The Last Recruit

What a great LOST! It was also a very nice Jin/Sun reunion. Who was the last recruit, though? Jack? Claire? The plot's really picking up momentum now, but holy crap!! I still need a lot of answers! The bad news is that there are only four episodes left (though the finale is two hours). The worse news is that there is NO epi next week. I have to wait THIRTEEN more days for my next fix!

Cats are complicated. They are much less predictable than dogs, and I’m perpetually intrigued and surprised by their behavior. Carrie was our last adoption, up until the recent return of the twins. She’s a bit of a diva and has issues getting along with several of our cats. She appointed herself keeper of my bedroom door soon after she moved in with us, and has since tried very hard to control who can and cannot enter our bedroom. She and Petey have had a bitter feud going on since we got her. She gets along with Oliver (but then most do), sometimes Tica, and sometimes Jasper. That’s it. I assumed that when the twins came, she would stick to her usual hostile approach.

I was surprised to see that she allowed them into our bedroom without a headboxing or even a growl! She likes them. She makes this cute little squeak when they come up for mutual face sniffing (or butt sniffing). I’ve observed their interactions closely, and I absolutely cannot identify anything at all about the twins that is noticeably different from the other cats in our home that she decided to hate for no apparent reason. I’m constantly working to improve the strained relationships in the house, and I would LOVE to know what makes these two okay with Carrie, because it would help my sleep problems immensely if I wasn’t awakened several times a night to the sounds of Carrie and Petey having a hissing & growling contest two feet from my head, or even an outright fight now and then. They followed the same feline etiquette that the other cats in the house follow with her, but she doesn’t respond the same. I’m frustrated by my inability to figure this out!

Carrie and Charlie do have a couple of strange quirks in common. They both are very human-face focused. It is very important to both of them to thoroughly sniff faces, concentrating on the hairline (on the forehead), then each eye, the nose, and the mouth (which they insist upon having me open, so they can really sniff my breath). They are also the two cats in the house who most frequently use their vomeronasal organ for smelling. It’s located in their mouth, so they must open their mouth to use it (Flehmen response). They make such a funny face when they’re flehming—I love watching them.

Tica is another one who I thought wouldn’t take to the twins. She’s so tiny and disadvantaged by her leg/hip and had such a rough early life as a street kitty, that her first response to anything new is to hiss as ferociously as a five pound cat can and then run and hide. I figured if nothing else, the twins’ gingantic size—they are almost three times as big as her—would make her especially fearful of them. She initially acted as I expected that she would, but at some point she made friends with the boys. I just noticed one day out of the blue, that Tica was playing chase (not unusual at all) WITH BASIL (shocking!). She has also made friends with Charlie and has been allowing him to sleep in L’s room with her at night.