When Kittens Attack

No one is safe.


Actually, they're perfectly safe, but at the very least no one is left unannoyed.

i was trying to get a photo of Pete, who for whatever reason had crammed
himself into the smallest carrier we have, but someone interrupted.

slowly...

slowly...

rebuffed!

i took these pictures because they started out cuddling. by the time i got the camera,
it had devolved into lazy fighting.

this may seem violent to non-cat owners, but honestly, they do this all the time

they also do this all the time-- that is, attempt to save face after a spat when
no one is willing to forfeit the couch by doing some impromptu bathing

"for why is he not wholly intimidated by my attack?"

You may have noticed some trends. For one, most of these pictures involve Pete and Petunia, and that is not a coincidence. Roscoe has been much firmer about establishing the boundaries of his personal hula-hoop, and woe to those who violate it! I don't think in the first set of pictures that Petunia actually had the balls to make the final plunge and attack Roscoe. Pete is much more forgiving of her constant attacks, and often he even seems to enjoy them. Petunia, consequently, adores Pete. It's all the benefits of attacking a pillow, given his girth, with more interaction and the slight possibility of a good chase thrown in.

If you can believe it given the length of this post, we actually have more pictures of Petunia snuggling than of her attacking everyone and everything. This is purely a documentary representation error, though; it's much easier in this dark house to get some good shots of cats snuggling than of a flying whiz of gray fur making constant surprise offensives. The guys are slowly figuring out how to handle these blitzes. At first they were completely befuddled. Roscoe despises anything that resembles roughhousing, and furthermore, fighting back only seemed to encourage her. Pete likes a good fight as much as anyone, but seemed wary of hitting the 3 pound fluff ball. It seemed, no doubt, like behavior he might get scolded for. For a while he was so confused about the new house rules regarding fights that he started to beat up Roscoe, attempting to play with him, which infuriated Roscoe to no end, as he thought he'd established his feelings about this sort of thing a long time ago. But now Petunia only ambushes Roscoe cautiously and infrequently, and she and Pete have a play routine mostly worked out. Pete's working on getting Petunia to understand that sometimes when one cuddles, it's preferable to give each other baths than bite your co-cuddler's head. One of these days...