Tag: kitty

Cat

We have a cat again! After we lost Meg to old age we weren’t sure we realy wanted another cat. But… I can’t believe how much I missed having a cat in the house. It was like there was this empty space in my life… Anyway, once again we have cat. Meet Charlie.

Like almost all of our other cats she is a sort of rescue kitty. Her owner is going in for ankle surgery and after that she is moving into an apartment that doesn’t allow pets so she had to give her up. Then we heard about it from some of our family and without even thinking I said “We’ll take her”. And here she is.

And she is amazing. i know, I know, everyone thinks their new cat is amazing but Charlie really is. She’s 12 years old and is the most mellow, affectionate, well adjusted kitty I’ve ever seen.

We were prepared for drama when Charlie moved in. Anyone who has ever had to move a cat into a new environment or took one into a new family will know what I mean. Cats generally are creatures of habit. They don’t like change. And before this kitty came along most of our cats haven’t exactly been, well, normal. They came from a variety of unpleasant situations where they often were not treated well. It sometimes took weeks, even months or longer before a new cat moving into our home adjusted and came to realize they were in a safe environment.

With Charlie, though? Charlie was always in a pleasant, loving environment from the time she was born and it shows. Within 10 minutes of coming into the house she’d decided she liked it here. She spent some time exploring, let us pet and brush her and make a fuss over her, purred at us a lot, rolled on the floor and asked for tummy rubs, had decided which chair was the most comfortable for naps. She showed us which toys she likes to play with, which brush she prefers. She loves snuggling and when she’s happy she has a purr you can hear from three feet away.

What it boils down to is we love her, and she seems to love us and her new home. This is the third day we’ve had her and every time I see her I grin like an idiot.

Damn I missed having a cat.

Warm Kitties

Screen Shot 2017-12-23 at 5.45.08 AMThe siamese are warm at last!

The little goof balls spend the time from November through March trying to keep warm. It doesn’t matter how warm we keep the house, they’re still cold. They spend all of their free time going from one furnace vent to another trying to keep their little cat toes warm. It’s rather pathetic, really, seeing them huddled up together by the vents trying to keep warm.

So I decided to do something about it this winter. I bought a heated cat bed off Amazon. Wasn’t real expensive,  under $40. It has a heating pad in it. Not a very warm one, just 4 watts, with a pressure sensor that only turns it on when one of the cats is actually in the bed.

MrsGF scoffed. The siamese aren’t exactly all that smart, she reminded me, and they’d never figure out what it was. She did have a point. I’ve bought things for them before that other cats love; scratching posts, cat houses, toys, etc. And they look at the stuff, then look at me with this “what the hell is this?” kind of expression on their faces, and then go huddle in front of the furnace vents.

But not this time. It took Jay, the gray one at the rear, all of 5 minutes to figure out it was A) a bed, B) it was warm, and C) it was his. I’d hardly got the thing out of the box, plugged in and tested, and he was in it, all curled up and purring away.  It took Meg, the seal point, a lot longer. Even after seeing her brother sitting in it she wasn’t sure what it was. But yesterday I went looking for them and there she was, curled up in it with Jay.

It’s been an interesting adventure with these two. They were young adults when we got them, healthy but completely unsocialized, even terrified of people. They didn’t even act like cats. we almost never saw them. Food would disappear, the litter boxes were being used, there were no messes or disasters, and when we did see them they looked healthy, so we just left them alone. Every once in a while they would forget that they were terrified and start to act like normal cats. We’d hear them running around the house late at night playing.

We didn’t push things with them. As long as they were healthy and seemed to be doing well, we just left them alone. We were afraid of traumatizing them more than they already were. It took a long, long time, but they finally became, well, cats. Meg now likes to sit next to MrsGF on the sofa in the morning, head butts her and rubs against her to get back rubs and head scratches. Jay comes out in the kitchen when I’m cooking and talks to me (siamese can be very vocal. You can have actual conversations with some of them) and rubs against my ankles and wants his back scratched. They’re waiting for us when we get up in the morning, dancing around and chattering at us. Jay is downright playful. He chases small balls around the house, loves to play with shoe laces.

I don’t know what it is about me and cats. I’ve had dogs and I’ve loved them all, but cats? I’ve always been fascinated by cats, ever since I was a toddler. Especially siamese. We’ve had siamese since, oh, the early 1980s, most of them either rescued or from households where they weren’t wanted, and they are absolutely amazing creatures that I still find endlessly fascinating.