Carview!

CARVIEW

MOTORHOMES

Select Language

HTTP/2 200 content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 expires: Mon, 26 Jan 2026 18:28:21 GMT date: Mon, 26 Jan 2026 18:28:21 GMT cache-control: private, max-age=0 last-modified: Fri, 02 Jan 2026 08:23:16 GMT etag: W/"36d79416edc04f989322a1b98388fd51c02aad62482383cd6107f044c695880d" content-encoding: gzip x-content-type-options: nosniff x-xss-protection: 1; mode=block content-length: 26074 server: GSE alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-29=":443"; ma=2592000 No Cats Allowed - The Kracker Cat Blog

Friday, July 25, 2014

Carrizo - a most thoughtful and contemplative character

Another post just to make certain this blog stays online and does not get pulled for inactivity! I would hate to lose all the earlier work.

Friday, May 16, 2014

Just to keep this blog alive as an archive

Much has happened in the world of Grahamn Kracker and the Kracker Kats since I last posted in this blog in 2009. I am not going to try to update or start posting on a regular basis, but I got a little worried that if I didn't make a new post then sooner or later Google might delete this blog and the record I created with it.

So I make this post just to help ensure this does not happen.

Up until December, 2013, I did continue to blog at wasillaalaskaby300.squarespace.com through the end of 2011 and then kept a new blog, logbookwasilla.com through 2013. Both blogs remain online and cats frequent both.

I am taking a temporary hiatus of perhaps a year or more from blogging. I have been posting on instagram as @billhess, where cats also make frequent appearances.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Kitty cats and Mormon missionaries

I heard a knock upon my door the other evening and opened it to find two Mormon missionaries standing upon the porch. So I invited them in to meet the cats. Here they are, the young Elder Smith and the young Elder Wadsworth, posing with Royce, who is very old, even though he is younger than they.

Muzzy comes to get in the picture.

He terrifies the missionaries, so I have to take him to the garage.

Martigny comes to bless them with her presence. The missionaries wanted to baptize the two cats, but both refuse. Mormons believe in total immersion. These cats will not be immersed.

Wry and Royce.

Some of you may have already discovered that that other Wasilla blogger in the parallel universe has posted pictures identical to these on his blog.

He does things like that, sometimes. It makes me very angry.

I punched him in the nose, once, but the blow broke my own nose, so now I just let him get away with it.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Wry, Royce and cheese - the love story between the orange cat and the baby-turned-toddler-turned-little boy continues

Wry grows ever more articulate. In the evening, I point my camera towards him and he suddenly shouts, "Cheese!" Another word in his vocabulary! But where did he pick it up from? I never tell anyone to say cheese. To do so would be to violate my photographic technique.

It must have happened at day care. At dare care, he gets his picture taken every day for the class on-line newsletter. The picture taker must have told him to say, "cheese!"

Wry and Royce.

Wry gives Royce a smooch.

After the smooch, Wry smiles.

Then he notices that I am still taking pictures. "Cheese!" he shouts again.

Wry gives Royce some love.

He pats his furry belly.

"Cheese!"

Oh, I tell you, this Royce is an indulgent cat!

We are very thankful for Wry and Royce.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Charlie the cat man comes to visit

Charlie understands cats and they understand him. Here he is with Royce, both observing the same thing.

Royce needed a good brushing. Charlie gave it to him.

A bit later, little Wry came along, carrying socks.

Little Wry raises the socks into the air. What do you think he is thinking? What will happen next?

Good grief! Royce is wearing socks!

Royce goes to Tryskuit.

Royce and Tryskuit.

Royce relaxes by himself for awhile. Where is Charlie?

Why, Charlie is with Jim!

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Zed - the latest addition to the Kracker Cats

Here is Nabysko with Zed - the latest addition to the Kracker Cats. You will recall that Bryce, Nabysko's boyrfriend, is allergic to cats. That's why they went so long without a cat. But finally they got Juniper and, despite a bit of extra suffering, Bryce wanted them to have two cats.

Bryce liked Jim so much that he wanted that cat to be black. So, recently, they were down in Homer and they came up with this black kitten, Zed.

They bought a big, fancy, air cleaner that is going all the time. It has air-quality indicator lights - blue being best, red being worst. If the cats are a distance aways, the light is usually blue. If a cat come close, it turns red.

And here is Zed.

It is very dark in Nabysko's apartment, and I complained about how hard this made it for me to take a picture. (Oh yes, I know, I could have used flash - but I HATE flash.)

Tryskuit inserted a little light into the picture.

Tryskuit lights up Juniper.

Zed sees the light. I can't help but wonder if he saw anything, afterward.

Nabysko and Zed, in silhouette.

I call him, "Zederick."

I should note that I originally prepared five additional pictures for this post, of Diamond and Slick. However, Bill Hess needs to make a post on his blog in the parallel universe and both he and I are very tired, so we agreed that he would post the other five there, which you can find here.

However, if you click on the link and do not find the cats, that is because you have gone there before 4:00 AM AKDT, Sunday, October 25, 2009, when the Wasilla blog post is scheduled to go up. That would be 8:00 AM East Coast DT.

Due to an unfortunate series of events that beset me as a child, I grew up believing myself to be a despiser of cats. After I married, five children came to Sunflower and I, and when my two youngest, both daughters, would see someone giving away kittens in the parking lot of the local grocery store, they would beg, "Please, Daddy! Let us take home a kitten!"

With a smile, a tilt of the head and the bat of an eye, Tryskuit and Nabysko could charm just about anything they wanted out of me, but towards cats, my heart was hard. "No!" I would deny them, "Dogs are fine, dogs are good, but let just one thing be understood: in my house, there are no cats allowed!"

And then on a hot July day in Alaska, in the year 1991, a skinny kitten stepped out of the woods behind our house - quite literally, he stepped out of a dream and came to me, to beg for my ham. He relished the ham, but he did not care for the pickle, nor the mustard.

That cat stayed, and more followed. These are the Kracker Cats, and in this blog, the stories of all will be told. These will be happy stories, humourous stories, frustrating stories, sad stories, tragic stories. Readers - you who love cats - you will laugh, and you will cry!

To see all the Kracker Cats, both the original and contemporary, scroll down.

I travel a great deal, mostly in Alaska, but I wander into many other places as well. As my children grew, I was gone from home as much as not, sometimes more. When I was home, I would tell my children bedtime stories. By the time Kaboodle appeared at our house, the boys had outgrown these stories but my daughters still thrived on them.

Now, they insisted that every story that I tell be about a cat. So I made up some wonderful ones, right on the spot, and I was always as curious as they were to see how these stories would turn out.

Then one day as I was about to climb into my airplane and fly off to a village in the Alaska bush, Nabysko, the youngest, looked up at me and said, "Daddy! Write us a cat story while you are gone!"

So I did. Not long after, I happened upon a cat. I took its picture. I inquired about its history. When I returned home, I showed the picture to the girls, and told them what I had learned about the cat's history.

Ever since, wherever I go, I try to find and photograph a cat, and learn what I can about its history.

Hence, "Cats Met Along The Way." And always I keep in mind the wise admonition of Persimon Munk:

"Every cat has a story."

Charlie Chaplain, above, chosen at random, is just one of the hundreds of cats that I have met along the way, in every region of Alaska, 24 states, DC, four Canadian provinces, England, Russia and India.

And I will be meeting more, in many other places.

As my children grew, Sunflower was forever scolding me about all these lies that I told them. "You should write these stories down!" she insisted. I ignored this advice, but then, one summer, I decided to write down a few of the tails about cats that I had told to Tryskuit and Nabysko.

These are the stories that will appear in this section of the blog.

Above is an image, created by my talented niece, Amber Swallow, when she was still in high school, to help illustrate a story about Art, a cat who tried to fly his Catabria airplane over Denali.

If any of you southerners are confused by this word, "Denali," it is the name of the mountain that so many well-intentioned folk who don't know any better mistakenly call "Mt. Mc... Mt. McK... Mt. Mck... in... in.. le.." Oh, hell! I can't even say it! I'm not talking about a hamburger here! I'm talking about the highest mountain in North America, the mountain that rises higher vertically over the surrounding terrain than does any other mountain in the world.

I'm talking about Denali.