My quiltsMy 2001 Grant ProjectSociety for the Protection and Preservation of Fruitcake

Saturday, May 13, 2006  
Life's pretty good at
  • the Louvre - 7.5 million visitors a year.
  • Disneyland, Anaheim -- 13,360,000 (2004)
  • Magic Kingdom -- 16.2 million visitors, making it the most visited theme park in the world.
In other news, more kitten butt-sniffing, this time from Gus! And from Deirdre, some ear sniffing and well, a few ear licks and maybe a head-butt or two. Gus and the two kittens and I played "lets catch that weird birdie thing that keeps whizzing around overhead". A little catnip, a new rotation of toys (old ones back into the catnip jar), some scritching.

Written at: 9:43:00 PM


Thursday, May 11, 2006  

Almost the end of week one:

Well here we are on the eve of week two already and what progress I have to report. First off, in the quilting arena, I am very slowly and determinedly sewing together the rows of my new quilt. This is where the persistence pays off. I get rewarded each night with a little more of the coming quilt revealed, which is quite an incentive. But it is, as I like to call it: my life, an inch and a half at a time.

Then there's the whole cat v kitten thing. There has been a huge amount of progress here. Yesterday I observed a small amount of what we in the cat field call "butt-sniffing", specifically Deirdre (aka boss lady cat) sniffing the butts of the youngsters. Now this alone is good because earlier behavior was to hiss and puff at every near occurence of the youngsters. But socially, this is a significant sign.

This morning, yesterday's butt-sniffing had moved into sideways-body-rubbing with the occasional but very casual (I might not mean this yet) head butt. Voila! That's great. Deirdre now spends time sitting somewhere in the middle of a room watching all the tumble and jumble of two kittens whirling around.

Gus is still keeping his distance; not abnormally since male cats do tend to be more wary of young kits. I do notice that he doesn't exactly flee every scene containing a small furry bundle, but there's no physical contact yet. Yet.

For myself, other than the 5 am flying lessons I was giving kittens this morning. Off! Off! Off! I can honestly say I haven't laughed so hard or so often in a very long time. Kittens are r'][[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[+------------- really bad assistant typists. But they are really good at putting on acrobatic displays that defy physical laws. They do incredible feats of daring like leaping to the top of the very tall scratching post. Or walking up it and then flinging themselves off at the passing brother. They achieve amazing speeds while whirling dervishing themselves in an attempt to catch their tails. And then they collapse in a little kitten heap on my lap while serving up an apparently restorative purr. Deirdre looks like just watching them is exhausting! Now if there was just a reset button on that 5 AM wakeup call they seem to have.... Off! Off! Off! No snooze button either....

Written at: 8:52:00 PM


Tuesday, May 09, 2006  
The naming of cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm mad as a hatter
When I tell you a cat must have three different names.
-- TS Eliot
Many thanks to Julie O for this great quote. Sure explains a lot of my week so far, trying out names, trying out names for little nicknames etc. Looks like it's Archibald (Archie for short) for the little white-stocking fellow and probably Erasmus, (Raz for short? MusMus for short? Hey you! in a pinch...) for his brother.

Day four and we're getting way past the hugely puffed up, hissing, slinking away reaction from the big cats. That is always entertaining to watch.

This morning Deirdre was hurtling around like a total lunatic. I thought she was chasing the small kits but in fact she was hurtling around all on her own, banging into doors and whatever was in the way. The kits were hurtling around AFTER her, stopping when she was stopped by whatever and they'd just stare at each other in this sort of breathless, maniacal way. Looked like fun!

Tonight Gus seems to have gotten past the instant hissing thing too, so I think we're well on the way to being a big family again.

Written at: 7:04:00 PM


Sunday, May 07, 2006  

Day two

Time really flies when you're hurtling around in a little fur suit. And then it's time for a nap.

Written at: 7:18:00 PM


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