For Halloween

A little late, Henri.

Some Pictures with Cats

I don't tend to take my own photo very often, but looking through my Photo Booth folder on my Mac, I found that I am very likely to take my photo with my cats. There are many varieties of these photos.

Photo with washed out face and slightly annoyed cat.

Matt with cats and my arm.

Small cat experiencing forced cuddling while my hair is not brushed.

Cat and I sharing the comfy leather chair.

Me photo bombing my cat.

Taking my photo with a cat when it's cold in the house and I don't want to turn up the heat.

Poorly framed photo of me with my sister's cat Penny. Penny never cuddles with me. It had to be documented, even if shoddily so.

Me with a sticker on my chest and our sweetie Chloe, who died 2 years ago.

Photos of me where my hair is still not brushed with an aggressive cat.

Photos where the cat has given up on biting me and is instead climbing on me.

More photos where the cat is lunging at my face.

Me smooching my cats. With unbrushed hair. There are lots of these, especially with the hair thing.

And me in my rain jacket with cat.

So that's it. That's about every variation of my self portraits with cat.

The Cats Are Alright

I still need to sort through house photos, and take some of the outside, but in the meantime here is a sneak peek. As you can see, the cats are adjusting well.

Guess which one of these ottomans I recovered after it was shredded by cats and which one I haven't gotten to yet. See that beautiful blue wall? I painted that. And that's my beautiful cat as well. I am a lucky gal. Except for that bit where my cats destroy our stuff on occasion.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, some cats...

We moved, folks! Not the blog, us, literally, to a new house. Obviously this impacts the cats enormously, so I will post some updates soon including photos of the new digs. We've been in the new house a full week, but it's still totally crazy around here. It reminds me that moving is less like a tornado and more like a hurricane. Or maybe a multi-day blizzard. Choose the weather phenomenon of your choice that suggests both chaos and sustained misery.

What Flavor Are You?

 

Matt and I were discussing creating our signature ice cream flavors the other day. My obsession with tailor made ice cream flavors stems from two sources: the acquisition of an ice cream attachment for our Kitchen Aide, and a children's book I read in elementary school. I can't remember the title, but the story was set in an elementary school classroom. One student was obsessed with ice cream and was always shoving ice cream cones into his or her desk and making a mess. Based on this student's fixation with ice cream, the teacher of the class made ice cream for everyone in the class. Not everyone got the same flavor, though-- she matched the flavors to the students. The flavors were, in essence, meant to capture something about the personality of the students. Some students were satisfied with their custom flavors, others envied and tried to steal other student's flavors.

I'm not sure if I was reading the intended message into the story, but I was struck by how some kids wanted other people's ice creams even though they had their own tailor-made flavors designed to suit them. There was something about the dissonance between having something made with you in mind but not wanting that thing that stuck with me. How could you not like something designed to complement you?

I know what my signature ice cream flavor is: a custard based ice cream flavored with green tea, lavender and honey. It is to die for. I may call it "Shannon's Morning Tea Ice Cream" since it's pretty similar to the tea I drink most mornings. Matt hasn't figured out his signature ice cream flavor yet, in part because I've been reluctant to make ice cream with sugar instead of honey, and Matt is avowedly a traditionalist in terms of his ice cream sweeteners. He complains that you can taste the honey when it's used to sweeten ice cream instead of sugar, as if that were a bad thing.

We also discussed what ice cream flavors would suit our cats. We've got pretty good ones for Pete and Petunia figured out. Petunia's would be Bumblebee Ice Cream: lemon ice cream with real vanilla bean sweetened with honey. The inspiration came from her backyard visits. A few days ago Matt spied her chasing bumblebees in the overgrown grass, after which I imagined she sipped tea while playing mahjong with her unicorn friends (update: Petunia has also taken to chasing lighting bugs. Which makes her the Cutest Cat Ever.). Pete's ice cream would be solidly traditional in its conception but still delicious. Pete's Hot Fudge Sundae Ice Cream: vanilla ice cream (made with sugar, no honey) with fudge swirls and toasted nuts and bits of cherries.

Roscoe's ice cream flavor was harder to come up with. I think it's in part because he just doesn't seem like he would eat ice cream. He's more the type of cat that has black coffee and two aspirin for breakfast, and finishes off his day sipping scotch. Right now we're thinking of something along the lines of Roscoe's Bread Pudding Ice Cream. Roscoe loves bread and grains (he gets aggressive when you eat rice cakes in his presence and will try to smack them out of your hand) as well as fruit, and the creaminess of bread pudding seems to suit him somehow. Chicken Bridge Bakery at the farmers' market uses fresh berries in their serving size bread puddings, and that is my favorite way to have them, rather than with raisins. Perhaps a buttermilk custard ice cream with berries, cinnamon and swirls of maple syrup could work. We're still working on the details.

Here are pictures of Petunia playing outside. She did, in fact, spend some time admiring a bumblebee on this particular outing, which I got in the first picture, but I don't think you can see the bee. I took some video of her playing, but our little camera saves movie files in some strange format so I haven't figured out how to view it or post it. I will do that as soon as I figure it out, provided I don't have to buy some fancy software.

Halloween in May!

It's kind of like Christmas in July, which makes sense, because if Christmas (December) is in July, then Halloween (October), would be in May. Right? No? Are you sure?

I guess this is just further proof that I am the world's worst cat blogger. Here are pictures of us from Halloween. I'm Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, and Matt is Charlie Brown. Matt's rather inflexible about wearing any costume more complicated than his normal clothing, so he's more or less Charlie Brown every year.

Petunia was a rather uncooperative Toto.

trying to get Toto in the basket. It didn't work.

look at how pretty Petunia is! She doesn't care much for being picked up, but she indulges us.

Snoopy?

Petunia beat the crap out of faux-Toto, the stuffed animal I carried in my basket at the Halloween party we went to.

die faux-Toto!

Pete comes over to observe.

right for the jugular!

kicking with the back legs! ouch!

<3 <3 <3

What do kittens do best?

Cuddle! I can't believe these photos are from August. I need to get more recent ones off my camera and post them, stat. Petunia is her own little cat person now. She won't be as big as Roscoe, but she's almost full size and she has filled out. She is completely adorable and loveable, and always working on something, whether it's moving water dishes around the floor or hunting mice or keeping her brothers on their toes. She spend a lot of time attacking them up but it's not malicious at all-- I think she just loves them so much she can't help but try and eat them up. I know the feeling well.

We recently have started to let her outside on supervised trips for half an hour or an hour at a time. Maybe she can work out some her wiles in the great outdoors. She loves being outside, and we're training her to respect the boundaries of the yard (more or less) and come in when she's called. Roscoe and Pete are helping-- she generally wants to do whatever they're doing. Her love of treats is also a big incentive.

It runs in the family

This is my younger cousin with a video about her cat Bo. Notice that her video production skills are far superior to my own. She's gone for lively and entertaining whereas my video smacks of poorly impersonated "This American Life" radio interviewing techniques.

Cats have no sense of personal space

That is, unless we're talking about their personal space. The hazards of doing yoga with cats.

My biggest fear doing yoga with cats around is that when I not so gracefully fall out of a position I'm going to land on one of them and squish them. I wish my yoga skills were as awesome as this woman's.

Kitten Canoodle

A shaky aerial view:

The Kitten Covers

Behold!

Get a Bucket

For all the brainz that just slid out of your left ear.

Petunia is growing up so fast! She doesn't seem like she's growing particularly large, but all I have to compare her to is Pete and Roscoe who were, respectively, 7.5 and 6.5 pounds when they were 4 months old (they estimate about a pound a month for the first few months of a cat's life, which is to say: Pete and Roscoe were giants). I think Muffin Pants here, who is about 4 1/2 months old now, weighs about 5 pounds, maybe a touch more.

This particular photo was expertly taken by Matt just a few weeks after we first got her. She still rules the house and she is getting prettier everyday. Her adult front left fang grew in of its own accord (phew! no need for x-rays or dental surgery) and on Tuesday Missy Nutters is going to the vet to get spayed. I will post some current photos soon.

Chewing out the Paparazzi

"Woman, stop with the photos already!"

I take photos of her so often, that she's started to quack at the camera whenever I point it at her. Regardless, I love that she is using the kitten castle. I bought two of these (overpriced) cat scratchers at Ikea for Pete and Roscoe, not realizing that they're too small for them to use as beds, and they're not interested in scratching on curved surfaces.

If you look closely, you'll notice that her bottom left fang is missing. That was the one that was knocked out (or broken, we're not sure) when she was dumped. :(

Happy Birthday Pete & Roscoe!

Roscoe (right) and his sister Roxanne

Pete (right) and Roxanne

Pete and Roscoe, August 2011

Today is Pete and Roscoe's birthday. They are nine years old and still the same sweethearts they were when they were just baby kitties. Happy Birthday!

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...