appeared on TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, podcast, and maybe some sort of smoke signal. It was all distressing for me until I embraced the idea. Why? Because he needs a manager. And what else does a manager do but make sure their ward/”talent” doesn’t get his head stuck in a food bowl or fall off a counter because he thinks the sink “attacked” him, while taking anywhere up to 50% of the profit? I mean, this is a gig that was crafted for me; the amount of delicious seafood flown in from the fish farms that’ll end up on my plate.. but I’m getting ahead of myself.
To “celebrate” this great achievement, there’s a new Sockington One Million movie out. I won’t ruin the surprise within except to say that a song was made especially for this film. Can you believe that? Socks has his own troubador, some nerdy fellow named MC Frontalot.
Here we go. The climbing throngs of followers have continued unabated throughout this glorious summer, and it is obvious the little grey stump is going to have an army of over one million followers, when I am languishing at around seven thousand. But this entry isn’t about injustice, my friends. It’s about this clamoring horde. And what a horde it is! Always wanting his autograph, asking him to jump onto the latest bandwagons, joining his facebook page… and everyone keeps sending in t-shirt photos, which are very cute and all but sometimes feature other cats. Other cats!
So with this onset of one million followers comes the inevitable press, checking up on Socks and myself and only half-getting the stories because they have a deadline and less than fifteen minutes to tell his life story, and worst of all, they hardly mention me!
So let’s quickly go over the basics, so you all know what’s going on.
Sockington. Grey cat. Called Socks because of his white feet and that’s what his brain is full of. Runs around a lot. Watches Cat TV out the window. Loves Salmon and playing with Baron Von Shakymouse, a constantly rotating cast of toy mice that he thinks are all the same one, even though he eats half of them. Sleeps a lot. Bothers me. Drops literary references he overhead once, usually getting them wrong. Yowls. Spends more time in the litterbox than anyone I’ve ever met. Hogs the good pillows. Dumb. He was a stray found outside a subway stop when he was a few months old, and came here to live with some overly-nice people and myself. Awesome punching bag.
Pennycat. Yours truly. Raised on a farm, met all sorts of nice mentor cats and animals. Refined. Copper-colored, a sultry-eyed beauty keen to discuss contemporary subjects but privately harboring a taste of the old life, when cats were worshipped and short-attention-span theater of the web would never have been tolerated. Loves long walks in the kitchen and appreciates the staff for their sometimes-bumbling attempts to feed me and treat me in the manner to which I am accustomed. Brilliant. Self-assured. Humble.
Fatty. Plodding, obsessive technogeek who ruined any potential of the online world by introducing Socks to twitter. (I followed of my own volition.) Computer historian by trade, has made the occasional documentary. Totally unaware of how much Socks gets away with. Finds him adorable (another sign of mental illness). In a pinch, can be persuaded for treats and extra mealtimes. Good pants.
Food Lady. The creme de la creme of the staff. Provides regular meals, expertly prepared. Five-star lap. Prone to reading a lot, but can fit me in there under the book and give me space to follow along. Beautiful.
During the last round of media madness, a lot of inaccurate information was forwarded around. For example, very few sites included my picture. Again, I provide a quality headshot:
So please, press and members of the blogosphere, please contact us here at sockington.org for the true information! As the most informative member of this cat-based endeavor, I will make every effort to give you the most accurate knowledge. Also, be sure to get my good side in the shots.
Hello, everyone. Penny back in the driver’s seat. Fatty can type faster than I can but wow, he sweats like a bottle of chilled Chablis in the noonday sun. Dignity please.
The announcement of Socks’ disappearance and later recovery earned the views of tens of thousands of people, a couple news outlets contacting the house, and hundreds of comments and letters wishing well in finding him again. Naturally some people thought this was a cynical public relations stunt, but excuse me; do you not think I’d have had t-shirts ready to go before this fiasco/misunderstanding occurred, so I’d finally get my dream of an automatic litterbox? This was an honest losing of the dope, and it took several days to really get back into the swing of being himself.
So out of the well-wishing, a handful of folks who were in the professional capacity of animal rescue wrote in with what I thought were excellent overviews of finding a missing cat both in your house and in the surrounding neighborhood, and so as a reference material, I’m putting them here. Who knows, maybe I’ll get lost someday, and it’d be nice to know people were using the very best techniques to find me.
Socks Army Member Becky wrote in with this set of suggestions:
Saw your tweet – a cat owner’s worst nghtmare! A couple suggestions:
did you pull out couch cushions & thoroughly look through there?
do you have a recliner? Open it up & inspect thoroughly
do you buy clumping kitty litter in those large plastic tubs? I was recently sent an email from a rescueperson whose cat fell in, the other cat jumped on top, closing the lid and the cat inside suffocated. Totally freak accident but worth sharing to help others avoid it.
did you check the dryer?
do you have a basement – check drop ceiling, walls, anywhere you can fit you hand is a possible hiding spot
does he have access to your garage? Check under hood of car, etc
open cans of tuna, sardines – something smelly – to lure him out in case he’s scared, hurt, sick (cats are notorious for hiding & suffering in silence)
have you checked all doors & windows for small openings or tears in the screens? Maybe he got out on his own (not abducted). If he did, I’ve heard that a good trick to help him find his way home is to sprinkle used (not new) litter from his box around your yard – he’ll recognize his own scent.
There are tons of lost/found pet sites online (petfinder is a good place to start, not to mention the classifieds of your local paper, as well as Craig’s List). Post lost ads on these sites and check found ads. Post flyers ALL OVER your neighborhood (he could be just a couple blocks away being cared for by a well-meaning neighbor!). Check with animal control, contact local rescue groups and visit every vet’s office and pet store within 15 miles… The most important thing is to start right away. The sooner you do the more likely you’ll find him!!
Susanna of MARK-9 Search and Rescue in Dallas suggested the use of a dog in finding a cat (or child):
I saw your tweet this morning and read your post on the website, and though I have no information about anyone possibly involved, I do recommend quickly getting the help of a handler with a search canine specifically trained to find pets. I partner a search-and-rescue dog (we find missing people) and know there are dogs on the East Coast that are pet-specific search canines. Because they work best when scent is very fresh, sooner is always better. If Socks is somehow in the house, jammed in some impossible place, they can help. If he slipped out the door because someone opened it and he is in the area, a search canine can trail him — again if the scent is fresh. Would Socks have run from a stranger in the house, or is he extremely social? Where does he normally choose to sleep overnight? Does he try to bolt for the open door, if opportunity presents itself? Is there a chance he might be in a neighbor’s garage (relevant to the car backing out that you mentioned). These are the kinds of things a search handler would ask, attempting to establish the place last seen and any escape attempts or previous directions of travel, if Socks went out on his own during a break-in attempt.
Boy, I’d have loved to have seen Socks’ face when the dog found him. But excellent advice.
Many other pieces of advice were posted in the comments of the “Socks is Missing” announcement, some of which include:
“check your basement, one of our two indoor cats used to go missing for hours at a time and just this year we discovered a large hole in the wall behind the oil tank where even a large cat could fit…we’ve stuffed two 2-liter soda bottles full of water in the hole so nothing more can get out or in.”
“This happened to me with my cat once, it was like 4 hours and we were making posters and you couldnt hear her whatsoever. Turned out she was napping in a rainjacket pocket, a jacket hanging in the hall entrance closet. So check your jacket pockets, I know it’s weird that a cat would fit in there/choose to nap there but it happened to me.”
“Please check every cupboard and closet – particularly ones with doors that could easily close again if pulled open. It may be a long shot, but am fervently hoping he has fallen asleep somewhere odd rather than something sinister; cats do love a nice cosy cupboard to hide away in for a nap, & I had a cat that could open my closet doors. Hope he turns up soon, my thoughts are with you.”
“Have you checked your ductwork? We were babysitting a friend’s cat once and she managed to pry open the corner of one of our air return vents and got into our duct work. It took us one full day to realize what happened. Then when we realized where she was, we left food and water near the opening. She eventually came out, we grabbed her and blocked all the vents after that.”
“We had a cat disappear for a few days and could hear his meows. We searched the whole house and even went up on the roof to look. Then by sheer luck while on the roof, he meowed and we turned toward the sound. He was at a window at the church next door (all windows were up high and not visible from below). He must have gone in on Sunday during church and fell asleep and found he couldn’t get back out. He was sure hungry when we got him back home. I even heard of someone buying a couch at a yard sale and a kitty was found in it when they got it home. Cats can accidentally get themselves into something they can’t get out of.”
“I once found my cat INSIDE the box spring. He had clawed the “fabric” on the bottom open and crawled inside.”
“My 12-wk old kitten disappeared for 3 days. Later discovered she’d perched on a neighbor’s spare tire under the car. Had been riding around under that car for 3 days. Miraculously, she didn’t jump off in traffic…just clung to that tire. The car wash did her in. When she jumped out the neighbor recognized her from my fliers, caught her and brought her home. I still can’t believe she didn’t jump off on the other side of town. My little miracle.”
“Neighbors called me at work once because my fire alarm was going off. Arrived home to find firefighters already inside – no fire, but doors standing wide open. One cat, Moxie, was making friend w/them but Indy was NOWHERE to be found. I was terrified, bordering on hysteria, and like you, finally resorted to looking in places he couldn’t possibly fit, which is where I found him: Under the dresser which had only about a 3″ clearance from the floor, and he weighed 13 pounds. The alarm scared him so badly he got himself under there. So I know the fear and the relief and joy of finding him alright, just shaken up.”
“I once had a cat disappear in my room for two days after failing a jump from the back of my chair to a tall shelf (she did this while alone – normally she’d jump from the chair while i was in it, giving it weight, when she jumped while I was gone, the chair moved, she missed, fell straight down on her ass and injured her rear leg) it was pretty scary, eventually found her under the bed. She did have a habit of staying out for a day or two at a time, so I wasn’t too worried at first, then I heard pathetic mewling from under my bed finally, found her curled up inside a synth case.”
Something like this happened with my baby, who is now laying on my legs, using them for her personal bed. When it was the 4th of July, every neighbor on the block was popping fireworks. This scared her out of her mind. We couldn’t find her. Didn’t know where she went. Looked everywhere. Hours later, we found her. She was under a chair, but she had literally climbed up into the mechanism of the chair (it was a recliner). She was scared to death. For hours after, she walked hunched to the ground and nary made a peep. She’s perfect now. As curious and crazy as ever. Socks will get better. Once he realizes he’s safe once again and that everyone loves him.”
So there you have it. Words and wisdom from the Socks Army. If you ever misplace a cat, or hear of someone who does, send them this way and maybe they’ll get some good ideas, and the cats who aren’t lucky enough to have an army behind them will be found.
Socks and Penny receive excellent medical care at the Weston Veterinary Clinic in Weston, MA, under the care of Dr. Neil Storey and the rest of the top-notch staff.
