Crazy cat people: Transformation complete?
Thursday, December 4, 2008
It is time to continue the story of our apparent transformation into crazy cat people. I left off a couple of months ago with my two “Autumn cats” posts.
When we moved out of our apartment in October, we did in fact bring two outside/stray cats (Daisy and The King) with us to our new house, to give them more stable, healthy lives. The King has happily stuck around, but Daisy (kind of expectedly) ran off, even after we tried to acclimate her in our garage for a couple of weeks. She was fairly nuts though. So we had two inside cats and one outside cat.
Then, on the last Sunday in October, as we were doing the final cleaning before dropping off the keys to our old apartment, our neighbor Matt showed us the two stray male kittens he had just trapped. Apparently there are still a few fertile adult cats hidden under various buildings in the apartment complex, despite our best efforts. The kittens were only about two months old then. We took photos of them for Matt, hoping to share them with some nice people who might want to adopt the kittens. Below are five photos from October 26.
Kittens are so cute. Their mother is a tuxedo-colored cat (black with a white chest) and we think their father must’ve been part Siamese, based on their markings. Like our cat Eli, the two kittens could be closely related to either Daisy or The King, since they’re from the same cat colony.
Matt continued to take care of the kittens in his apartment for a few weeks. But in mid-November, he gave us a call and asked if we would babysit the kittens for a week or so, to give him a break, since he has several other cats and was going to visit family for Thanksgiving. We agreed, knowing full well that it was a trick, and that in a week’s time we would find the kittens too adorable to give up. Because we’re total suckers. And, you know, it’s the holiday season, the spirit of giving, and blah blah blah. The justification continued with thoughts like this: Well, we do have more than twice as much room in the house as we had in the apartment, so doubling the housecat population is totally reasonable. Yeah.
So, yeah, we’re keeping them. Now we have four indoor cats and one outdoor cat. But this is it. We’ve reached pet capacity. Unless I get a special message from the Old Testament God telling me to collect additional animals and convert my house into an ark (or, I suppose, if I truly go nuts and become an animal hoarder), this is the limit for pets. The 10-gallon fishtank plus four indoor cats. No more. Three indoor cats would be more sane, but we didn’t want to split up the brothers like we did to Eli and Repete last year.
Here are two pictures of Shadow the kitten on Thanksgiving, at around three months old. We thought about calling him Ewok, for obvious reasons, or Frost, because his dark gray fur looks frosted at the tips. But his propensity for lurking beneath and behind things made naming him easy. Shadow’s starting to grow out of his excessive hissing now and becoming quite sociable.
Below are two pictures of blue-eyed Tanuki. He’s sleeping with his new friend Eli in the second photo.
As you can see, Tanuki is quite Siamese-looking with some raccoon-like markings. I originally wanted to call him Rorschach, but this suggestion was rejected and countered with the name Taffypants. And I could not have this little guy named Taffypants. I mean, really. So I came up with Tanuki as a compromise. Tanuki is the Japanese word for a species of raccoon dog found in Japan. You may also remember the Tanooki Suit from Super Mario Bros. 3. Same thing. Tanukis are magical, shapeshifting animals in Japanese folklore. See Studio Ghibli’s Pom Poko for evidence.
Here’s the whole famdamnly playing together on Thanksgiving, including Eli and Lily:
And here’s an indoor fambly portrait to wrap things up:
I will leave you with these: How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You and Techno Kittens.