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The Cats' Blessing:
May your food bowl always be full, the sun always warm, |
We bring a beautiful hand-woven wool rug home, made by Mike's Aunt Ellen. Within minutes, Shadow has taken up residence (Fiona later stopped by for a snooze, but she slinked off before I could snap a picture). Now, if we could only keep them from coughing up hairballs on it.. so far so good.
January, 2002
After visiting for the weekend, some of Mike's wonderful relatives sent some awesome catnip filled cloth toys in the mail. The second they hit the floor, the cats went nuts! Catnip Party!
Winter, 2001
Aye, read about The Bath.
late April, 1999
We adopted Shadow and Fiona in the spring of 1999. Shadow is 1 year old and was adopted from the Franklin County Humane Society. She originally came from a private home (her owners' baby was allergic). Fiona was a stray (they originally named her 'Fanny' but she seemed unattached to the name, so we changed it), and is estimated to be about 3 years old. She was found on the side of the road with a broken nose, and was having trouble breathing. The Green Mountain Animal Hospital surgically repaired her nose (and did a GREAT job!). She has a bit of meltable stitch left on her face, but she looks fine and seems to be breathing normally now. She does have gooey eyes and a slight upper respiratory infection, but we're treating it withr antibiotics now.
Fiona looks norwegian to us for some reason. She's tall, thin, elegant, and has big eyes and a wide face. She's very calm and affectionate, and loves to curl up on a lap or chest. She purrs loudly when she's happy and doesn't mind if we rub her belly. She loves to be pet and often curls up beside us if we're on the couch. She also has slept on the bed every night since we adopted her, which troubles Shadow (who used to sleep with us until Fiona got here).
Shadow's very playful and loves to be pet. She isn't crazy about being picked up, but she'll go limp in your arms if you cradle her like a baby. She hardly sleeps and spends the day chasing balls around and looking out the window. In the evening, she often settles down behind our heads on the couch or behind us on a chair. She likes to be near people. She has a very tiny hoarse meow which is, let's face it, absolutely adorable.
Shadow isn't crazy about Fiona and hisses at her periodically. Fiona seems surprised at this, and just stares at her (not hissing back). We hope that Shadow comes to enjoy Fiona. For now, we try hard to give them both generous amounts of attention and rubs, so neither will feel left out. We have not been able to convince Shadow to hop onto the bed though. She's bugged by Fiona, but she won't take a stand. Fiona just slips in quietly and takes what she wants.
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Here are some pictures of Shadow when we first adopted her:
 Tiger in the tree.
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 Sphynx.
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 In her box.
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 What an angel (until 3am when it's ball time!).
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 Gotta go!
|  Mike holding Shadow.
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 Mushy kitty!
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 Mooking.
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 Stalking.
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 Under the bed.
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The cats have definitely settled into a routine. Fiona sleeps at the foot of the bed on my side every night (Mike's too long to give her any room at all, unfortunately). Shadow often sleeps in the kitty tree or under the bed. We can tell if she's under the bed because my feet get attacked when I get up in the morning. :-) Both cats then meow, purr, and wander around the room as we shower and dress. If we show any movement toward the stairs, they bolt gleefully toward the door and sometimes down the stairs. Then they look back with this sad, "I'm so starving" look on their face, when they see that we haven't followed. They often wait until we're about to pet them, then zoom off just before we can touch them. Sigh. So far they haven't figured out that we take a shower and dress every day before breakfast.
When we had both cats upstairs during the night (for the purpose of bonding with us and with each other), we had a litterbox, food and water in our bathroom. Since then, we've moved the food and litter downstairs, but we kept a bowl of water, since Shadow seemed to like it. She drinks from this bowl several times a day - in the morning and evening. We keep it quite fresh, especially since we kick it every few days and have to refill it. Groan! Still, it's interesting to have a cat who actually drinks water. Hilly Dilly drank from the fish tanks, standing pools of water downstairs, the toilet, and from any other foul sources she could find, but she NEVER seemed to use her bowl. I think our kitties learned to drink from a bowl during their Humane Society stay, and it stuck. Fiona only drinks downstairs though, as far as I know. Shadow drinks from anywhere she can.
When we finally do go downstairs, both cats bound down the stairs. Fiona is like a little tank. She has well-planned methodical steps and motors quickly down. Shadow is like a bolt of electricity. She hits about every other step, and is typically flying so fast when she gets to the bottom that she "skids out" across the hardwood floor, until she hits the area rug and stops abruptly. It's quite adorable.
We now feed them in separate locations to discourage Fiona from eating all the food. She gained at least 2-3 lbs since we adopted her (too much - she should probably weigh about 9 lbs and she's about 11 now). Shadow is a little sprite, on the other hand. So.. we feed them each a scant 1/2 a cup in the morning and the same amount at night. Shadow's bowl goes on a bar stool. This worked well for a while, but now Fiona's figured out where it is. She still tends to leave it alone most of the time. Our thought is that hopefully Shadow will learn to eat more quickly, to keep Fiona from pilfering it all.. but it's kind of sad, because I don't want to see Shadow losing her good "grazing" habits because of Fiona's pigginess. We'll see.
They're wonderful cats and are very complimentary. Shadow occasionally poinces on Fiona, but they pretty much get along really well. Shadow follows us everywhere, and is almost always in the same room. Fiona has a gentle circadian rhythm.. after the food ritual, she hangs around in the morning, rubbing against us while we eat breakfast (though we've NEVER fed her from the table) and sitting around staring into space. Later, she and Shadow will spend some time at the back door watching chipmunks.. then Fiona will wander upstairs to our bed to nap until late afternoon, where she'll come down for a bit of sitting around staring into space, followed by some ankle rubbing and meowing until dinner time.
Funny thing about Fiona.. she has an amazing amount of inertia. If you put her somewhere and pet her for a minute, she's likely to stay there for at least 20 minutes before gathering the energy up to move. She's a great lap kitty for this reason. If you put her next to you and sit down, or lie her on your belly while lying on the couch, her typical response is to be somewhat tense for a minute, then settle down and snooze until you inevitably have to get up to pee or answer the phone.
She's very tentative about toys too. She watches moving toys with interest, but will rarely do more than touch them with her paw. Part of this reservation may be due to Shadow, who usually comes out and lunges at a toy within seconds.. causing Fiona to back off.
One day when I was sick, I was lying in the sun with Fiona on my belly, petting her. I looked into her ear, and noticed a pale green-blue pattern inside of her right ear. I looked a little more closely (trying not to bug her in the process), and realized that it was the letter "S" that had apparently been tattooed into her ear! How odd.
Later that day, I called the Humane Society and the local vet to ask them if they knew what it meant. Neither did.. after thinking about it for a few days though, I came up with a theory. My theory is that it was some vet's method of marking a spayed animal. Since it's really hard to judge whether a cat has been spayed by normal examination, a simple small eat tattoo would be a great standard for marking her. It's so subtle that it doesn't detract from her overall appearance at all, but hopefully it would keep someone from trying to spay her again if she ever ended up a stray.
Of course, it didn't - she did end up a stray, and we were about to spay her, but when the Humane Society folk shaved her belly, they thought they saw a scar and decided she'd probably already been spayed. She hasn't gone into heat yet and generally acts like a spayed female, so I think they were right. Oh well, it would be a good standard if it reached critical mass.
More about our kitties later...