Posted on 1 Comment

How I spend my Thursday nights (a reprise blog post)

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER:

This is a “rescued” post from a now retired, theological theme subject matter blog, Hagios Blogging. I decided that it was worth reposting in as a prelude to the exciting happenings that are rapidly evolving for this April in association with my feline friends at NipClub and the site re-launch.  This post has been ever so slightly edited for content and craptastic(R) grammar.

“How I spend my Thursday Nights”

Originally dated 4/12/2012 in the “Almost Crazy Cat-Lady-land” category

Several A couple of years ago, I stumbled upon a group of people on Twitter who referred to themselves as “Ani-pals.” I discovered they were people who tweeted on behalf of their pets, and had made friends with other like-minded individuals.  Hence, they had become animal pals, which became shorten to Anipals because when you’re limited to 140 characters or less to express a thought you abbreviate . . . a lot.  (and yet another reason the English language and grammar is doomed, but that’s another rant for another time.)

I bring this up for a reason, through the process of gaining followers on Twitter and reciprocal follow backs, I have swapped tweets with many wonderful people, many of whom like I and my husband had gotten into animal rescue “accidentally,” having been seduced by the precious face of one of God’s purring or barking creatures.  For us it started innocently enough by watching the elderly lady next door and her porch-full of semi-feral cats that she would feed.  Not being a cat person, it was a source of amazement to me to watch the cats gather as if by announcement by their own Feline News Network that a snack would be available, and the various routes that they would take to get to her front door.  At time it seemed like they had transporter technology because one moment the porch was completely empty and the next they were there.  As time progressed, it became apparent that these cats were simply not getting enough to eat so every couple of days; we started putting food out, too.

As this was during the time that the both of us were working from home, I was afforded the time to observe these furry creatures just being themselves from our kitchen window while doing dishes and was able to connect the dots so to speak and make correlations between cats and how they treat us and how we treat our Lord and Master.  A paper came out of it: Curious about Kurios and Cats where I discuss my observations and how we became cat people.

Now to the subject of Thursday nights:

….having been introduced to this group of people and reading their tweets, I discovered that not only were they animal lovers but they supported animal rescue charities as well and held fund raiser events on Twitter.  They called them “Paw Pawties” and used the hashtag of #pawpawty in their tweets so other people could sort and follow what was going on.  I “attended” my first one in April.  It had a Science Fiction theme and was a birthday pawty for Boris Kitty’s human dad.  It was a little intimidating as most of the group had been pawpawtying for over a year and they had their own lingo and talked about things like Niptinis and Bacon! Beer, but with a photo-shopped picture of our Obi-wan Katnobi as his namesake for my avatar and I watched and learned.  An actual PawPawty itself is best described as a virtual reality gathering of like-minded individuals either tweeting on behalf of their pets or as themselves, (the majority are pets) and carrying on as if they were at an actual party.  (Think LARPing but online, with cats … and dogs and bunnies and the occasional hamster.)

The following month, someone had a brilliant idea to create a weekly ‘pawty’ gathering where people could hang with their friends in a more casual manner, relax and have a good time like the 1980′s TV series Cheers …and #nipclub was born.  Since then, as my work schedule permits, I pop onto Twitter and chat and share a virtual cocktail and have had the privilege of meeting some of the nicest “folk” around.

You can read a fantastic article in the Anipal Times about Nipclub’s origins here, and you can visit NipClub’s own page and read their history from the cats’ own mouths.

Nipclub is getting ready to celebrate its 6th birthday on on the second weekend of May 2016 and I’m glad to be a part of it.

1 thought on “How I spend my Thursday nights (a reprise blog post)

  1. I like what you guys tend to be up too. Such clever work and exposure! Keep up the amazing works guys I’ve added you guys to my own blogroll.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *