Yesterday, I did not bring a cat home.

This was… tricky.

One of my co-workers brought four kittens into work.  They were *tiny*, and my only picture is pretty blurry, but they’d been abandoned under her porch and she was taking them to the SPCA.

You could hear them (down the hall, around the corner) in my office, and their little squeaks and cries just hit me in the gut.

They weren’t cuddly; they were scared and crying and altogether not interested in bonding, and that was probably the best thing, because, well.

We have three cats. Continue reading →

This weekend, we had one of those heart-stopping moments, and we had only ourselves to blame. 

Actually, that happened twice in the last few days, one far less bad than the other, and only myself/ourselves to blame in both cases.

So, Sunday, we were hanging laundry, so we let the boy-cats out on the patio, as we do sometimes.  They can hang out there and eat grass (their favorite activity) and roll around on the concrete (second-favorite activity) for 10, fifteen minutes and all is right with the world. 

Except T & I got distracted talking about which trees we were going to prune.  We headed back to the house – and Oli was looking guilty and Theo was nowhere to be seen. 

I wasn’t worried right away. Theo likes to hide under the lilac near the corner of the house and sniff out chipmunks. 

No Theo. 

No Theo under the car, behind the heating-oil tank, under the patio chairs.  Continue reading →

I asked on Discord what I should blog about this week, and the suggestion that came back way my cats.

Okay, I can talk about them pretty much endlessly!

… crap, what do I say?

🙂

If you’ve missed it, T. and I have three cats.

The slightly-older two are white-and-grey fluffbucket Norwegian Forest Cat mutts.  They are loud, they are affectionate, demanding, and they chew on everything.  Furniture.  Firewood.  They commonly eat their way out of cardboard boxes.  Sharp teeth!  Oli (Oligarchy) is a bit bigger, longer-furred in the “ruff” and “pantaloons”, more likely to be demanding in the food department.  He sleeps on my feet at the beginning of the night and usually by my shoulder when he thinks I ought to be getting up. Continue reading →

This is, more or less, just a little babbling about my kitty. 

We have a feral cat.

I mean, she says that all the time. “I’m feral!  Zoom!”  and she runs all the way up the stairs.  “I’m feral!  Oh no!” Zip, under the bed.

She’s really sure she’s a wild feral cat.

You know, like “here’s the WWI Ace Fighter Pilot…” Yeah.

We got her from outside, where she was semi-feral, a barn kitten from down the road who had been eating out of our compost bin.

T. took months of feeding her and coaxing her closer, until she was willing to let him handle her.

Then we shoved her in a carrier and left her at the vets for three days.

That was four years ago. (editor’s note, no, that was 5 years ago, since we brought her inside 7 years ago… nowish, i.e., November 2019)

When I tell her “Merit, Nap time!” She comes and jumps up on me on the couch and sleeps on my hip/stomach.

When I go to bed, she sleeps to the left of me; when I wake up, she’s either on me or tucked against my right side.  T. taught her to cuddle for food and now, when she’s hungry in the middle of the day, she will jump up on his lap and nap there for a little while.

She still says she’s feral, but you can pick her up without any complaint, she tolerates brushing and likes petting, and she talks to you when you ignore her.

(also, she yells at you when you sneeze).