THE BLACK CAT

★ a tiny web community for handmade websites ★
est. recently · population: small · vibes: immaculate

🐈 WELCOME TO THE BLACK CAT 🐈 please wipe your feet on the doormat, it is also HTML 🐈 this website is 100% handmade and 0% sensible 🐈 no javascript lives here, we checked under the couch 🐈 the cat is not black, the cat is a metaphor, the metaphor is black 🐈

 |\---/|
 | o_o |   < you have arrived. congratulations.
  \_^_/       nobody is quite sure why.

🚧 THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION 🚧 AND ALWAYS WILL BE 🚧

Hello, and welcome to The Black Cat, a very small corner of the internet where people keep tiny handmade websites the way you might keep a plant on a windowsill: badly, lovingly, and with occasional dramatic collapse.

Everything here is static HTML written by actual humans with actual keyboards. No trackers. No analytics. No cookie banner asking you to "manage your preferences" across 847 legitimate-interest partners. We do not know who you are and we are delighted about it.

🍿 The Joke Section (mandatory)

Every website needs a section it cannot justify. This is ours. Management apologises in advance, but management is also the one who wrote them.

Why did the web developer leave the restaurant?
► Because of the table layout.

I told my cat about our strict no-JavaScript policy.
► He said he prefers his script in a litter-al box.

(that one is bad. it stays. this is a democracy and I am the only voter.)

What do you call a cat that got into the CSS file?
► A cat-astrophe. A purr-fectly avoidable one.

Knock knock. Who's there? An infinite loop. An infinite loop wh—
► Knock knock. Who's there? An infinite loop. An infinite loop wh—

My uncle insisted I include this one, so blame him:
"I only date people who use semantic HTML."
► He has very strong <article> standards.

(he laughed for eleven minutes. alone. in a kitchen.)

What is a cat's favourite HTTP status?
► 418. I'm a teapot. He does not care that it makes no sense. He is a cat.

📧 How To Get In (yes, you, right now)

ANYONE CAN ASK FOR AN INVITE.
That is the entire application process. There is no form.
Forms are for people who have their lives together.

hi@theskull.org

Send an email. Tell us your name, or a name, or a noise you like.
Tell us what you want to put on the internet.
★ Accounts are invite-only and approved by hand, by a human, slowly, like sourdough. ★

We are not going to pretend there is a waiting list of thousands. There is a person reading an inbox. Sometimes that person is asleep. Please be patient with the person.

📈 You Start Small. You Can Grow.

New accounts start tiny on purpose. Not because we are stingy, but because a small box makes you creative and a large box makes you upload a 4 GB video of a fan spinning. Space and features go up over time, by asking, once you have actually built something.

Stage	What you get	How you get there
🐈 KITTEN	A small starter quota, your own page at `/~yourname/`, and the browser editor. Enough for a real website. Genuinely.	Send the email. Be a person. That's it.
🐱 CAT	More space, more files, bigger uploads. Room for photos, zines, questionable poetry, an archive of your grandmother's recipes.	Ask, once your page actually exists and has words on it.
🐇 ABSOLUTE UNIT	Serious space for a serious hoard. Publish extra folders, share links, the whole toy box.	Ask again later. Bring evidence of enthusiasm.

NO ADS, EVER NO ALGORITHM NO "ENGAGEMENT"

⚠ House Rules, Abridged

Be a decent human. This covers roughly 95% of it.
One account per person. You are not a corporation. Probably.
Make websites, not a free hard drive. We are a windowsill, not a warehouse.
No phishing, malware, spam, harassment, or crimes. Obviously. Sadly, worth writing.
No proxies, VPNs, seedboxes, or "definitely legal" file dumps.
Keep your own backups. We are experimental and gravity exists.

The long, boring, legally-shaped version lives on the rules page.

🔮 Frequently Assumed Questions

Is there a hit counter?
No. There will never be a hit counter. We had a long meeting about it. The meeting was one person. He was very firm. ❌

Is there a guestbook?
The guestbook is an email address and it is up there ☝. Sign it with electrons.

Is there JavaScript?
No. Not one line. Everything moving on this page is CSS having a moment.

Why a black cat?
Because black cats get adopted last, which is a scandal, and because <marquee> looks better in the dark.

Will this website still exist next year?
Bold of you to plan that far ahead. We hope so. Keep backups anyway.

🕳 THE BLACK CAT WEBRING
◄ previous site · random site · next site ►
(the ring currently contains a very small number of sites. at this size a ring is technically just a dot. we are working on it.)

BEST VIEWED
WITH EYES MADE BY
A HUMAN NO JS
ZERO. NONE. 100% ORGANIC
FREE RANGE HTML CAT
APPROVED

🎉 THANK YOU FOR VISITING 🎉 TELL A FRIEND 🎉 OR DON'T 🎉