The result...

Let's flick on the TV and see who won the big game...
Look! There's Hawthorn captain Sam Mitchell and coach Alistair Clarkson accepting the Premiership Cup. Let's all sing a round of the Hawthorn theme song to celebrate (believe it or not, it's sung to the tune of 'Yankee Doodle Dandy'):

We're a happy team at Hawthorn.
We're the mighty fighting Hawks.
We love our club and we play to win.
Riding the bumps with a grin at Hawthorn.
Come what may you'll find us striving.
Teamwork is the thing that talks.
One for all and all for one.
Is the way we play at Hawthorn.
We are the mighty fighting Hawks.

That's right, everycat, the Hawthorn Hawks staged an upset to beat the Geelong Cats in yesterday's 2008 Australian Football League Grand Final. It was a very close, intense, arm-wrestle of a game, but Hawthorn rose to the top in the third quarter and stayed there, beating last year's champions by 26 points. This is the Hawks' first premiership victory since 1991, and their tenth overall.

This was only the second time this year that the Cats lost a game, so it was a massive effort from the Hawks, and a massive effort from our friend Lux, who tipped the Hawks by 22 points, which makes him the winner of my AWESOME Footy Finals Fever Competition for 2008.

Congratulations, Lux, and congratulations to the Hawthorn Hawks! Can't wait until season 2009!

Thanks so much to everyone who entered my competition. Hope you had fun.

Cheers,
--Pabs

Pablo's AWESOME Footy Finals Fever Competition

That's right, sportscats, it's on again!

As predicted, the top two teams from the Australian Football League this season - the Hawthorn Hawks and the Geelong Cats - won through the finals playoffs to this weekend's big game - the Grand Final.

At 2pm on Saturday afternoon (Australian Eastern Standard Time), the Cats and the Hawks will fight it out in what many are calling a re-match of the infamous 1989 Grand Final, when the Hawks beat the Cats by just six points in a tough contest. But the Cats are going in as favourites this year, because they're the reigning champions from 2007.

And so to MY competition.

From now until 2pm AEST this Saturday (27 September), every blogging animal of the non-human variety can enter their tip for who will win the game, and predict the winning points margin. To enter, just post your prediction, with your name, in the comments of this post. Like this:

Pablo, Geelong Cats by 999 points (an exaggeration).

Feel free to add a little cheer for your team, but these will not affect the outcome of the contest. The winner will be the blogger who guesses the winning team with the closest points margin to the actual final points margin of the game. In the event of a tie, the blogger who posted their tip first will win. One entry per blogging household. And I can change these rules whenever I want (so there).

The winner will receive a souvenir poster to commemorate their team's success, as well as a small selection of awesome toys. A $20 donation to the Hobart Cat Centre (my local) will also be made in the winner's name.

A hint from Pablo: in general, most AFL matches are decided by under 30 points, but it's not unheard of to have a points margin of 100 points or more. In last year's Grand Final, the Geelong Cats beat the Port Adelaide Power by a massive 119 points. If you're interested in studying the teams' form, you can visit the AFL's website. Otherwise, just make your bestest guess!

Aah, I LOVE September! Get tipping, everycat!

Cheers,
--Pabs

Never too late to save the environment

With all the excitement of my international guests (see below), I didn't get time to do a post about how our household accepted The Cat Realm's dare to do the super dare devised by Mr Chen:

...come up with one creative, fun, useful way to save the environment
and put a picture of yourself doing it on your blog!

This is what we did:
I made Nick go to the hardware store and buy a water-saving shower head, so that Nick and Kate don't use so many waters when they have a shower. Waters are very precious in Australia these days. You can also see the little timer that they (sometimes) use to limit the amount of time they spend in the shower.

So what's my part in this dare? Of course, I don't have showers. My lickbaths are very efficient on water. My contribution to the dare is to give Nick this 'death stare' until he actually installs the new showerhead:

Do it, Nick! Do it now!!!

Cheers,
--Pabs

PS: My friend Lord Jaders has been missing from her home for two weeks. Her beans think that she may not be coming home. They hope that she has been taken in by somebean somewhere. I do too. Jade, if you're reading this, go home!! Your beans are worried about you!!

They came bearing gifts!

Everycat should try and get some of their international blogging buddies' humans to come and visit them, because you get GIFTS! Lots of them. Here's what Tracy and Denis brought me, as selected by Phoebe, Monica and Joey: Phoebe, Monica and Joey sent me some great feather-butt chickens (because they know that chickens are my favourite), an awesome laser pointer toy (which I'm not scared of AT ALL) and a very important survival guide to modern feline living (it's also a training manual on how to be a feline revolutionary).
It's full of very important learnings and will take me some time to digest.

They also sent along a card...


Don't worry, Monica, Tracy and Denis must be very smart, because they made it to tomorrow without any problems (although the Temptations they tried to bring into Australia weren't so lucky. Tracy says that they were confiscated by Australian customs, but I tend to think that they were sucked into a wormhole by the space-time continuum).

That's the outside of the card (always great to see a d-o-g looking silly!)

Here's the inside (might need to biggify to read eachcat's message)

Thanks, Tracy and Denis, and thanks to Phoebe, Monica and Joey for choosing such fantastic gifts to send to me! And don't worry about the Temptations. I can imagine how delicious they would have been...

Unfortunately, I didn't get a whole lot of time to spend with Tracy and Denis while they stayed with us. I had some very important matters to attend to, which had nothing to do with being scared of having strangers from overseas staying in my house:
I left it up to Nick and Kate to show them the sights of Hobart, and introduce them to some of their friends at an Aussie barbecue. I think they had a good time. They're gone now. But I've got all those cool gifts to remember them by.

Cheers,
--Pabs

They came!!! They came!!!

Tracy and Denis came to see me! All the way from yesterday, USA! They made it to tomorrow and brought me gifts from Phoebe and Monica and Joey and they stayed all weekend and I've got photos to prove it but I'm blogging from a s-l-o-w computer today and it would take about a year to post photos and I've run out of time to do The Cat Realm's dare but I'm still gonna do it and I haven't given you an update on the footy finals and... and... man, I need a break. Will resume normal blogging soon.

Cheers,
--Pabs

Evidence

Psst. Come here, everycat!

It's me, Pablo. I'm on a covert operation in the guest room to find out if the rumours are true... that Tracy and Denis, the human staff of my great Stateside fan club organisers Phoebe, Monica and Joey, are really coming to Australia to visit me! Monica seems to think that it might be happening soon. All the evidence seems to indicate that she might be right:

See? Kate seems to be preparing the guest room for visitors. She's stripped the linen from the bed and everything. Hmm. This mattress is com-fy! Why does she keep the door to this room closed all the time?
Am I getting some international visitors? Monica mentioned something about presents for me. I saw a picture of Temptations on her blog. Oh, wow. Oh, wow.

Stay tuned for more news about my international visitors!

Cheers,
--Pabs

PS Monica said that you USA cats live in yesterday and I live in tomorrow... does that mean that Tracy and Denis have a DeLorean or a TARDIS or something? Will Marty McFly or Dr Who be with them?

Football finals fever: Week 2 results

One out of two ain't bad, everycat.

That was my strike rate for tipping the winners in last weekend's round of the Australian Football League's finals series. Here are the results from the semi-final round:

Western Bulldogs defeated Sydney Swans by 37 points
Saint Kilda Saints defeated Collingwood Magpies (sorry, Huffle) by 34 points

So this weekend's preliminary finals will be Geelong Cats v Western Bulldogs and Hawthorn Hawks v Saint Kilda Saints.

The winners of this weekend's games progress to the Grand Final. To read my preview of the preliminary finals, check out my blog on Friday. Pick a team and get on board now!

Cheers,
--Pabs

PS Congratulations to my all-time footy hero, Richmond Tigers player Matthew Richardson, for being selected in the AFL's All-Australian team for 2008. Go Tigers!

Two friends in two weeks = Too sad

Lovely graphic courtesy of Skeezix the Cat. Thanks, Skeez!

Our dear friend Daisy lost her sister Pixie yesterday. Pixie has had a heart condition for a very long time and finally decided that it was time to go to the Bridge. Goodbye, Pixie. Every time I see a 'bananer', I will think of you.

Big, rumbly purrs to Daisy and her family.

(I'll talk about the footy results tomorrow... doesn't seem right today.)

Cheers,
--Pabs

Friday football finals fever: Week 2

Hi sportscats,

I'm just makin' biscuits on my current favourite cushion in the living room in preparation for a big weekend of footy-watching. It's week 2 of this year's Australian Football League finals series... semi-finals time. Here are this week's matches:

12 September
Western Bulldogs v Sydney Swans
(winner to meet Geelong in a preliminary final next weekend)

13 September
Saint Kilda Saints v Collingwood Magpies
(winner to meet Hawthorn in a preliminary final next weekend)

All finals are sudden-death from this week onwards, so it's the end of the line for two teams this weekend. It's terribly hard to pick winners for these games, so I'm going to go with my heart in my tips. I predict that Sydney and Saint Kilda will be the winners (sorry Huffle, my Nick supports the Saints. I have to be loyal to his team or he might kick me off the bed). Don't forget to keep an eye on the results, so you can make your best guess in my Grand Final tipping competition, coming up in two weeks' time.

Happy Friday, everycat, enjoy your footy this weekend!

Cheers,
--Pabs

Busy times

I need a nap.

Man, life has been very busy lately. I spent a lot of last week with my international judge's hat on (not a real hat, I don't do fashions), carefully considering the entries in The Cat Realm's latest and biggest I Dare You All competition. Hoo boy, there are some great dares in there. Stay tuned to The Cat Realm to find out about the winning dare (they've postponed the announcement while we all mourn the loss of dear Roscoe). Judging was tough work.

A few days ago, my kiwicat friend Poppy Q gave me this award:


Thanks Poppy, I'm chuffed! There are so many blogs out there that I love, so it's hard work thinking about who to pass this award on to. Many of those who I'd consider passing the award on to have already received it from others. So you know what? I'm gonna pass the award on to everyone on my blogroll (which is, itself, badly in need of updating... more work, aagh!). But if I could be so mancatly as to single out two blogs that I especially love at the moment, I'd have to say that...

Eric and Flynn's blog rocks... it makes me want to be an English farmcat, and
Momo's blog rocks... because her SS is back and so Momo's blog is back in action

I absolutely love getting online every morning and seeing which of my friends have new blog posts. I love your blog!

Cheers,
--Pabs

Sad times

We lost another blogosphere friend today... Roscoe. Goodbye, mate. See you at the bridge.

Purrs to Roscoe's brother Opus and his family.

Cheers,
--Pabs

Mancat Monday

Ahhhh... it's just another Mancat Monday (I wish it was Sunday...) and I'm having a big mancat stretch on the grass in the backyard (time for a bit of mowing next weekend, Nick?) and having some mancatly reflections on Week 1 of the Australian Football League's finals series.

It was a HUGE weekend in the footy (sorry for the bland, photo-less post on Friday, the internet's acting strangely at home), with results going almost as I predicted (as Gypsy and Tasha noted, 3 outta 4 ain't bad).

Week 1 finals results:
Hawthorn Hawks defeated Western Bulldogs by 51 points
Collingwood Magpies defeated Adelaide Crows by 31 points (You must be happy, Huffle!)
Sydney Swans defeated North Melbourne Kangaroos by 35 points
Geelong Cats defeated Saint Kilda Saints by 58 points

The two teams who were eliminated (due to their low ranking) were the Crows and the Kangaroos. The two highest-ranked winners, the Cats and the Hawks, enjoy a week off now, while the other four teams fight it out this weekend for the right to play the Cats and the Hawks in Week 3 of the finals. Here's the draw for Week 2:
12 September: Western Bulldogs v Sydney Swans (winner to play Geelong in Week 3)
13 September: Saint Kilda Saints v Collingwood Magpies (winner to play Hawthorn in Week 3)

I'll give you my tips on Friday.

Cheers,
--Pabs

Friday football finals fever

Well everycat, it's September again, and that can only mean one thing...

The Australian Football League finals series!

That's right! Here's the draw for the first round:

Friday night:
Hawthorn Hawks (finished the regular season in 2nd place) v Western Bulldogs (3rd place)

Saturday:
Adelaide Crows (5th place) v Collingwood Magpies (6th place)
Sydney Swans (6th place) v North Melbourne Kangaroos (7th place)

Sunday:
Geelong Cats v Saint Kilda Saints (4th place)

As expected, Hawthorn won tonight's game against the Bulldogs, but by a far bigger points margin that most of us predicted. For the rest of the games, I tip Adelaide, Sydney and Geelong to win. You heard it here first, sportsfans!

The two lowest-ranked losers from this round will be eliminated, while all the rest will live to fight another week. Keep an eye on each team's form, because in a few weeks, I'll invite you all to tip the winning team and the winning points margin for the Grand Final... there will be a prize involved.

May the best teams win!

Cheers,
--Pabs
(PS My Weekly peeks into the cat-based fashions in Kate's wardrobe will return in October.)