Caturday felid trifecta: Japanese felt cat artist; Washington D.C. counts its cats; Achilles, the Official World Cup Oracle

The Japanese artist “Wacuneco” (Facebook page here) makes incredibly realistic models of cat heads out of felt. Here are some of her productions shown at designboom, and a video below shows how she does it:

The designs, which are incredibly tedious to make, produce cats that are stunningly real. They’re based on real cats, and you can order one that looks like your cat, though I’m sure it’s really expensive. But it’s a better way to memorialize your cat than having it stuffed!

How it’s done (there are several videos on the page):

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National Public Radio reports that Washington, D.C. is engaged in an expensive project to census all its cats, both homed and feral. Read the article (click on screenshot) to see why they’re doing it:

Some of the techniques from the article:

According to the site, the project will use a number of strategies to arrive at a total population count:

• “Camera trapping” — a camera triggered by an animal’s presence, not an actual trap — to estimate the outdoor cat population

• Household surveys to estimate the owned cat population

• An analysis of the number of cats at shelters

• A physical count of outdoor cats in sample locations, to compare with the camera trapping data

• A statistical model to explore “the interactions between cat population segments”

• The development of a set of tools to help other groups do similar counts

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Well, the World Cup is over, and for four years France will hold the title. It’s time to compare the outcome with that predicted by Achilles, a deaf cat. As I reported in 2011, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg has a clowder of resident cats to keep the mice down, and Achilles is one of these. He was appointed the “official FIFA World Cup results oracle”.

Achilles is a white cat with blue eyes, and such cats are often deaf. Here’s his photo from the Moscow Times:

 

Achilles is popular with the locals, and is sort of an ambassador for the Hermitage. Here’s the big news conference at which Achilles was introduced to the press:

Achilles’s prediction? I can’t find it for the winner, but here he is predicting a Russian victory in the opener of the FIFA Confederations Cup last year. This method looks like Putin could have had it rigged by putting stuff in the cat food. After all, if he can intervene in the American elections, it’s a piece of cake to intervene in soccer predictions.

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Lagniappe from reader Mark:

Came home and went into my office,  I found Lucifer watching kitty porn on the computer.  Bad Lucifer!

h/t: Michael, Rike, David, Su