aceofkittens

As I may have mentioned previously, every morning at 6:00 a.m., I am awakened by what I call "The Alarm Claw." In addition to lovingly applying his claws to my face, Chip basically starts to do his best impression of a mountain goat by bouncing repeatedly onto my head. If I scrunch down to hide under the covers and Chip can't scoop me out, he goes over and starts to do the same thing to invisiblebf until the latter roars out something like, "Get up and feed the cats!" except with a few more expletives.

Meanwhile, Sprat just sits patiently and quietly nearby, supporting the wall in the way that he does. He has only tried to use The Alarm Claw on me once and it was more of an "Alarm-Purr." We like to pretend that Chip "deputized" Sprat to give it a shot, but Sprat just didn't pass muster. Maybe it's a very complicated game of "Good Cat, Bad Cat" that they're playing with me... I'm not sure. In any case, I'm not willing to give up my glorious nighttime kitty cuddles, not even for a good night's sleep. Besides, if we close the door, Chip claws at it relentlessly and makes piteous squeaking noises. Thus I live with The Alarm Claw as a fact of life.

So that's all well and good, except a few days ago, Chip decided that 6 was too late for breakfast and started applying The Alarm Claw at 5:00 a.m.! Perhaps this was revenge for the fact that we were gone for three days and my mom came and fed them at odd times (certainly never at 6:00 a.m.!). For the first two days, I alternated hiding under the covers, throwing Chip off the bed, and saying "NO" in firm voice, but all these pitiful attempts to get a few more minutes of sleep failed miserably. This morning, however, invisiblebf had had enough. After Chip jumped onto his face at 5:05 or so, he got up and ejected both cats from the room. Before closing the door, he cleverly placed two big pillows against it as a barrier to prevent Chip from scratching at it. Ah, blissful sleep...

It was 6:30 when we woke up next. "I guess I'll go ahead and feed them," I mumbled, stumbling to the door and opening it. The pillow barrier had held up beautifully and both cats were sitting to one side of it, gazing up at me with grave reproach. Also in front of the pillows: three dark lumps of poo on the floor. Nooooo! Well, at least I didn't step in it.

"I'm telling you," I said to invisiblebf, "Chip wore a satisfied look. Like: yeah, THAT's what I think about you and your pillows and closed doors and opposable thumbs." "Chip would never do that," invisiblebf replied, "It's my fault. I locked him away from his litter box and he didn't want to use Sprat's."

I was ready to stay grumpy, but then Chip jumped up on my pillow and put his paws around my neck and purred me back to sleep. All was forgiven.

Who knew there were so many videos on this fascinating website called YouTube! ;) Some of them contain cute cats.

Startling discovery.

Speaking of cute cats, earlier this week, Sprat stole a potato chip and ran off with it. I made him relinquish his prey, but he was very grumpy about it. He is currently licking some sort of cracker crumb off my pant-leg. We are a classy act around here.

Thanks to the amazing and wonderful fairyarmadillo, my foster cat Ghost has found a home! Ghost will now be living with fairyarmadillo's dad and stepmom up in Lake County.

I wish it had worked out for him to stay with me, but he just wasn't happy here. I'm so grateful to fairyarmadillo for setting this up and helping make it happen. It just couldn't have worked out more perfectly. His new family are awesome people who love cats and he will have other cat friends and a lot of space to run around. I will get to hear about how he's doing and maybe even see him sometime. I know that he will be loved and have a wonderful life.

But of course I miss the little weirdo. It's so quiet now.

( Pic of Ghost under the cut )

My mom is in the midst of having the kitchen remodeled, so there are contractors and workmen stomping all over the house and the whole place smells like fresh paint and varnish. As a result, her cats are very traumatized and mostly hiding in the closet or under the blankets on her bed. She showed me the presents she plans to give them when this unbearable ordeal is over, so of course I then had to go to four different Walgreens stores in order to buy Chip an identical incredibly adorable and cute cat bed:

He is ignoring it, of course. :)

So, uh...

Does anyone want a kitten? Or two?

I'm going on a kitten-snatching mission on Saturday. The kittens are 6-week old tabbies with white socks. I wish I could keep them, but I can't. :(

HALP! :D

RIP, Vassilissa
5/18/1994-5/22/2008
( Read more... )

It has been brought to my attention (ahem!) that I have been remiss in posting photos of Chip. That's true. Here are some recent photos! :)

( Four medium-sized photos of the best cat ever )

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce...

( Charles Konstantinovich Chapayev, Marquess of Cholmondeley )

This morning, as I drove to work, I was just merging into the middle lane after the 10 East/110 interchange, when I saw what I thought was this fluttery black plastic bag being tossed out of a car in the lane to the right of the fast lane. In that moment, I watched the way it went from the car's window, hard against the ground... then up again and lurching across the fast lane toward the shoulder on the left. A puzzlement flashed through me, because plastic bags just don't do that kind of thing. In the next nanosecond, my eyes re-interpreted what they were seeing and my brain started screaming into overdrive.

Because it was a kitten. I saw it clearly: probably about 8 or so weeks old, dark gray/black. Someone threw a kitten out of their fucking car onto the fucking I-10 East freeway. It was still alive, but I was in the middle lane, and going too fast to get over. Plus, the shoulder on the left side is dangerously narrow.

So of course I went back. You see, in my mind, that was already my cat. Another chance at the perfect kitten. It took me a while to get back over there, because of traffic and the way the freeways connect in that area. When I got there, I pulled over into the narrow shoulder, with my hazards on, inching forward as cars whipped past going 70. But the kitten was gone. Not squished, just gone.

I have to believe someone else stopped for it.