The New Natural Cat: A Complete Guide for Finicky Owners

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

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.

My sister-in-law had already made icing, using confectioner’s sugar, milk, and shortening according to a family recipe, coloring it with Wilton Paste Colors . I don’t like the taste of the shortening nor the thickness it imparts; my icing used heavy cream and confectioner’s sugar only, but I just had the regular food coloring bottles you can buy in the supermarket. What a n00b! On Boxing Day I went out to A.C. Moore and procured some Wilton Colors for myself; I found them to be much richer. I’d brought some décoratifs that I’d bought at Crate & Barrel in the shapes of snowflakes, gingerbread men, candy canes, and Christmas trees, and we used some cinnamon dots as well. My niece helped decorate a few, but I slogged through most of them myself, only pausing to eat the broken ones. I’m new at this, so be gentle in your criticism.