Category: Cats

I'm happy to report that our new kitten, Trillian, is assimilating into the household quite nicely. I've seen her playing with Velvet and my husband has watched Xena initiating play with her.

It's great that Xena likes to play with Trillian, but there's one plaything that she simply will not share: my husband.

Thanks to Laurie Ruettimann, I have the perfect term to describe Xena's relationship with my husband: she's his kitteh wife.

This means that Xena feels compelled to (literally) fling herself into my husband's arms at every opportunity so he can carry her around and treat her like the queen she knows herself to be.

Today my husband reported that Trillian had climbed into his arms for a little attention. While he was petting her, Xena came into the room, shot hate-filled looks in the kitten's direction, very deliberately climbed up on the ottoman by my husband's feet and turned her back on them.

My husband eventually put Trillian down and tried to pet Xena, which earned him a bite on the hand. Xena then jumped down, chased the kitten into the basement, cornered her and started hassling her until she squalled for help.

So basically we're hosting the feline version of Rock of Love in our house right now, except that at least the cats stay out of our liquor cabinet. Do you think Sharon Osbourne is available to referee?

Please join me in welcoming Trillian to our household. Like the instant messaging software, she's named after a character in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series.

 
I adopted her from The Animal Rescue Alliance where I sometimes volunteer. I originally met her a couple of months ago and liked her very much. Every time I worked a pet adoption event that included her, I would carry her around in my arms so people could pet her, hoping to find her a great family. The last time around, I came to the conclusion that mine was the great family she was destined to find.

You might notice from the photo that her left ear tip is missing. That's because she was rounded up with a group of feral cats that were going to be spayed and neutered and then returned to their neighborhood after recovering from surgery. They "ear tip" the cats to mark that they've been fixed to save future animal welfare workers the hassle of catching them again later.

In this girl's case, she was tame and friendly enough that the group decided to adopt her out rather than return her to the streets. Thus, she has the lean physique of an alley cat with the mellow personality of a lap cat.

Our other cats are very interested in her, but not as hostile as you might expect. She was frightened of them at first, but it seems as though the transition is going to be pretty smooth.

Right now she's about seven months old and very petite. The perspective in the photo above is misleading: she's about two-thirds the size of Velcro (the calico on the bed) and maybe half the size of Xena (the cat on the floor).

I know I've always said that three cats is more than enough. My sister is already mocking me for my crazy cat lady ways. Still, Trillian is such a sweet, cuddly little thing that I didn't want to pass up the chance to include her in our lives. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go downstairs and snuggle with her some more.

This morning I gathered up all the cat toys I could find and put them back in their basket. It's possible that our cats might be a little spoiled.

 

Xena, a.k.a. 15 pounds of wet cement in a trash bag. Not that I have any room to talk, obviously.

I’ll never forget my first automated cat box. It was a LitterMaid, of course, and it did a pretty darned good job of cleaning up after the cats and reducing to a bare minimum my handling of their waste. I had two of them for four cats and they did an amazing job of making my house smell like a non cat owner’s house.

Eventually one of them broke and the company promptly sent a replacement. I had one of the original boxes and the replacement one for a number of years, but they finally wore out. Then began the struggle.

The new generation of LitterMaid boxes was awful. Some never worked at all, others stopped working within a month or so, and one managed to break its own mechanism to pieces. The company’s customer service declined with the technology and it was more trouble than it was worth to try to return or exhange them. Considering that they cost more than $100 each, this was upsetting in myriad ways.

I went back to regular litter boxes and clay litter while I sought an alternative. Despite my careful stewardship of the boxes, the house started to develop a cat funk that crept up the basement stairs and assaulted the nose.

I started seeing articles about the Litter Robot. It had almost 200 reviews on Amazon, most of which were very positive. The only drawback was the price, but considering how much I’d spent on faulty LitterMaids, it would be worth it if it worked as advertised.

Once I got my tax refund, I bit the bullet and ordered one. IT. IS. AWESOME!

As recommended, I eased the cats into it by removing one regular cat box at a time and letting the remaining ones get icky so that cats wouldn’t want to use them. Last weekend I took the regular boxes away and left the Litter Robot as the only option. The cats made the transition without a hitch, and now my house is back to smelling completely cat-free.

It sifts everything into a large drawer that you can line with pretty much any kind of plastic bag. Even when our A/C stopped working this week and we had the windows open and the attic fan on, no odor escaped the Litter Robot.

My only minor complaint – and this was mentioned by the Amazon reviewers as well – is that the cats manage to track a lot of litter out of it. It’s not that big of a deal for me because I keep mine in our circa 1970 ultra-modern finished basement (as seen in the photo). However, if you had it in the main part of your house, you’d probably want to put a mat in front of it to trap the litter.

So there’s my expensive product recommendation for the week. So far it seems to be able to handle all three cats, but I’d buy a second one in a heartbeat if I thought I needed it.

I’ve been noticing that Velcro is sleeping really hard these days and doesn’t even wake up when you come into the room or approach her. I’m starting to think she might be going deaf.

She’s at least 15 years old (she was my late mother’s cat, so we’re a little fuzzy on when she was born), and she’s already had one mastectomy for breast cancer. I hope she’s not running out of steam.

As her name suggests, Velcro cannot stand to spend a moment apart from her favorite humans. When I’m in the living room, she’s sitting on my lap. When I’m in the bathroom, she’s standing on the counter (except when she’s drinking out of the toilet). The sad thing is that she’s starting to get a little clumsy about jumping up on things, and sometimes she doesn’t quite make it and falls.

I’ve recently rescinded the "no cats in the bedroom at night" rule just because Velcro so enjoys sleeping on or next to me all night. I’ll admit it, I love the purring.

She’s due for a checkup at the vet, so I’m making her an appointment for Saturday. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she’ll be around for at least a few more years.

Xena’s latest trick is hopping on my back while I’m leaning forward over the bathroom counter to put in my contacts. The word "No" is apparently not in her limited vocabulary.

It would almost be kind of cute except that she uses her claws for purchase, and she really wants to stay once she’s up there. While bra shopping over the weekend, I discovered that I have no small number of scratches and punctures on my back and shoulders, thanks to her.

Speaking of bra shopping (guys, you can skip this part), I’d been reading over the past couple of weeks about Suzanne and Monkey going for professional fittings and I decided it was time I did the same, even though they had mixed results.

I went to Nordstrom because it was the only place I could think of that would offer bra fittings. It was Saturday afternoon, I happened to be dressed up because I’d been to a memorial service, and I hated to waste the chance to shop in a nice department store while not looking like a dirtbag who needs to keep her hands in plain sight for the security cameras.

It turned out that the size I’d been wearing was wrong in both directions: the band size was too big and the cup size was too small. Of course, I’m sure that’ll change again the instant I get out and start exercising regularly, but it’s awfully nice to be this comfortable for now.

We won’t even talk about the ridiculous amount of money I spent on two bras. I tried on different ones for what seemed like hours, and I was happy to fork over any amount for the two that fit and looked decent under a t-shirt.

I don’t know where to go with this narrative after a digression like that, so I suppose I’ll stop here and get ready for work, shutting Xena out of the bathroom beforehand. Enjoy your Monday!

When we got our cat, Velvet, the shelter told us her story. She’d belonged to a family that got a dog and apparently decided they didn’t want a cat anymore. They tossed her outside and stopped feeding her, so she wandered through the neighborhood trying to get into people’s houses. By the time a kind-hearted neighbor finally took her to the shelter, she was malnourished and parasite-ridden. She lived at the shelter for seven months before she came to live with us, so her life was definitely anything but pleasant until recently.

Upon her first trip to the vet, he estimated that she was about six years old, and he strongly recommended that we have her teeth cleaned because she’d already lost some teeth and the others were pretty grotty. I finally saved up the money (it’s expensive because they do blood work and x-rays and there’s anesthesia involved) and took her in yesterday.

She did NOT want to let me put her in the cat carrier. I imagine that a once-abandoned cat is probably even less amenable to vet visits than the average cat. I managed to stuff her in without having to wake up my husband, but it was touch and go there for a while.

They cleaned her teeth and removed a small growth from beneath her eye. The procedures went fine and I picked her up after work. She was still a bit groggy when I got her home, so I planned to confine her in my dressing room with food, water and a cat box until she shook off the effects of the anesthetic. So much for that plan. She made a beeline for the basement and crawled up into the ceiling the instant I opened the carrier.

It didn’t help that Xena acted as though she’d forgotten who Velvet was in the nine hours she’d been gone. She got all brushy-tailed and hissy and "Stranger! Danger!" as soon as I brought the carrier in. Sheesh.

All evening long I kept trying to figure out exactly where Velvet was in the basement ceiling, but I couldn’t see her anywhere, even with a flashlight. Our ceiling is partially sheetrocked, but large portions of it have been removed for various remodeling projects. It’s the best hidey-hole a cat could ask for.

I finally spotted her this morning and got her to look at me. I gave her a catnip toy to try to wake her up a bit more and eventually she came upstairs and ate. Xena and Velcro both stared at her evilly as if they’d never seen her before.

I hoped she’d stay upstairs and either go to sleep in our bed with my husband or lie in her window hammock, but she decided she needed to hide in the basement some more. Poor kitty.

I predict that everyone will settle down today and be back to normal by this evening. I’m leaving for work and my husband’s asleep, so the cats will have to work things out on their own.

moar funny pictures

Here’s an old photo of our much-missed cat, Kato, preparing to lick the peppermints on the gingerbread house until they ooze red onto the pristine snowcap of the roof.

Speaking of cats who can’t be trusted with Christmas decorations, my husband and I have realized that there’s no way we can put up a Christmas tree anywhere near our year-old cat, Xena. She would systematically remove every ornament and piece of tinsel, breaking the breakables and snarling the tangleables. Then again, she might just climb the tree and knock the whole thing down at once.

Thus, the tree is going in the bay window of the recording studio this year. I’ll content myself with some garlands in the living room out of Xena’s reach (assuming there is such as thing as out of her reach).

I don’t think I’ll put up decorations this weekend, though. Perhaps next weekend.

One last LOL before I sign off. I don’t know why I thought this LOLhamster was so funny, but it made me laugh and laugh when I saw it.

Have a great Saturday! Leave a comment! 😉