Hiding in Plain Sight

Harri thinks that if she stays in the laundry basket she is safe from Buddy the bully.
I'm going to get her a laundry basket of her very own because this one usually has dirty (and sometimes clean) clothes in it.



And Mimi thinks that nobody can see her, either.



You can just barely see her little paws peeking out, though.

There she is! Sound asleep.

Cats in the Cupboard-Again

Last night while relaxing in front of TV watching the evening news, I heard some banging noises coming from the kitchen and knew right away that we must have shut a cupboard door on one of our unsuspecting cats. They're strong enough to push the door open a little bit, just enough so that it will close again with a bang, but not quite strong enough to push it open all the way.

So, I go into the kitchen to see who got stuck inside the cupboard and see Mimi staring at the cupboard door, so, no, it's not her. I open up the cupboard and there's Lucy looking back out at me like 'Hey! What's the matter with you shutting that door on me? It's dark in here!'

We usually do a head count once a day to make sure nobody's missing in action, with six of them there's always somebody getting into something.

Looking Out My Back Door

Creedence Clearwater Revival circa 1970 something:

Just got home from illinois, lock the front door, oh boy!
Got to sit down, take a rest on the porch.
Imagination sets in, pretty soon Im singin,

Doo, doo, doo, lookin out my back door.

Theres a giant doing cartwheels, a statue wearin high heels.
Look at all the happy creatures dancing on the lawn.
A dinosaur victrola listning to buck owens.

Doo, doo, doo, lookin out my back door.

Tambourines and elephants are playing in the band.
Wont you take a ride on the flyin spoon?
Doo, doo doo.
Wondrous apparition provided by magician.

Doo, doo, doo, lookin out my back door.

Tambourines and elephants are playing in the band.
Wont you take a ride on the flyin spoon?
Doo, doo doo.
Bother me tomorrow, today, Ill buy no sorrows.

Doo, doo, doo, lookin out my back door.

Forward troubles illinois, lock the front door, oh boy!
Look at all the happy creatures dancing on the lawn.
Bother me tomorrow, today, Ill buy no sorrows.

Doo, doo, doo, lookin out my back door.

This song is now going through my head on an endless loop after seeing the kitties doing this today.

Hi!

Whatcha doing?


Just chillin here.

Buddy and Lucy

They like to sleep in the middle of the floor so that you have to step over them. Either they are very trusting or they just like to make you step over them.

Can We Come Out And Play Too?

I was out in the back yard and turned around and saw my audience.

All lined up wishing they could come outside, too. No, we don't let them out and while some people think it isn't 'natural' to keep your kitties inside, our budget just doesn't allow for the flea medicine and the parasite medicine and the extra trips to the vet when they get beat up by other cats.

This morning I woke up to find a big shop towel covered with sawdust and metal shavings laying in the middle of the living room. I'm guessing that someone decided to drag that big shop towel-actually an old bath towel- from the garage through the kitty door and into the living room. Why? I don't know.

Mmmm...Funky!

Your pile of dirty smelly sweaty funky clothes make such a lovely bed to lay on. My olfactory senses thank you!
And, we got a new kitty bed-I mean office chair for the studio. My back has been hurting a lot so we spent the money on an ergonomically correct kitty bed-I mean office chair-for me.

I like to sleep under the furniture because I know you can't see me.

And we like to squish ourselves between metal and wood for our naps.

Sweet Little Lucy

Unlike Buddy and Mimi who will leap onto your shoulders when they want some attention, Lucy will very delicately put her little paws onto your leg and wait until you pick her up for her petting. She usually does this in the afternoon when I am working on the computer of course, so I pick her up and pet her and give her hugs. None, and I mean none of the other cats will let you pick them up and put them on your lap. Buddy and Mimi both struggle to get down and Pepper growls if you pick her up. Harri and Bear will tolerate it for a minute as both of them are very timid kitties, but the expressions on their faces let you know that they are not too happy about being picked up.

But, sweet little Lucy likes to be held and petted-for a few minutes at least.

Here she is being an itty bitty kitty again. I remember when all three of the little ones could all fit in this basket together!

An Awwww Moment

Sometimes these kitties just make you go awwwww....so cute!

although this view looks vaguely obscene.

Just Warm Blooded Furniture

I remember reading somewhere that to a cat you are just a piece of furniture-albeit with warm blood and the ability to open cat food cans.

I was sitting on the couch watching TV the other night while Buddy was racing around the living room chasing Mimi. Apparently I was in his way because he raced right up and over me in his quest to get Mimi. Didn't even say excuse me.

Derailment

Keith was playing with his new train set on Sunday afternoon, which of course totally fascinated all the kitties. Can you imagine if you were a little tiny person on the little tiny train and saw this huge predatory kitty lurking over the tracks? Aaaaaaaggghhhhh!! It's a monster!!

Lucy was a little leery of the train and was safely up on the nearby shelf where she would delicately stretch out her paw to touch the train as it went by.

Mimi just plopped herself down right in the middle of all the action, blocking the track with her tail.

Great kitty entertainment.

This Is What

We woke up to this morning. Apparently the hundreds of kitty toys we buy for the kids are not enough to keep them entertained.

Buddy Loves His Daddy

Just like human kids who think that Dad is just the best thing ever, not like Mom who is always home telling them what to do and making them eat their vegetables, Buddy thinks that Keith is just the greatest. He's got big hands and knows all the right petting spots, he smells all funky and interesting when he comes home from work, his beard is scratchy, and when he lays down he makes a nice soft spot for sleeping on.

Buddy is getting really big now and very muscular and just a solid heavy kitty, but when Keith lays down he still wants to be little baby kitty and get cuddled. He gets on Keith's chest and walks around a little, gets some petting and scratching, then just flops his big body right onto Keith's neck and lays there and purrs.
Best Buds Forever!
I love my Daddy!

Sleeping Lucy

Lucy really really enjoys her naps and especially enjoys taking them right in the middle of the hallway so that you always have to watch your step around here.

I had to take all angles of this strange position-she does this all the time, sleeps in the most awkward looking arrangements ever.
She's so trusting of us that you can walk right over her and she never even flinches.


ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ...kitty dreamland.

And Then There Were Two

Pepper lived an idyllic life with her status of 'only spoiled kitty' until the summer that she turned one, when Harrison who I call Little Bit came to live with us.

That year 2ndhusband's daughter came to live with us for a while, which is a whole other story. In the house behind us lived a couple of young partying type men who never mowed their back yard but had an abandoned lawn mower sitting in the foot high grass One day we heard kitten in distress sounds so 2ndhusband climbed over the fence and found a litter of kittens under the abandoned lawnmower, one kitten of which was in the grass catcher part of the lawn mower, which was filled up with water from recent rain, crying, soaking wet, and trying to escape sure death by drowning. 2ndhusband rescued the kitten from drowning and put it back under the lawn mower with the rest of the kittens. We just assumed that these kittens belonged to the party boys that lived in the house and didn't think much more about them. Well, a few weeks later, here comes stepdaughter and her friend with three of these little kittens saying 'can we keep them?' Turns out the party boys claimed no knowledge of these kittens and didn't own any cats, so we let stepdaughter and her friend take care of these little kittens. The friend wanted to keep one, but her dad was allergic to cats, so she was going to keep this kitten in a cage in her backyard. Not. So we let stepdaughter keep the kitten she had become attached to and gave the other two away out in front of wal-mart. One of the kittens we called Popeye, he was all black with big huge bulging eyes, but a man outside of wal-mart saw him and just had to take him home. I'm assuming both of the given away kittens became cherished family pets, but who knows? So, stepdaughter named her little black kitten with the white stripe on her nose Harrison something something something. She had four names for this kitten, three of which I can't remember. Harrison is a stupid name for a girl kitty, and being a little bitty thing, I started calling her Little Bit.

I don't remember that much of her kittenhood, just that Pepper was a little pissed off at this interloper and would whack her on the head-bam, bam, bam-whenever she came too close. Little Bit would try to play with Pepper by leaping on her but Pepper would have none of that nonsense. We did have some houseplants that Little Bit would full body leap into and dig around in the dirt, so the houseplants soon went outside.
Little Bit grew up and became a somewhat reclusive little cat, she is very petite albeit really fluffy, and prefers to spend her time away from the rest of the bunch, just barely tolerating the other cats. She has vampire teeth that hang out of her mouth, so sometimes I call her vampire kitty.
She used to sleep with us almost every night with a little ritual that involved 2ndhusband getting into bed and Little Bit turning herself around and fitting in between his side and his arm in a convenient position for the ultimate in petting. She doesn't do this as much now because she is always on the lookout for another cat getting into her space. She gets stressed easily, especially when Buddy gets all worked up and starts chasing her around the house.
Little Bit is not the most photogenic of our cats, but in real life she is cute-here she looks a little cock-eyed. She reminds me of a reclusive movie star-'I just vant to be alone!'

More About Pepper-Or, Back When We Only Had One Feline

Pepper's shooting me the 'I wish you were dead except then who would feed me' look right now since I had to remove her from my chair so I could sit down at the computer.

It's kind of hard to remember back in the days when Pepper was a cute little kitten-I know she wasn't cuddly, she hates to be picked up and is most definitely not a lap cat. She has always been feisty and her favorite thing as a kitten was to hide and then run out and bite your ankles when you least expected it. My hands were always scratched up because she liked to play rough.

We kept her inside for her first few months, deciding to get one of those cat harnesses so that we could take her outside but keep her from getting into trouble or hit by a car or something. We put the little harness on her and took her out front, attaching the end of the harness around a pole so that she wouldn't stray. I went back inside for just a minute and came back out to an empty harness and Pepper sitting a few feet away with the first of many many of the 'I wish you were dead except then who would feed me' looks she has given me over the years.

So, Pepper became an indoor/outdoor cat without a harness-this changed a year or so ago when we started keeping all the cats inside after Pepper left me a huge pile of poo that was filled with still squirming worms, we spent hundreds of dollars on Advantage for fleas, and all the cats were diagnosed with an intestinal parasite called giardia-sp?-that can cause internal bleeding and very loose stools. The medicine they give cats for giardia causes cats to foam at the mouth and run around the house like lunatics, and then hide under the bed for the next four hours, coming out only to give you more of the 'I wish you were dead' looks.

Since we keep all of our cats inside now, no big Advantage bills, no squirming poo, and no foaming at the mouth.

So, Pepper was the Queen of the house until we adopted a little stray black kitten about a year later, and she has never ever forgiven us for that one. She only puts up with us because we can open cat food cans.

How it All Began

I was never a big cat person and neither was my (2nd and current-if he behaves himself) husband. He'd had a cat growing up and we also had a cat growing up, but I could kind of take them or leave them. When my kids were teenagers they convinced me to let them bring home a kitten from one of the never ending litters of kittens born at their Grandma's house. She loved animals but neglected to spay all of her cats so there were always litters of kittens at her house. So, they brought home a little grey tabby kitten, promising to feed it and keep its litter box clean, which of course happened rarely if ever. The cat box was in their bathroom and apparently it didn't bother them that a cloud of noxious fumes greeted them each time they opened the door. So, little grey tabby grew up, shredded my nice new sofas, and spent a lot of time sleeping at the foot of my bed. We never really named him, he was just known as Kitty, and then when he started spraying and we knew for sure that he was a boy (and got him fixed) we started calling him Mr. Kitty, which sounded a little more dignified. We are not good at determining cat sexes.
Of course, both of my teenagers grew up too and moved away, leaving Mr. Kitty with me, so when I got married and moved away, I gave Mr. Kitty back to my daughter, where he currently resides, very pissed off sometimes because in addition to Mr. Kitty, she and her husband have a dog and a new kitty. Grrrrrr...
We moved into a little house 100 miles away and thought our days of scooping cat shit and opening cans of cat food were done.
Nope.
A few months after we moved in, son calls and asks if we could take his kitten in-also a little grey tabby-because his crazy wife wouldn't let him keep it and was being abusive to it. So, soft hearted people that we are we said sure, bring the little kitty over. We didn't know if it was a girl or a boy but son assured us that it was a boy. Not-when we finally took HER to the vet, they assured us it was indeed a girl. A very rambunctious scratchy bitey little girl. After a few months we decided on the name Pepper, which suits her well, since pepper is kind of a bitey scratchy spice, not something you want to use too much of, and she's kind of peppery colored. She is now 4 years old and very fat and cranky. We had to put her on a kitty diet and she's not too happy about that, not that I blame her.
We have no baby kitty pictures of her since we had no camera back then, so here is a picture of her current fat cranky sassy self.
She goes nuts over the smell of celery and attacks the grocery bags if we bring celery home. And oddly enough, she likes pepper and will lick the top of the pepper shaker so now we have cat slime flavored pepper.
She's praying to the fancy feast goddess for opposable thumbs.