Category: cats

Since Betty’s not here to see the boys do their usual goofy stuff, I’ve been taking more photos of them, & thought I might resurrect Friday Cat Blog in order to share them. So here’s the first of a series:

For your amusement, while we’re driving:

(h/t to Sandy for this one!)

and here’s one for the dog folks (h/t to Lena):

I haven’t cat blogged for a while, but I took this photo of the boys recently & couldn’t resist. Aren’t they just too adorable? This was right after Aeneas came home, after his surgery, and he seems very happy to have his big brother next to him again.

It’s been a long while since I’ve done a Friday Cat Blog, but today just had to be done. Aurora, whose full name is Queen Aurora Crankypants Thunderfist Quickbiter, has finally conceded to sharing her warm orange self with her adopted older brother, our big Endymion. He’s been working on her for three years – always trying to sniff her, trying to give her a lick once in a while, reaching out a paw to touch her when they’re both asleep, etc. It’s been so charming to watch her go from bristly freak-out to annoyance to – well, concession. And today, on this cold drippy rainy fall day, he has finally succeeded in getting her to let him use her big orange belly as a pillow.

Even Aeneas needed to find out what was going on. & While I did get their attention with the flash, they went right back to sleeping a minute later, & Aeneas, always the jealous kid brother, came & slept on my lap.

Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow.

Betty & I have been working on Aurora for years now. What we found out is that cats who are de-clawed are often meaner, and more prone to biting. If the cruelty of declawing your cats isn’t enough, those are two more good reasons not to do so.

But of course we got Aurora long after whoever owned her before had declawed her, & so we got a bitey cat who is something like post-traumatic. She doesn’t like her nether parts touched ever. Nor her belly, or her paws. She is mostly okay with being scratched between the eyes, and sometimes on her cheeks or under her chin. But mostly all touch is very conditional – depending on how full she is, how sleepy, how recently she’s had a standoff with one of the boys, or how long ago she saw some other cat in her front yard, how recently it’s thundered… you get the picture.

We’ve worked to make her a little less sensitive to touch, or more used to being touched in good ways. That is, we just try to communicate that a human hand does not need to be attacked immediately; she tends to be “shoot now, ask questions later” about hands. Things have gone very well, to the point that I will actually take a catnip toy away from her while she’s playing to toss it back to her, without fear of losing a finger.

Except that sometimes it’s hard to judge how she is. Sometimes the flick of the tail doesn’t predict her mood quickly enough to take your hand out of harm’s way. & So it was with me late Sunday night, early Monday, when she really got her teeth into me. It would be bad enough except, of course, I’m allergic too. So it started to swell, from about mid-forearm to wrist, and I had to go to the doctor, who put me on antibiotics and gave me a new tetanus shot.

So for this week at least, she is no longer Princess Aurora Thunderfist Quickbiter (which is her full name, after all), but just Quickbiter, and occasionally, that orange rescue fucker who bit me. (But of course I still love her, and I’m extra glad we didn’t rescue a pit bull, instead.)

Do you see that belly? Our downstairs neighbor – soon to depart for IN – calls her Butterball, now. And whenever I take her out on her leash, someone invariably asks me if I take her out so she can get some exercise, or they ask if she’s pregnant. I’m glad she can’t speak English.

Aurora, despite having been declawed by whoever lived with her before us, still has the habits of a cat with claws. She is all ferocity, no?

I love the way her tail kind of fades into the wood flooring, but then the little white tip hangs there in space.

Aeneas, too, appreciates some peace and separation from the rest of us. Though one has to be careful: one day I shut the drawer not realizing he was in there until – maybe 45 minutes later – Betty asked me why Aeneas kept meowing & wanted to know where exactly our noisy cat was.

Tada! He was in the panty drawer. & Yes, those are my panties, if you must know.