Today, our little “family” (myself, my husband, and our cat Rory) became complete with the addition of this tiny little darling:
Meet River, Rory’s new little playmate. Yep, we’re those annoying Whovians. Get over it 😉
River’s been home now for almost two hours, and she and Rory have been cautiously ignoring each other for about an hour. There was a lot of hissing and growling on both sides when she first arrived, and they haven’t been very close to each other, but I’m optimistic that once they get used to each other they’ll get along swimmingly.
Rory has always enjoyed playing with the cats living at my parents’ house when he went over there to visit, but he’s never had a permanent “sibling” living with him. He’s been, essentially, an “only child,” which means he’s never had to share his territory. For an animal like a cat, that’s a huge adjustment to make. I think they’ll be okay though. I wouldn’t be surprised if they start getting along within a couple of days at most.
I’m happy that River feels safe enough here to doze a bit. She’s still wary enough to fight going fully into a deep sleep, but she’s doing really well. I look forward to when she and Rory start playing together and cuddling and all the things that kitties do when they’re friends.
Category: Cats
Pitter-patter
No, no, it’s not what you might think. We’re not “expecting”–ZERO chance of that–but we’re expecting to be expanding our family soon. Our little Rory-kins is about to be a big kitty in a bigger house than he’s used to, and since we’ll be free from apartment life we’ve decided it’s high time we get him a little friend to play with.
We’re looking at two prospects in Phoenix, but one of them is highly sought-after according to the foster owner, so it will likely be the other. We’d like either one of them, really, and they’re both so stinkin’ cute on the Petfinder site! The best thing is both pet profiles state that the kittens do well with other cats, so that’s a definite bonus. We’d hate to go through the adoption process only to find that Cat X has territory issues or something.
Fingers crossed that Rory has a little brother or sister soon!
There but not there
He sat in silence, tail twitching, ears turned towards his target.
Pulling my legs up onto the couch (theoretically a place safe from whatever it was that he was hunting), I peeked over the edge, trying to spy what he stalked. I saw nothing, and for some reason an icy chill crawled up my spine. Was it a harmless bug? Was it–*gasp*–a spider? I didn’t know if I could handle a spider on my own. Eight-legged demons, they are.
Without warning he pounced, and I felt myself jump despite my determination to remain calm. Did he get it?
No, it seemed he didn’t. When he stood back to observe his handiwork, there was nothing on the floor. I relaxed for a moment until his body went rigid again…save for that twitching tail.
Dare I get off the couch to see what it was? If I put my feet down, would The Thing Beneath bite me? I swallowed back a lump of fear and ever-so-slowly began to get up, keeping the cat between me and whatever it was he was determined to murder. Inch by inch, I got down on my knees and bent over, looking under the couch, praying it was a ball of lint or long-lost cat toy.
Nothing. There was nothing.
The cat still stalked this nothing for several minutes before following me into the other room, the nothing-that-he-thought-was-something apparently forgotten.
Shaking my head, I chuckled to myself as I turned out the lights and snuggled next to my sleeping husband. It was just my imagination, I thought, or perhaps the cat’s. Nothing more.
Then I heard a door open and close.
We have no roommates.
The life of a cat
Man, some days I wish I could be a housecat.
Sleeping all the time. When I’m not sleeping, I’m eating, drinking, or playing. I have people that love me. I have food provided. I have sand to poop in.
Any surface is a bed. Any surface. I can get comfortable in the most uncomfortable of positions. My house is my domain, even when I’m the smallest person there.
Any thing is a toy. Any thing. A ball. A bell. A pen. A ball of my own fur. The only limits to my play are the limits to my imagination … which has no limits.
I am loved so much. I get petted and scratched and snuggled. My every need provided, my every want met.
Some days I wish I could be a housecat.
Cat Logic
Okay, so it’s 3:30 in the morning. My cat has already woken me up an hour ago to give him his morning feeding (and just because he believes I need to be woken up at 2:00-3:00 in the morning). He has also decided that it’s play time, which is weird for him since he usually waits until my husband wakes up for that.
He brought me a crumpled up receipt about 30 minutes ago. This means, in Rory speak, that he wants to play fetch with it. At 3:00 in the morning. When my husband is still asleep.
In his little mind, now is the perfect time to play. Momma’s up, so it’s playtime. I know he’ll eventually give up and go off to sleep somewhere else in the apartment, but it’s still annoying. I’m trying to goof off on the Internet instead of working on cosplay stuff like I could be doing. Silly kitty, doesn’t he know?
Then again, if I do get out of bed and go to the craft room, he’ll definitely think it’s playtime. All bets are off if I’m in there. It’s on the opposite side of the apartment, so not as much risk of waking up my husband while playing.
Perhaps that’s what he wants–for me to go to the other room.
Who knows. It’s cat logic, after all.
The cat came back the very same day
Rory, Rory, Rory. What am I going to do with you?
I’ve tried feeding him later at night so he’s not as hungry in the morning. I’ve tried closing him out of the bedroom at night. I’ve tried ignoring him. I’ve tried holding him down so he can’t knead on my throat.
But the cat just keeps coming back.
Rory is too smart for my own good. When we first got him, I was having insomnia. I’d wake up between 0130 and 0200 every morning and be unable to go back to sleep. Rory decided that this meant I was supposed to be up at this time, and I have not had an uninterrupted night of sleep since.
I tried untraining him, but that hasn’t worked. He has his mind set that I am awake at a certain time, and that’s that. Granted, he has started waking me up a tad later–like around 0215-0300–but the cat just keeps coming back.
Some mornings, like today, I can tell he just wants food. Still, I wait at least an hour until I feed him so he (hopefully) doesn’t get an immediate association between me waking up and him eating.
Some mornings, he just wants me up. I’ll try to go back to sleep only to have him come back an hour later and start in again. He doesn’t necessarily want anything in particular. In fact, sometimes he immediately goes off to the other room to go back to sleep himself. It’s like once I’m awake all is right with the world and he can rest easy knowing he did his job.
I know I should shut up and accept my fate, but there’s got to be a better way.
I’ll keep trying new things.
But the cat will still come back.
Cold nights, warm feet
It’s getting to that time of year: the cold has arrived, and my cat has noticed.
We keep the apartment warm enough, but as I’m sure you know sometimes that doesn’t cut it. The cold just seeps in. Thankfully, my cat and I have developed a somewhat symbiotic relationship, in which he warms himself by my feet and my feet are warmed by him.
Sometimes, however, this cuddling becomes inconvenient. Last night, he decided to sleep between my feet, which would have been fine had I not needed to get up during the night. As with most sleeping animals that get in your way, he would not move when I came back to bed and I was stuck having to curl up in a ball to fit. (Luckily, I am able to sleep in a near-fetal position.)
I kind of wish he hadn’t gone off to stalk some imaginary creature. My feet are a little cold right now.
Early in the morning
Some mornings I have to get up early for work.
And some mornings, there’s Rory.
My cat does not seem to understand the concept of allowing me to sleep past 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. Every morning, he at least attempts to get me to wake up around that time, though sometimes I can fend him off and get back to sleep for another hour or two.
Rory is a little too smart for my own good. He trained himself to play fetch…and he trained himself to wake me up early in the morning.
It’s slowly getting better. This morning, after his failed 2:30 a.m. attempt, he let me get back to sleep until 4:30. Which, on a day when I don’t have to get up until 5:30 or 6:00 a.m., is still a bit early, but it’s an improvement.
My muse had been silent for a while, but I think I may have an idea for another novel. It’s kind of contrived and probably has been done before, but I’m hoping I can execute it well and have a good story. This time, I’m going to try to put more thought into the plot and not pants it quite so much. The last couple of times I tried pantsing, the results fell rather flat. If the plot does come along, I’ll have something more to do in the mornings other than just mess around on Facebook and Twitter 😉