Halfcat
May 7, 2013 8:00 AM   Subscribe

Halfcat. The magic of Google Street view is that it has shown us a new animal. A good animal. Thank you, science magic. Bonus: Top Ten Google Street View animals.
posted by Greg Nog (62 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble



 
Looks like we have a containment breach - where is SCP-529 at?
posted by Old'n'Busted at 8:02 AM on May 7, 2013 [14 favorites]


I have already started writing my sci-fi fantasy epic The Thrilling Saga of The Half-Cat Riders, so all y'all back off.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:03 AM on May 7, 2013 [5 favorites]


What hath science wrought?
posted by codacorolla at 8:06 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]




Also, if you like this, then you might also like Jon Rafman's ongoing gallery at 9eyes (previously).
posted by codacorolla at 8:08 AM on May 7, 2013 [13 favorites]


Did this occur to anyone else?

Actually, it made me think of this.
posted by Kabanos at 8:11 AM on May 7, 2013 [7 favorites]


Does this image really originate at Google Street View? I can swear I saw it making the rounds over a year ago in some other context. Also if this is from Google Street View, why is it in black and white?
posted by Nelson at 8:11 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Yeah, here's a version from 3 and a half years ago. TinEye has a bunch of others, too.
posted by Nelson at 8:13 AM on May 7, 2013


It reminds me a little of the weird bipedal monsters that you could ride on from Golden Axe, but with the bird/dinosaur slider turned down and the feline slider turned up.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:15 AM on May 7, 2013 [2 favorites]


It's not in black and white, it's just a white cat on a predominantly gray background. There's green visible in background above.
posted by elizardbits at 8:16 AM on May 7, 2013


Having also searched Tineye, while it's made the rounds none of the results reveal an origin opposed to what we've got here; they're just all funny image aggregators. It could be a photoshop, I suppose; but I've seen weird results with photostitching software so I'd give it at least a plausible sticker.
posted by solarion at 8:17 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


My apologies; elizardbits is right, it's not a black and white image. My money is still on deliberate Photoshop and not accidental new æsthetic street view error. That TinEye search says the biggest image is from motivatedphotos.com, and biggest is often earliest. Unfortunately Cheezburger bought the site and changed all the URLs around, so the URL TinEye has no longer works. And Wayback is giving me fits.

Sorry to be so pedantic! It's a funny image, makes me uncomfortable, I like it. I just like tracing things like this back to their origins.
posted by Nelson at 8:24 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm glad you all think it's cute. But even as a typical cat snuggler, I find it a bit terrifying.

Probably because I'm just imagining how pissed my cat would be if I halved it.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:25 AM on May 7, 2013


It has no ears, so that makes me think photoshop. But google street view can do some surprisingly strange things.
posted by Kabanos at 8:28 AM on May 7, 2013


I'm sure I've seen something very much like it on a Hieronymus Bosch, but damned if I can find it (and damned if my eyes will let me).

As for it coming from Google Street View, well... perhaps. But without a link, who can tell?

It's not so much the form as the sheer willpower visible in this creature's eyes which unsettles. It is at the least a bizarre mutant, but more likely demonstrates that cats - while apparently part of the evolutionary continuum of Earth - are no such thing.

I'm putting it in my big file of evidence that cats are in fact just the current form of aliens deliberately marooned on our planet a few hundreds of thousands of years ago for nameless crimes. The form was chosen by their judges to prevent them rebuilding technology good enough to get back off-planet, and since then they have been using their Alien Mind Control powers , like wasp larvae in cockroaches, to guide humanity to their will. Which is why, inter alia, we tolerate their genocide towards the birds (true nature also unknown), and appear to be constructing a vast network of highly capable machines , global in reach and exponentially increasing in capability, which are clearly cat-oriented.

Is it mere coincidence that a dog was the first creature to be sacrificed in search of space flight?

Remember what happened in Egypt. That's all I'm saying.
posted by Devonian at 8:30 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


See also: world's shortest train.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:32 AM on May 7, 2013 [6 favorites]


No-one else is the slightest bit terrified that Cyriak's nightmares are making appearances in the real world?
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:43 AM on May 7, 2013 [11 favorites]


If it truly is from Google Street View, it's right up there with the Giant Flying Pliers of Doom on the funny/disturbing scale.
posted by anthom at 8:56 AM on May 7, 2013 [5 favorites]


In case you were sincere Devonian: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Jheronimus_Bosch_023.jpg
posted by rahnefan at 8:57 AM on May 7, 2013


thanks for rescuing us from that internet-wide cat shortage earlier this week *phew*
posted by mokudekiru at 9:06 AM on May 7, 2013


Egads! It's longcat's nemesis!
posted by schmod at 9:06 AM on May 7, 2013 [13 favorites]


I blame Schrödinger.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:06 AM on May 7, 2013 [8 favorites]


I have a pair of lineman's pliers that look just like that. I have always suspected they were up to something.
posted by Mister_A at 9:10 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


They found Foot Foot!
posted by Sys Rq at 9:13 AM on May 7, 2013 [4 favorites]


Nelson, here ya go.

Took me several tries to get it to load
posted by zippy at 9:17 AM on May 7, 2013


What does the tail attach to? Thoracic vertebrae? THIS IS MONSTROUS!
posted by Mister_A at 9:28 AM on May 7, 2013


If it is Google Street View, why no link? I call shenanigans.
posted by LarryC at 9:36 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


This cat looks like it would have trouble leaping up onto the bed to walk on your sleeping face. I like it.
posted by orme at 9:38 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Nice work zippy, you seem to have found an archived copy of the page thumbnail. Do you have a link to the Wayback page that shows the URL history for the page? The Wayback Machine was insisting on doing the redirect to cheezburger, which seems odd for a historical web search service to do. Anyway that URL gives us a date of 2009-11-30, about the same time as the Russian site I linked above. The text reads "CAT-ST: This is kind of messed up". It's certainly plausible the mass origin of this particular image was a fake motivational poster funnypic site.

I'm doubly convinced this has nothing to do with Google Street view. Still curious where that idea came from. Twitter loves that story today. Here's the tweet from @streetviewfunny that seems to be the origin of the recent spread. Maybe that site author just decided it had something to do with street view and put it on his blog and promoted it successfully?
posted by Nelson at 9:39 AM on May 7, 2013


When I saw the thumbnail I thought it was something like Faith the two-legged dog, but on closer viewing it would seem that there simply isn't enough cat there to be viable.
posted by milovoo at 9:42 AM on May 7, 2013


mokudekiru: cat shortage

I see what you did there.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 10:00 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Nice work zippy, you seem to have found an archived copy of the page thumbnail. Do you have a link to the Wayback page that shows the URL history for the page?

Not handy, but I took the link you provided, removed the RSS argument, and fed it to the Archive (web.archive.org/*/...) to get the original page, which doesn't redirect but also doesn't show an image. That page under the "link to this" section has an image link, but I had to view the page source to get that because the archived page wouldn't let me view it.

I then fed that image link to the archive to get the thumbnail.
posted by zippy at 10:13 AM on May 7, 2013


But if it's from Google Street View then why am I so lonely?
posted by shakespeherian at 10:19 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Ok.

I was going to give my usual response to these stupid "look the accidental photographic artifact I found" things, in which I just type 'lame' then delete my mean comment without posting it and move on.

But the halfcat is a very important discovery, and definitely qualifies as the Best of the Web. :D
posted by General Tonic at 10:22 AM on May 7, 2013


Amazing discovery! The demifeline has been thought extinct since the days of Pliny!
posted by hoople at 10:23 AM on May 7, 2013


The new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game looks like a hoot and a half!
posted by Apocryphon at 10:24 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Could be a rolling shutter issue?
posted by Rock Steady at 10:27 AM on May 7, 2013


Gah! This dredges up a particularly vivid nightmare from childhood, from the night after a newly licensed uncle bragged about "going out to make halfcats" with his hoodlum friends in Grandma's old Caprice. Except in my dream it was just the back end.
posted by darksasami at 10:35 AM on May 7, 2013


OK, from the Top 10 link...is there a Google Scuba View? Because I am totally prepared to believe there is.

It's not in black and white, it's just a white cat on a predominantly gray background.

Oh right, now you're going to tell me this isn't Photoshop either.
posted by psoas at 10:52 AM on May 7, 2013


Thanks Zippy. Here's the Wayback result for the motivatedphotos.com version and here's the archived page. The photo was submitted by user Kodos who submitted several hundred images there. Tags were "photoshop two-legged cats lolcats moticats wtf star wars geeks".

But this image goes back before the motivational poster version on 2009-11-30. I dug through all the TinEye results and found versions from August 6 2009: TopCultured, FunTimesHad, Izzon me. Also an August 2009 date from the Russian Demotivators archive. The Russian text OCRs as Грибной сезон открыт, btw, which Google-translates to "Mushroom season is open".
posted by Nelson at 10:54 AM on May 7, 2013


Halfcat is one of the strangest photographs I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cat cut in half, or why.
posted by Clandestine Outlawry at 11:03 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


It's like a tiny living version of those light bots one used to play in Mech Warrior style games, the ones that could run uber fast, but didn't carry massive amounts of armor and armament.
posted by ZeusHumms at 11:28 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Where the halfcat lurks, the half-man can't be far behind...
posted by Apocryphon at 11:32 AM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


This actually reminds me of an animated GIF I saw on Imgur a few months back. It was (to the best of my recollection) a white background and consisted of a two-legged dog (in the same style of this cat) walking in a desert landscape.

I can't find it now for the life of me.
posted by Sarcasm at 11:34 AM on May 7, 2013


The Russian phrase at the bottom of some of them says "Mushroom season is starting."
posted by benito.strauss at 11:36 AM on May 7, 2013


That cat would make some seriously creepy noises, I bet.
posted by rmless at 12:30 PM on May 7, 2013




The original half-cat.

Did it come before or after Half A Cow?
posted by acb at 2:26 PM on May 7, 2013


But can a tabby be said to be
Or not to be an entire tabby
When half the tabby is not a tabby
Due to some ancient injury?
posted by Kabanos at 2:34 PM on May 7, 2013


psos: OK, from the Top 10 link...is there a Google Scuba View? Because I am totally prepared to believe there is.

Some underwater locations (eg. Great Barrier Reef) are included in the World Wonders Project, and there are Six Ocean sites on Google Maps streetview.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 2:36 PM on May 7, 2013


Sorry to burst bubbles, but someone in the comments found Halfcat as Fullcat.
posted by deborah at 3:02 PM on May 7, 2013 [4 favorites]


Please add "purveyor of fraudulent kittehs" to the occupation field in your profile now.
posted by elizardbits at 3:36 PM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Amusingly, TinEye only finds Halfcat as matches for the original source image. Gere's more info about that original source. "a feral cat colony living on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada ... the cat’s name is (was?) Thumbelina, and the original photo was taken in 2003"

I still wonder how we get from a 2003 photo of a cat in Ottawa to a joke picture site in Russia in 2009.
posted by Nelson at 5:02 PM on May 7, 2013


This whole thread is why I love metafilter. Kudos to all you mutant cat sleuths.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:14 PM on May 7, 2013 [2 favorites]


this looks like something out of a Cyriak video.

Gosh I love fractals.
posted by seawallrunner at 5:15 PM on May 7, 2013


Halfcat strut.
posted by grapesaresour at 5:50 PM on May 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Nah man, that's just a classic U WAT U LOSE
posted by Tom-B at 6:37 PM on May 7, 2013


Is your Google cat half empty or half full?
posted by Dr. Zira at 8:53 PM on May 7, 2013


Reminds me of ButtDog.

(which has it's own subreddit)
posted by panaceanot at 9:18 PM on May 7, 2013 [2 favorites]


> If it truly is from Google Street View, it's right up there with the Giant Flying Pliers of Doom on the funny/disturbing scale.

It’s an old experiment that you’ve probably seen before, but well worth trying nonetheless.
posted by wachhundfisch at 12:21 AM on May 8, 2013 [1 favorite]


Reminds me of ButtDog.

Thank you! That GIF I was talking about is in that subreddit.
posted by Sarcasm at 5:45 AM on May 8, 2013


Oh god, ButtDog has me literally in tears laughing. So enthusiastic catching that ball! It's somehow even better in the original context, via the reddit.
posted by Anything at 6:41 PM on May 8, 2013


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