T - 2 Weeks

Tica and Lila playing. Notice how Lila has crammed herself into the empty magazing holder she knocked off the shelf.

Living with a herd of cats is always and adventure and never, ever boring. Yes, I do know that technically a buttload of cats is called a clowder, but it’s somehow not as fun as envisioning a herd of cats. *Another interesting aside here: sometimes I type my blog entries in blogger and sometimes I type them in Word. I do not proofread at all—just spew. Anyway, when I type in Word, of course, my words are automatically spell checked. Spell checker does not recognize the correct term, ‘clowder’, nor does it recognize ‘buttload’. I think the absence of both words constitutes a gross omission on Microsoft’s part.* Back to my life as a cat herder.

On the very positive side, I think the combination of adding yet another litter box, pouring enzyme-based odor neutralizers on all questionable areas, and getting Ivan’s sore tooth pulled have eliminated the spraying that recently started to occur. I’m not sure if it was just one of the above or a combination thereof, but I am happy. Now if I could just get Carrie to stop eating too fast and hurling the entire contents of her meal in various places…

We are going through a slight territory adjustment period, as the cats lost some valuable territory. Carrie, Jasper, Oliver, and Ivan have enjoyed sleeping in various spots of the walk-in closet in our bedroom. I’ve been toying with the idea of evicting them since Carrie decided that, on a daily basis, she would scale up my clothing to the top shelf where I store my sweaters. This resulted in me having to spend time every single night hanging up the clothing that she knocked down (lots of it) and re-folding the sweaters that she shoved off to arrange a more cozy spot for herself. Often, I would find that she had stood on the top shelf and vomited her fresh meal onto the clothing hanging beneath—requiring laundering anywhere from 2-6 otherwise clean outfits. I complained but didn’t have the heart to take away such a beloved hangout. Then I opened my closet door one night to find that they had somehow knocked down and bent one of the floor-to-ceiling closet organizer units in there, dumping all of my blazers/jackets, shirts, and jeans onto the floor. Not only was I extremely unhappy to have to spend the next few hours fixing and putting the organizer back up, but I had to re-hang every single top and re-fold all of the jeans. UGH!! At this point, though, it became clear that while nobody had been hurt, they certainly could be if that unit was knocked down/broken again. The closet has been latched and off limits since then. Since they all feel the need to hang out in our bedroom for much of the night, this has caused some additional night time scuffles, while they decide how to reallocate the smaller territory.

Lila, at 16 months old, continues to expand her hobbies and interests. We still haven’t gotten around to re-caulking, and apparently removing the dining room wallpaper and constantly unrolling the toilet paper in the first-floor bathroom didn’t provide quite enough of a challenge. She has now started jumping into the litter boxes (usually right after they have been cleaned/scooped, thank chtulhu) and kicking copious amounts of litter out of the box and onto the floor. She then leaps out of the box into her litter pile and rolls around in it as if it were a pile of catnip. WTF is that about?! She’s just so happy and cute about it that I can’t reprimand her. I’m certainly not excited about the litter mess she leaves behind, though. You can see the litter flecks in her fur after finishing a litter roll.

Tiny little Tica has been sleeping with Luciana almost every night. She sleeps right up on the pillow, wrapped around Luciana’s head. She has also taken to licking and chewing L’s hair—eeeww. I’m not sure what the chewing is about, but it leaves some hellatious rats to brush out in the mornings. Despite being around 3 yrs old, Tica’s tiny size (5 pounds) and her kitten-like looks and behavior make it impossible to do anything but smile when you see her.

L. chose to attend Sunday School the last time she spent the night at my parents’ house for date night. She has no interest in church/god, but likes some of the crafts and children there. She came home very excited to show me the craft she made. I’m certain that this is not what they had in mind when they laid out letter beads for the children to make jewelry with, but L. always marches to her own beat. The cats definitely rule our house—I guess the world is next on their agenda.