Not Such a Good Idea

What, pray tell, is that?

Dear reader, you well may ask.

Is it a blanket for a late-season picnic? A quick and easy way to kill the grass for a new garden bed? An insidious pattern fungus growing in my back yard?

No, it's the wet memory foam mattress topper from my own little bed. And it's the sign and evidence of an experiment gone wrong, of an idea Whose Time Had Not Yet Come.

Yesterday I did the wash. Rhadwen and her predecessor Didon always derived great amusement from "helping" me fold the laundry. Let's see if the kittens will like it, too!

So I brought them individually into the front bedroom, where I was working. Gwenith and Huw liked that. But I noticed they were more interested in the room than in diving under the sheets and towels and T-shirts.

Hey . . . Why not let both of them sleep in my room? It'd expand their territory and get them more familiar to this part of the house. True, that meant closing the door to keep out the dog and Rhadwen the big cat, but if they needed to pee or poo, they'd let me know, right?

Gwenith and Huw had a field day-- or night. Wonderful places to jump and climb and tunnel through! Unlimited fun with mirrors, windows, curtains, and bed rails! The frolic went on far past lights out.

But eventually all subsided into silence and sleep . . .

. . . . Until the dawn's early light, when I was roused by the sound of kitty claws going scritch, scritch, scritch in the sheet next to my shoulder. Simultaneously, I became aware of a strange wetness on the sheet, on my nightclothes, on me! The air was filled with the delicate odor of kitten pee, and my now wide-open eyes beheld no kittens on the bed, but a rapidly-spreading wet spot right next to me on what had been the clean white sheets.

Oh, p----! I guess they are too young to let me know when they need to go!

Instantaneous leap to action! Get the kittens back to their own room and their own litter box! Get out of the wet nightclothes! Strip the bed! Rinse out the mattress topper in the bathtub! Take a shower! Put the soaked bedding in the washer! Hurry, hurry, hurry!

So that's why the foam topper is out in the backyard killing the grass and theoretically getting dry. It'll be awhile, so I'll be bunking in the Kitten Room until future notice.

The Continual Entertainment Value of Cats

Here's a funny cat story I picked up via the AP feed on the WABC Radio website:

"Cat, Stuck for a Week, Blasted Out of Tree with Fire Hose."

Funny, that is, as long as it's not your mog.

The Top Cat Wars

Huw is nothing if not gutsy. And he appears to have dreams of dominance and glory. Here he is yet again nosing into Rhadwen's dish:

Rhadwen, in her placid middle age, seems to acknowledge his ambitions. The times she's come into the Kitten Room, it's Gwenith she approaches and hisses at. Rivalry against a fellow female? Or a desire to avoid the little tiger-striped tabby, who would like nothing more than to set himself up as Top Cat?

Though to be fair to Rhadwen as Queen of the House, this evening she did not permit the young pretender to eat out of her bowl. Blasted digital camera lag lost her reaction, but oy! it was unmistakeably clear.

An Unexpected Development

On the theory that cats will associate good things with the place where they eat, today I fed Rhadwen breakfast outside the Kitten Room, with the door open, so she could see the interlopers-- I mean, her new brother and sister-- while she ate.

And not just ordinary dry kibble, either, but nice, moist, fishy tinned food contributed by my neighbor Eileen*, a cat person who can't have cats because her teenaged son is violently allergic.

So there Rhadwen is, one eye on the kittens, the other eye on her saucer, eating her meal. And out marches Huw, bold as brass, and starts eating out of her dish! And Wennie backed up and let him!

No, I do not have pictures of this. Camera wasn't handy. But that's exactly what that three-month-old upstart did!

In a case like this, I do not care what the books and websites say about letting the cats arrange these issues for themselves. The kittens are not eating out of my senior cat's bowl. Especially not when it's tinned food that's too rich for them. I do not wish to be cleaning up piles of kakk on the rug.

So I pulled Huw back and distracted both him and his sister with a bowl of their own kitten kibble. And the respective breakfasts were finished in peace.

But now Rhadwen is going to associate special food with its being stolen? Life is shaping up to be interesting here in the Valleys.

To give an idea how it went down, here's yesterday's dry run of the food-association exercise:

The sniffing you hear is Llewellyn, shut in the front bedroom.

Greedy paw by Gwenith. She's not as in-your-face brazen as her brother. She prefers the sneaky guerrilla approach.

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*Made up name

Sniffing Out Trouble

Earlier this morning, the kittens Gwenith and Huw went to the vet's. They got the rest of their shots. They were weighed (Huw has more than doubled his weight in the past 26 days; Gwenith, who was bigger the first vet visit, has added over 50% to hers). And hallelujah, they were both cleared as free of FIV.

So now the felines old and new can start sniffing out each other's territory. Literally.

The kids went into my room, in the carrier. Llewellyn, poor thing, I bundled into the bathroom, to keep him out of the way. And Rhadwen I induced to come upstairs to inspect the Kitten Room.

This is the result.

I hadn't intended to give the kittens reciprocal privileges this morning. The ideal thing is to let the newcomers range over the whole house while the reigning cat is otherwise occupied. And my house is not ready for that.

But what could it hurt if I let Gwenith and Huw nose around only in the front bedroom after Wennie took herself off downstairs? Not a whisker!

Today they're most interested in strange smells and promising hidey-holes. In a week or so, they'll be happily flinging phones and doilies and ornaments off dressers and nightstands and shelves, just like their adopted big sister Rhadwen.

(Oh, golly. I can hardly wait.)

The Cat Channeller

This past Saturday I made a foray to the Big Pet Supply Store, for kitten food and kitty litter and a litter mat and a scratching post and who knows what all. In amongst the haul I brought home a book, Cat vs. Cat: Keeping Peace When You Have More Than One Cat, by Pam Johnson-Bennett.

I'm looking forward to introducing Wennie and the kittens in a few days, and I'm eager--not to say, anxious--that all should go well. After I'd stood there in the store reading it for maybe fifteen minutes, this book struck me as something worth having. Even as something I wished I'd had a couple weeks ago!

Well, I've pretty well finished reading it by now, and yes, Ms. Johnson-Bennett gives some great advice on introducing new and old cats to one another. For instance, it stands to reason what she says about letting them catch each other's scents and about sequestering the resident cat(s) while the newcomer(s) explores further afield.

But ye gods and little fishhooks! For most of this book, you could swear she's the paid lobbyist for the Feline Rights and Rewards Political Action Committee! Sometimes, I think she's channelling some mysterious cat spirit. Or maybe, she's part cat herself!

I mean, she prescribes two fifteen-minute play sessions per day with each cat! More, if my schedule is about to change or get busier! She tells me I shouldn't rearrange the furniture, because it'll upset their sense of place! I should have a litterbox for each of them, and maybe more! And don't put it in a corner, because kitty might get ambushed!

And all that you hear about cats being aloof and independent? Forget about it, according to this book. No, I read that it might provoke a crisis once I get a fulltime job, because cats actually suffer from separation anxiety! And as for going away for the weekend, let alone longer--!

So if I got cats because I thought they were drip-dry, wash-n-wear, wrinkle-and-care-free pets, apparently I am to see the error of my ways.

Yes, I am firmly convinced that Ms. Johnson-Bennett is a paid lackey of the Loyal Order of Cats and Kittens. If she isn't some eerie form of cat-human hybrid. And she is here to put me in my place. Firmly. To the delicate but gratified ovation of three pairs of feline paws.

It's enough to make a cat laugh.

Resistance Is Futile

Two weeks ago I gave Rhadwen her Triennial Cat Bath. Here's this big calico kitty with all her claws, known for scratching some people's eyes out** and sending others to the emergency room (see link to her MeanKitty profile, to the right in the Virtual Tie-Out List). And she sat there in the bathtub with me hardly holding her, submitting to the indignity of being soaked wet and bathed.

How could this be?

Oh, yeah, I remember. She started getting baths back when she was a tiny kitten and came to me with fleas. She figured out early there's no point in fighting the Dreaded Bath: just endure it and get it over with.

Gwenith and Huw don't have fleas. They weren't particularly dirty. (Gwenith got a bath from Hannah* after she was recovered from the floor cavity of Hannah and Steve's* new house.) But both kittens need to learn the same lesson their big sister did eight years ago.

So I bathed them both this afternoon. Gwenith actually fought more-- maybe because she knew what was coming!

They survived, and they're sleeker and fluffier for the exercise.

And hopefully, when they're great big grownup kittehs and they get dirty and need to be bathed, they'll go peaceably to their doom. Because at bathtime, Resistance Is Futile.

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*Made-up names
**Mine, practically, when trying to jump out of my arms to chase some neighborhood cats