Ode to a Pink Tabby Kitten

I've written a poem on the ways and character of Gwenith, my pinky-yellow medium-haired tabby kitten.

WARNING: Egregious Sentimentality and Affected Archaisms Dead Ahead!
To My Capricious Kitty

O Gwenith fair, thou pink and coy,
How dost thou wend within my heart?
Flirtatious, clinging, shrinking, shy,
Thy feline ways a thing apart.

Thy pale and striped tabby fur,
Thy bib and belly white as dove,
Thy elfin face, thy plushy tail
Me call to give thee snuggly love.

And purring, purring like a mill!
Content thou seemst in all thou dost:
At play, at food, at mischief, too:
To pet thee seemeth only just!

But O! illusive as thou art!
Thine act denies thy winsomeness:
So quick eluding every touch,
So loath to brook the fond caress!

Thou might'st be tripping through the hall
Or crouching snug the stairs upon,
Or anywhere the house abroad:
I stoop to stroke--and thou art gone!

But let me lay me in my bed,
Or sit to work, then verily,
There art thou, Gwen, upon my lap,
My desk, my work, all over me!

Thou trammelst me at every turn!
I cannot see, thou block’st my view!
With kisses rousing me from sleep,
With paws that knock my plans askew!

No good nor use to sigh and groan,
For kittens walk in fancy’s ways;
And Gwenith fair will grow a cat,
And then I’ll mourn these wanton days.

Flirtatious, clinging, shrinking, shy,
Thy feline ways a thing apart,
O Gwenith fair, thou pink and coy,
How thou dost wend within my heart!

So True! So True!

I received this the other day via email from my friend Ruth*. She got it from our mutual friend Ieuan*. I don't know where he got it, but if anyone knows who the artist/animator is, I will gladly and appreciatively revise this post to credit him or her.

"For anyone who has ever owned a cat . . . "

The Cost of Free Kittens

Did PetsMart's stock go up yesterday?

Wouldn't be surprised if it had.

It should have, after I got finished at my local branch. One seventeen-and-a-half pound bag of premium dry kitten kibble! Twenty-four five-and-a-half ounce tins of kitten dinner, ditto premium! Forty pound box of clumping kitty litter (Huw, the litter box connoisseur, has declared it his favorite, which is convenient)! A new scratching post! Nature's Miracle enzymatic cleaner against the marking behavior which evidence tells me has already started! Sticky-Paws tape to protect the new slipcover I bought to cover the feline-ripped loveseat! Anti-scratching spray, as a back-up for same! Three new feather-ornamented kitty toys, which the dog will want to go after first!

The dent in the checkbook is not pretty.

On the other hand, the kittens are. For all that, I get one sleek four-month old kitten and one fluffy. I get two more balls of fur to snuggle up to me in bed at night. I get diet aid for my admittedly-overweight grownup cat, who abandons her bowl whenever she sees the kittens coming. I get two little creatures for my dog to shepherd. I get a helper and companion in my computer work. I get a furry little doorstop for the back door.

And when the cold weather sets in, I'll get two more portable (well, mobile) heaters to keep the bedroom warm when the thermostat turns down at night.

That's what I call value for money.

Teaching a Young Dog New Tricks

The grass in the near end of my backyard is a mess.

Correction: The bare dirt in the near end of my backyard is a mess. Thanks to my doggie Llewellyn and his little gifts and deposits over the past year and a half, it might be, oh, maybe one-quarter covered with grass?

And not happy grass, either.

This I need to do something about before the warm fall weather goes away.

Never mind why I didn't rake out the dead matter until yesterday. I had my reasons. But now it's done. Hopefully, I'll get the area reseeded by Saturday. Can I let my poor dear dog range free out there and do his business as usual?

No, I can not.

So since last night, Llewellyn's doing his business on the leash, out the back gate, in the grass next to the alley. Back there, I don't care if the vegetation gets killed. Good riddance to it.

The surprising thing is that he's not pulling on the leash half as much as he does when I try to take him for a walk out front. And this is in spite of the fact that he chewed through his Halti collar when he freaked out at the vet's in July!

In fact, the one needing the discipline is most likely to be me. I start an early class tomorrow, and it'd be soooooo much easier on cold crisp dark mornings to just let him run out the back door . . . ! Especially if I'm running late.

Llewellyn, he's enjoying himself so much, he's forgetting to be a prat on the leash. Maybe it's the novelty factor. Long may it last.

Pecking Order

Let's figure this out:

The kittens Huw and Gwenith openly steal food from nine-year-old Rhadwen's bowl.

Rhadwen blatantly steals food from my plate.

So where does that put me in the household pecking order?

(Llewellyn I don't allow to eat till after I do, but that's only because he hasn't yet worked out how to pry the lid off the dog food tin . . . )

Gwenith Is Computer Literate!

Tonight, Gwenith, my four-month-old girl kitten, discovered the computer.

And the cursor, and the fun way the picture scrolls up and down, and (oh, joy!) the funny cats on YouTube!

What she can't figure out is, why does the funny cat jump around here, but she hears it meowing over there?

A Milestone

Of sorts.

The medium-sized litter box in the basement that Rhadwen has been using the past several years is as of today officially too small. The cat household has graduated to the big box I bought four years ago but didn't use because, well, because there was no need.

Now there's a need. Huw, at least, is also using the basement box. The old one has been outgrown. Or overpopulated. Or overpoopulated!

Enough said, then, on the litterbox issue. Except for this: Why does Huw have to be the first one in after the litter's been changed? He did that with both boxes this afternoon.

Correction: Why does he have to be the first one in the clean box, even when there's no litter in it yet? I foresee a messy issue to this someday!

Kitten Retrieved

Here's a cute story of interspecies adoption from the Pixburgh Tribune-Review website:

"Golden retriever nurses stray kitten."

This little girl looks a lot like my Huw!

This Should Not Be!

This is Huw eating out of Rhadwen's bowl this evening-- and Rhadwen letting him! A little later, Gwenith jumped up and did the same!

The kittens do not need to be eating her Senior food!

And to be fair, she does not need to be slipping into the Kitten Room and licking up the leftovers of their canned kitten dinner!

I took the water pistol to both the little upstarts. We'll see if it works.

Sleep in Heavenly Peace

Last night was the first time since the kittens came that I've tried sleeping a) in my own bed, with b) all the doors open so all the four-footed inhabitants could come and go as they pleased.

I woke this morning with one big cat and two little ones with me on the bed, and one dog on the floor.

And no wet places!

Well done, one and all.

Homeland Security

The kittens Gwenith and Huw are increasingly out and about these days, so appropriate measures must be taken to Protect the Homeland.

And not necessarily from the kittens themselves.

Here's the security device I rigged up on the Kitten Room door a week or so ago:

It's designed to keep Llewellyn out of the room and out of the catbox cookies.

Comme ca:

(Poor baby!)

Then early this morning, I installed this on the hatch door to the attic storage:

The dark recesses of the void under the roof has been a popular hideyhole for Rhadwen ever since we moved in four years ago. In fact, this is what she did back then when I tried to block the door with a full can of white trim paint:

Imagine coming home from a nice Sunday afternoon out to find that!

But we now have an understanding. I can pretty reliably call (or bribe) her out of there when I need to. But who knows what Gwenith and Huw might get up to in that long, dark space. They might park themselves way in the back just to assert their feline independence. They might creep in unbeknownst to me and I could inadvertently close the door on them on a very hot or very cold day. Do not want!

I kept them out as long as possible; yes, I did. But yesterday they, too, figured out how to push aside the door stop, spring the cabinet latch, and get inside.

Huw I quickly managed to catch and deposit back in the Kitten Room. But Gwenith had found something marvellous in the attic space, something delightful and delectable, something so fascinating she must bat it and attack it and carry it in her little mouth all round and behind and between the boxes and bags and stored Christmas decorations, something she was going to keep away from me, oh, yes, she was. It was stiff and gray and looked sort of furry-- Oh, no, do I have mice?

But eventually she--and it-- got close enough and I pounced. This is what she'd found:

A dead bird does not surprise me, though I'd like to know how it got in. Wouldn't be the first bird, live or dead, I've found in this house.

Even so, I don't need my kittens breaking into the attic space in hopes of further necrotic avian treats. Thus, the bolt.

Here's Rhadwen this afternoon trying to get the hatch door open. It's too bad I didn't get a picture of her glaring at me afterwards. If looks could kill--!

Sorry, BabyCat. The kittens ruined your fun for you. The attic has been made Secure.