Weekend critter blogging
It’s been a lazy few weeks, at least on the homefront. This is due in large part to the fluffy invader from the north, TiVo. No, not the delightful DVR technology. TiVo is also the name of K’s dad R’s calico kitten, about 7 months old (and counting). We have been cat-sitting, and it has been lovely.
Here you see Miss TiVo, perched prettily om K’s lap the first time we met her, just a few months ago.
Also new to this post–pop-up photos. Nothing fancy, but damn I was tired of not having that function. (Have popups turned off? That’s what the ‘Allowed sites’ function is for.) I’ll pretty it up later. The links are popups too. Of different photos.
The second photo is of her now. You can see some of the kitten fluff is gone, but I can assure you that in no way has she parted with her kitten behavior! The eyes, however, are even more beguiling.
ArG has decided that the kitten thing is mostly ok. For the first few days, she was highly suspicious. But being ignored made her curious. TiVo played joyfully with GtG, chasing each other around the house until they both flopped down with exhaustion. 15 minutes later, the process was repeated.
When the sourpuss saw how much fun they were having, she sidled up near where they were playing. At first she watched from a perch above the field of play, but eventually she would sit just close enough to get involved when their skirmish got wild. GtG or TiVo would run her over and she could pretend to be highly offended.
Yes, that is photographic proof! You could not imagine how difficult it was to get that (bad) shot. Cats and dogs playing together–quick, get your apocalypse boots on.
We kept all parties separated during the day for the first couple of workdays. GtG went to doggy school. In the evenings, all bets were off and all critters were free. When no fur or blood flew, we started leaving the cats out together when we went to bed, figuring that any caterwauling would certainly wake us up.
None happened. For the most part, there has been copious snuggling, quite a bit of tail-chasing, and occasional romping. And let me just say that a two-cat bed (with two cats that are reasonably peaceable) is quite a delight. I had forgotten about the cat and kitten crazies, whereby pairs of cats play Calvin-ball at appointed hours in the middle of the night. Points are obviously scored for landing on sleeping humans, with tender bits garnering bonuses.
They do sleep, however, for large portions of the night. I don’t have any photos of that, so you’ll have to see sleeping cats in action during the day. ArG does not give up her throne easily. She still gets the top of the cat tree most of the time. TiVo typically takes the chair or one of the lower holes in the tree. K loves it when the cats are in the holes.
K is weird.
But there’s a few pictures of TiVo in the hole for her.
There’s yet another picture of TiVo in the hole, but it’s a bit weird. I was playing around with the digital camera again, trying to recreate some of the push photos I like to take with print film. Also, I asked one of our designers at work who can do amazing shit with photoshop to show me some neat tricks.
I did the same sort of thing with this photo of GtG, in repose. He is doing one of his favorite things: acting like a human. He’s on the couch, just hanging out. Sometimes he’ll go sit in there all by himself. I swear, the dog uses the actual living room more than we do.
Don’t let the cuteness fool you, though. They are wily devils and their adorableness is a sharp weapon.
How do I know this?
Because any other creature would cause great alarm if I awoke to it unexpectedly snuffling my neck at 4 in the morning. TiVo? I just thought, ‘Awww, how adorable!’ and carefully went back to sleep. She was laying on my back, between my shoulder blades. She was totally thinking about going all vampire on my ass.
March 27th, 2006 at 9:52 am
The cuteness! It burns! Burns like the demon sun!
Damn. Those are some good pics.
March 29th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
Holy crap, those are some adorable pictures. Wow. So awesome.
Also, Calvin Ball at 5am? Totally. Three nights ago, the kittens went blinds-crazy on top of our heads at 5am. The night before last, they were nestled on top of various parts of me most of the night. Last night, they ran laps around the living room ceiling when we went to bed. Kittens love them some Calvin Ball.
March 30th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
Kittens do love them some Calvin Ball.
We ended up with TiVo for a few extra days. She has recently been practicing her pratfalls–I think she might have a future job as a feline comedian.
Yesterday, while I was toweling off after a shower, she was rolling around on the toilet seat–with the lid down, as necessitated by her desire to splash around in toilet water.
She wriggled and stretched, trying to get my attention (or the attention of the other cat, most likely). In her enthusiasm, she squirmed a bit too much and fell off the seat and into the food and water bowl that sits beside the john. She was soaked through and the dry kibble stuck to her fur. I laughed at her as she struggled to right herself. She stalked away and she glared at me haughtily as she cleaned herself.
Then this morning, she repeated the process, in the kitchen. She was on the counter, trying to distract me as I grabbed a Coke Zero and headed out the door. She was thinking about climbing behind the refrigerator, but instead of jumping fearlessly, she hesitated, slid off the lid of the garbage can, and crashed into a stack of soda bottles.
Is it wrong that I just laughed, and didn’t help her get untangled? Probably.