Tag Archives: dustcats

Flora and fauna

The science of dustcats

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Dustcats are much debated by The Scientific Society of Hopeless, Maine.

Observations of James Weaslegrease: According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a dustcat should be able to fly. The dustcat, of course, flies anyway, because who cares about tiny details like the laws of physics.

Keith Errington: As a fellow member of the Scientific Society, I am astounded by your inaccuracy Mr. Weaselgrease, clearly dustcats do not fly, they are simply not capable of flying, to suggest as much is tantamount to lunacy. No. Clearly dustcats float. And it’s their floating that defies all known laws of physics. (Even the ones that “Professor” Evenheist made up).

Mark Hayes: dust ‘floats’ in the air due suspension in air currents , until it settles on a surface, in the same way that heavier particles ‘float’ in water, suspended in the medium a dust cat does not fly, it ‘floats’.

James Weaslegrease: Your theory, whilst interesting, has some room for improvement. Floating is what occurs when a creature has buoyancy within the appropriate body, be that liquid or gaseous. It, critically, involves no input from the creature itself to sustain, and does not allow for directed movement, forcing the creature to move as the flow of its surroundings dictates. With this in mind, I have performed several tests with a dustcat’s favoured human, as well as some especially tasty piles of dust, and have concluded that dustacats are entirely capable of “floating” towards whatever their target is with far too much regularity to be a coincidence. Therefore, since their aerial mobility is controlled, it constitutes flight, as opposed to floating.

At this point it needs noting that the debate in question had occurred informally at The Squid and Teapot and that further insights may be less than perfectly scientific in nature…

Herb Chevin: Your mum’s a dustcat.

James Weaselegrease: You wish my mum was a dustcat.

Bob Evenheist: I have proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that my theories about physics…

Herb Chevin: I’ve got a theory that if I punch you really hard, you’ll shut up. Want to test it?

At this point Herb Chevin undertook to punch Bob Evenheist. Bob flew through the air in a graceful arc and then just lay horizontally in the air above the fireplace, looking awkward until she was towed out at closing time. Various conclusions have been drawn from this, but frankly none of them were useful.

(Image by Nimue. Text by named individuals, other bits also by Nimue.)

Hopeless Tales

Licking dustcats for science

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Dustcats are weird, feline inhabitants of Hopeless, Maine who float about being whimsical and mildly threatening.

One of the contributions to the recent Eldritch Broadcasting event – Anomaly – featured a paper on the hallucinogenic effects of licking dustcats. This all started at Raising Steam last year. We were doing some Hopeless, Maine live stuff in which Keith Errington ran a Hopeless, Maine meeting to discuss health and safety issues on the island. This was all very silly, as you might imagine. During the discussion, Susie Roberts (of The Ominous Folk) made some comments about the lovely, distracting effects of licking dustcats.

For Anomaly, Keith Errington took this idea and ran with it (no doubt while laughing maniacally)  and then Susie Roberts recorded the piece for the event itself. 

Island life depends a lot on these kinds of processes, where people playing with ideas lead other people to play with the same ideas, and things expand (un)naturally from there.

This video also has content from Andy Arbon – who started The Eldritch Broadcasting Corporation. 

Hopeless Tales

Convocation of dust

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Most people don’t think a great deal about where dust comes from. Dust is people. Dust is dead skin, although unless you have the opportunity to stare at it under a microscope and see the tiny cells for yourself, this may not be a familiar thought. For most people on the island, dust is just something that turns up; a small, relentless nuisance that adds to the discomfort of daily life.

Dust is you.

It might be tempting, if you live alone, to gather the dust that is made purely from your skin, and hoard it all in a massive jar. You might spend years, carefully collecting the dead bits of yourself that gather, ghostlike in the silent place you call home. 

Sweeping with a small paintbrush, slowly cleaning surfaces of your own dead self. 

You might wonder after a while exactly how much dust you will make in your lifetime. Will you live for long enough such that there is more dust in the dust jars than there is living skin on your body? You might panic at that point, afraid of what could happen if your dust self becomes bigger than your not-yet-dust self.

You are the dust.

(Art by Kat Delarus, words by Nimue).

Hopeless Tales

Written in dust

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Dustcats are clearly flavour of the month, so here’s a bit more dustcatty goodness!

Dustcats sleep in the air, often floating in profoundly undignified positions. It makes them attractive to other sorts of cats, who will, if chance arises, lunge after their wafting tails and dangling tongues. On the whole, this causes the dustcats very little trouble.

To protect themselves while sleeping, dustcats exhale small clouds of dust intermittently. It is enough to inconvenience a would-be predator, and the ensuing coughs and sneezes will wake a vulnerable dustcat, usually giving it time to flee upwards. The lingering taste of dust makes it more tempting not to eat a dustcat, but merely to try and play with its tail without suffering too much. Sometimes small children will participate in this sport as well.

Theophrastus Frog is probably the only person, living and not living, to have paid much attention to the dust that emerges from the tongue of a sleeping dustcat. Often it is of no great consequence. Sometimes however, patterns emerge in the cloud of exhaled materials. A person might observe landscapes – familiar and unlikely. There may be faces – horrific or identifiable, or both.

Theophrastus Frog has kept a diary noting the forms the dust takes. Or at least, the forms he perceives, for there may be some element of interpretation involved. It gratifies him to know that on the day before he died, three different dustcats made a dustface that he recognised as his own. He wonders if there is a predictive quality to the images made of dust. He wonders if these might be fragments of dustcat dreams, given form. He wonders most often if it is just that he is entirely mad, and seeing images where no images exist.

In the dust, he has seen shipwrecks and monsters from the deep. He has seen views of the island as though from above, and wonders if dustcats themselves go high enough for such views. His own dustcats seldom leave the snug safety of the library. He does not think they can have witnessed these perspectives first hand. Do they share their dreams with some other being? Or does the island perhaps breathe out through them sometimes as they innocently exhale?

(This piece was originally posted on Patreon some years ago. Making comics is time consuming, and does not pay a living wage, so Patreon support is really helpful for keeping us going. https://www.patreon.com/NimueB )

Hopeless Film

Where do Dustcats come from?

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Dustcats were once ephemeral beings who have, by unknown means, achieved considerable solidity.

Dustcat puppets on the other hand were once ephemeral ideas that are now being reality.

Here is some dustcat fur!

Puppet maker Matt Inkel says that he is waiting for stuffing and thread and then needs to decide what technique he will use.  He said to us “I suspect I will sculpt a head and make a simple plaster mould to be cast in something soft and then attach it to the fur body… I just want to finalise my thoughts on the transition between the two materials and hiding the join and blending the fur”

More as it happens!
(We are now off to rasp our faces for signs of dust)
Hopeless

For the love of Dustcats

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Dustcats are one of a number of Hopeless Maine cat species. They are adorable, floating cats who use their long tongues to slurp up dust. In normal circumstances, dust is their main food, but it is important to remember that dust is basically particles of dead skin. A hungry dustcat might not wait for the skin to naturally fall off.

Dustcats have been known to eat people’s faces. Island lore has it that they only eat the faces of the beloved dead, so this is only going to happen to you if you have a dustcat who loves you very much. Probably.

Like all cats, Dustcats are pointy in way they can use to attack and defend. However, they have additional capacities for violence. They can regurgitate dust – a process not unlike throwing up a hairball, only this is a dustball and can be launched from higher up.

In extreme circumstances, dustcats form a wrecking ball – knotting their tails together in the middle and putting all the pointy bits on the outside. It is a formidable thing to encounter.

What would a dustcat look like in motion? What would it look like as a puppet? We want to know. We know we are not alone in this. If you want to know these things, and you can spare a few pounds to help us make dustcats, we’re crowdfunding puppets for the Hopeless Maine film. If you aren’t able to chip in but want to help, please share your love of dustcats and help us find people who can help! We have social media badges and everything. More over here – https://hopelessvendetta.wordpress.com/bringing-hopeless-maine-to-the-screen-one-creature-at-a-time/team-dustcat/

Births, Deaths, Marriages, Island News

Further Carnage at the Home for Uncanny Cats

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By Frampton Jones

There were scenes of carnage last night at the Hopeless Home for Uncanny Cats. After the death of founder Crysta earlier this week, the cats have been uneasy. You’ve probably heard them. However, the yowling last night achieved new levels of volume and unease, drawing many of us out into the streets where we huddled together nervously. It’s never easy to tell whether one should face the horror, or hide under the bedclothes and pray for an easy death.

A bold few of us ventured towards the source of the sound. The cat’s home was covered in cats – far more than I think could have been living there. They covered the roof and surrounding garden, and the dim that they made was almost unbearable. It was clear from some distance that windows had been smashed, and the door broken down. Whoever attacked the establishment felt no need to be subtle about it.

Erekiel Morningstar Vaehne took over running the Home for Uncanny Cats only this week, after the sudden and still unexplained death of Crysta. There can be little doubt that whoever killed her must also have been responsible for this breaking, entering and murdering. Even Doc Willoughby, who is always reticent about blaming anyone for anyone’s death, had to agree that a man with a large, ornate knife sticking out of his chest probably hadn’t died of natural causes. Doc Willoughby concedes that while it could be suicide, it would seem odd to back violently through several items of furniture while trying to end yourself.

What did this violent intruder want? What was in the Home for Uncanny Cats that both Crysta and Erekiel were willing to protect at such costs? Should other cat owners now fear for their lives? Clearly, there is some horrific cat-related plot afoot, and it is one the perpetrator considers it worth killing for, and so dastardly is this plot that there has been no effort to disguise it. Who among us would do such a thing?

Erekiel has been left where he fell, on the understanding that resident dustcats would probably want to eat him. There have been suggestions muttered in the pub about whether the dustcats themselves may have turned psychotic, driven by a hunger for human flesh to start killing the people around them. It is my understanding that dustcats only eat the bodies of those they love, but even this long established truth now seems questionable.

Births, Deaths, Marriages, Island News

Our second mysterious cat death!

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Crysta, founder of the Hopeless Maine Home for Uncanny Cats, was found dead outside her establishment this morning. Her body was surrounded by cats – the apparently regular ones, the half-demon shadow cats, and a selection of dustcats. I arrived at the scene while the cats were still protecting her body. It was an eerie sight, and when they broke into wails of obvious lament, it was an eerie sound, too.

When Doc Willoughby arrived at the scene to assess the body, he was unable to approach it – the cats became hostile. Viewing from a distance, he said “I expect it was her fault, one way or another.”

I suggested that she might have tripped over a cat and endured a fatal blow to the head as a consequence, or that she may have choked to death being caught in a dustcat sneeze, or that perhaps a demon cat had been involved. He agreed with my assessment. That the ground around her seemed curiously singed was not mentioned, but then, burned ground is not a medical condition.

I may be seeing a pattern here where none exists, but I think this is our second cat related death of late – Lady Selina Arkham Kyle died in most peculiar circumstances outside the library, with possible dustcat involvement. Aside from the cat connection, I can think of little that might link the two deaths.

Only when Erekiel Morningstar Vaehne turn up to the scene did the cats let anyone through. Erekiel being a longstanding volunteer at the home, they clearly recognised him. At this point, the damage to the back of the victim’s head became visible. It did not look accidental to me.

The Hopeless Maine Home for Uncanny Cats will continue to do its good work, I am told. Crysta will not be buried – apparently dustcats like to eat the bodies of those they truly love.

Births, Deaths, Marriages, Island News

Lady Selina Arkham Kyle – death by misadventure?

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Lady Selina Arkham Kyle’s death has created a bit of a conundrum. Her body was found in the street outside the library three days ago. Doc Willougby observed the body at the scene and pronounced the cause of death to be sudden migration of the womb, leading to asphyxiation. He assured us that the damage to the back of her head must have been due to the violence with which she fell when her womb went mad and attacked her lungs. “When I see a woman’s body covered in bruises, I know it’s because of her womb,” he told me.

Much as I dislike arguing with the good Doctor in public, I cannot help but think there might be a connection between her death, and a rope dangling from an upstairs library window. As though someone had tried to climb up there, and had fallen, banging their head on the pavement and dashing out their brains. But I’m just a simple journalist and not qualified to comment on medical matters.

Given Lady Selina’s tendency to ‘discover’ unusual artefacts, I had long assumed she must have a penchant for exploring abandoned houses. And what harm does it do? The risk is always to the explorer – often such houses have been abandoned for good reason, and it’s all too easy to come out with a cursed item if you aren’t highly sensitive to these things. But why the library? Granted, no one has been upstairs there for years. To the best of my knowledge, the rooms are empty and there is nothing worth exploring, or removing.

And yet, I am certain I saw a flicker of movement at the open window. Not a human face, something much more feline. The library has always had a sizeable dustcat population, so this seems the most likely explanation, but it only deepens the mystery. Did Lady Selina fall? If she was pushed, it seems hard to imagine that a dustcat would do such a thing. But then, we do not know why she was there in the first place. We do not know if she was exiting or entering the window when she fell. We do not know if she had attempted to remove something from the library – there was nothing on her body, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

This may prove to be one of those mysteries that remains unanswered. But I have a feeling in my bones that this will turn out not to be the end of the matter.

Art of the island

The Dustcat Wrecking Ball

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Dustcats are generally rather cute entities, prone to floating about and slurping up dust. If a single dustcat feels threatened, it may spew dust at you. Unpleasant for most people, fatal for anyone with serious allergies.

On rare occasions when a large number of dustcats all feel put out, threatened, offended or enraged at the same time, they form a wrecking ball. All the soft bits go in the middle, all the pointy bits on the outside. It looks something like this…