The Cattery
Dec. 21st, 2009 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
porphyry
Back in June (or was it early July? I forget), Malkhos and I got two cats, sisters, who are both white and look very much like each other. I let Madeline name one of them, and after much clever rhetorical strategy on my part, convinced the child not to name the cat Cinderella. So the larger of the two white kittens came to be called Belle, another Disney heroine from Beauty and the Beast, but one could do worse. Cinderella, for example. I called the other one Sylvia. Between the two of them, Belle has remained the larger while Sylvia is smaller and daintier. Belle is quite friendly and Sylvia has turned out to be the touch-me-not cat. Currently, I find myself calling them Big Girl and Little Girl more than anything else.
But I must have "Sucker" stamped on my forehead, for about a month after getting those two, someone at work mentioned she had two male kittens, brothers, whom she needed to find homes for or they would have to go to the Humane Society. She asked me if I wanted them.
"No," I said. "I do not."
But she brought them in a shoebox to work not long after that anyway, and damn, they were cute. Little bitty guys, one all gray and the other tiger-striped.
"Give me the damn box," I said, and so we went from zero to four cats in less than a month.
So now we have the two sisters, Sylvia and Belle, and the two brothers (well, they were bonded to each other; what else could I do?) whom Malkhos calls Remus and Romulus, but the children call Tigger and Stumpy—Tigger being the tiger-striped one and Stumpy being the gray one because his tail is very, very short—joined the household, making it a veritable cattery. You can't do anything without running into, stepping on, or tripping over a cat.
They are particularly wild in the morning and at night. The Christmas tree, for example, has been the latest challenge. They actually climb it and have broken ornaments. My water aversion therapy hasn't worked. They think it's a game. Ah, well, soon they will grow into cats and lie around sleep most of the time.
