Cats, Sheep, & Penguins » Cats

Boys will be boys

lysa — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:35:55 +0000

At ten months and two weeks today, they’re such a far cry from the little alien-looking night monkey creatures that invaded our lives last year. Being responsible parents, they’ve been neutered, although the ethics of that surgery were debated until we read an excellent book by Anitra Frazier, The New Natural Cat: A Complete Guide for Finicky Owners. It goes over all of the biological, hormonal, and emotional changes that are going on in your little kitten, and the very good reasons for spaying or neutering her or him. There are no good reasons, other than professionally breeding your cat, to keep your kitten reproductively intact. Ms. Frazier has a host of good advice which she dispenses readily, most of which we were already following, either by our own common sense, having learned from years of living with cats, or from our wonderful vet (she makes house calls).

Without further ado, here are current pictures of our sleek and shiny teenagers, complete with attitude.

And Leon’s getting larger!

lysa — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:14:39 +0000

Well, there’s no Leon here (ten points if you get the reference), but certainly Mojo and Teazyka, weighing in at 2 pounds, 6.0 ounces and 2 pounds, 4.6 ounces respectively as of 9:23 am August 20th. Mojo has “made friends” with Harry (throws himself into Harry’s face so Harry runs away) and gets licked by Tigger and is scaring the bejezus out of Pye. She’s so upset that her asthma is back. In spades. It’s time for the Prednisone again, I think. We fed her atop the dining room table tonight; she hissed at both babies, then Harry. I put them to bed while I was working; they were throwing themselves at their door, so I let them back out. They’re wreaking havoc somewhere, and I need to get to sleep. I’ll post this quick and edit in the morning if need be. Gratuitous cuteness:

Knockabout Clowns

garrison — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:11:59 +0000

Looking more like cats, here are some pix of the boys slowly passing out after fun and frolic last weekend. Look closely and you’ll see that Ivan Rumpelteazer is slightly darker than Yevgeny Mungojerrie; each now weighs about one and a half pounds.

Lorisidae Catus?

garrison — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:40:14 +0000

Our friend Martha sent an e-mail a last month explaining:

I responded to a loud meowling out my kitchen window. She stood there plaintively, a petite grey and black striped cat with yellow eyes on my ten dollar ikea chair. When I opened the window she leapt up, meowling more loudly. I let her in the basement- she was probably pregnant and too clean to be one of the cats who lives behind us.

And I went to bed- it had been a long day.

Early Saturday I went downstairs to find kittymom had made it through- she came out and drank some water after two days. Her litter (i thought there were three of them) were tucked under the tub and I could only hear their squeaks.

It turns out there were eight tiny mewlers (donner, blitzen, oh- wrong story) in that litter; although I’m told the young mother clearly knew her way around the neighborhood and cared for her babies, after seven days, she disappeared without a trace. Rather than call the FBI’s missing person’s unit, Martha and her husband Jim carefully cut into their bathroom wall and extracted the hungry little buggers.

Lysa and I had been talking about adding another cat to our furry tribe, so we promptly sent a response to say that we would be thrilled to adopt one. Last night we drove out to Queens and met Martha, Jim, and their next door neighbors, all were exhausted from meeting the demands of eight diminutive despots. Through photos and e-mail, Lysa had more or less determined which one she wanted and upon her arrival it promptly fell asleep in her arms, sealing the deal.

Social obligation precluded an immediate retreat, and the time we spent believing we were enjoying the company of friends, food, and drink became the perfect opportunity for another of the sneaky little bastards to fall asleep on me. Fortunately we escaped before being talked into a third.

Now we’re the proud parents of two adorable fuzzy mutant Felinae/Lorisidae cross breeding experiment. If you can’t picture a loris, think of a bush baby (Galagidae) or aye-aye (Daubentoniidae); if you have no idea what such creatures are, just think of little wet nosed night monkeys, or look at the photos below.