Please click image to enlarge… if ye dare…. arr…..

Well, here it is again – International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Trust me, when it comes to nonsensical reasons to Photoshop crazy stuff on my cats, I’m all for it. But seriously, what the heck is International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Why and how did it begin? And how the heck is it that cats have taken to it with such fervor? Or, I supposes I should say, why have the human guardians to cats taken to it with such fervor?

Not being able to sleep without knowing the answers to these compelling, nail-biting questions, I took it upon myself to find out once and for all and I can say in all honesty that I would have never guessed the answer in a million years! So me scurvy pirate friends, here be the answers for ye (as taken from the talklikeapirate.com site):

We are guys, John Baur and Mark Summers. And that really should be all you need to know about the origins of Talk Like a Pirate Day. We’re guys. Not men, with responsibility and suits and power ties. We’re guys, with all that that implies. But here are the details.

Once upon a time — on June 6, 1995, to be precise — we were playing racquetball, not well but gamely. It wasn’t our intention to become “the pirate guys.” Truth to tell, it wasn’t really our intention to become anything, except perhaps a tad thinner and healthier, and if you could see our photos, you’d know how THAT turned out. As we flailed away, we called out friendly encouragement to each other -“Damn, you bastard!” and “Oh, jeez, my hamstring!” for instance – as shots caromed away, unimpeded by our wildly swung rackets.

On this day, for reasons we still don’t quite understand, we started giving our encouragement in pirate slang. Mark suspects one of us might have been reaching for a low shot that, by pure chance, might have come off the wall at an unusually high rate of speed, and strained something best left unstrained. “Arrr!,” he might have said.

Who knows? It might have happened exactly that way.

Anyway, whoever let out the first “Arrr!” started something. One thing led to another. “That be a fine cannonade,” one said, to be followed by “Now watch as I fire a broadside straight into your yardarm!” and other such helpful phrases.

By the time our hour on the court was over, we realized that lapsing into pirate lingo had made the game more fun and the time pass more quickly. We decided then and there that what the world really needed was a new national holiday, Talk Like A Pirate Day.

First, we needed a date for the holiday. As any guy can tell you, June 6 is the anniversary of World War II’s D-Day. Guys hold dates like that in reverence and awe so there was no way we could use June 6.

Mark came up with September 19. That was and is his ex-wife’s birthday, and the only date he could readily recall that wasn’t taken up with something like Christmas or the Super Bowl or something else. 

The site went on to explain that there really was no real reason for Talk Like a Pirate Day other than to have fun. No inspiring messages, no call for action to make the world better, nothing other than a “whimsical alternative” to all the serious and stressful things we have to deal with on a daily basis. And there folks, is where I was sold.  I was sold, even though yes, pirates were and are bad people – but I think we all know that, don’t we? But a day dedicated to “ahoy mateys,” “arrs,” “shiver me timbers,” and “walking the plank” is just far too irresistible to pass up. Add dressing up cats in pirate gear to the equation, well, it’s nearly impossible. I think that’s probably how and why it has taken off with such fervor for those of us that have cats and love to share the silliness any opportunity we can!

So there you have it. Pass the catnip ye blimey bilge rats and have a treasure chest of a fantastic day!

I have been featuring this picture of Zee for International Pirate Day every year since 2012 – the year I found out the day existed. I can’t help but share it again and again – to me, it is the epitome of what a cat would look like if he really was a pirate!