Proof Of More Cats

It's sometimes hard to tell with this weblog if we have more than one cat or not, because I go on and on about Onion all the time, but we really do have more than one cat. In fact, we have THREE cats.

That's what happens when two people who love each other very much but don't want to make human babies and are minus a uterus still want to love little things. They adopt strays and steal kittens from bums.

This is our third and final kitty, Lula:



Part of the reason I write so much about Onion to the exclusion of all the others is that he is simply more photogenic than either Oskar or Lula. The other two are black, and they end up looking like miniature black holes in the middle of the floor or whatever piece of furniture is behind them.

Also, as you can tell by the blur, Lula never stops moving around.



This little photo shoot was extra fun, because she's in a bit of a heat right now, and so she was busy alternating between showing me her butt and keeping her eyes peeled for opportunities to slut it up with Onion.

Our Onion might be fixed, but he gives the girl a good going over when she needs it. It's like his post-testicles super power.



Our Lula: cute! slutty! vocal!

I HAVE A CUTE BABOO, AND HE PROBABLY DOESN'T HATE ALL-CAPS LIKE MY CAPS LOCK-HATING HOUSEGUEST

I HAVE A GUEST STAYING OVER FOR THE WEEKEND WHO HATES CAPS LOCK.



HE SAYS THAT HE DOESN'T HATE IT BUT THAT HE JUST HAS NO USE FOR IT. I SAY THAT HE'S JUST NOT YELLING ENOUGH ON THE INTERNET.



HE TOLD ME THIS TERRIBLE THING ABOUT A NEW KEYBOARD THAT WON'T HAVE A CAPS LOCK KEY. OH, THE HUMANITY.



MY PINKY FINGERS WILL GET MIGHTY TIRED. AND PROBABLY REALLY BEEFY.



BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT. THE POINT OF THIS WHOLE ENTRY IS TO SHOW OFF CAT TWO OF THREE, ONION.

HE'S MY CUTE BABOO.

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PS.  I make a mean potato, and, yes, I think I am very funny.

I See Kitten Mittens In Onion's Future

This is Onion nosing around under our door early in the morning, and it's what we wake up to more often than not since all cats have forever been banned from our bedroom.



We used to let all three of the cats pile up on the bed with us at night. Onion would stake out his corner at the bottom on my side, Lula would turn and knead and curl up on the Palinode's side, and Oskar would make his own neurotic ruckus by turning in circles and crawling under the covers and hiding under my knees and crawling out from under the covers and meowing about the whole thing and generally being really annoying.



Our bed was always covered in fur. (I am discounting the scant five minutes during which it was hair-free between my making a fresh bed and their leaping all over it, gleefully shooting fur from their backs and rolling it into my clean blankets.) The fur got into our eyes. We ate it. I joked about its being extra fibre. It was disgusting, but I wuv my widdle cuddle-muffins, oh yes I do, and I was reticent to kick them out.

And then the cats forced our decision. Lula and Onion started tag-teaming making pee statements on the bed, Lula because she was experiencing sexy times and wanted everyone to know about her sexy times and Onion because he was mad at me, oh so mad, because I told him he couldn't eat my boots or stick his feet in my water or something else totally unreasonable and unfair.

They have not gone gently into that good hallway.



They sincerely miss cuddling with us on the bed in the morning, but none so much as our Onion. He paces. He scratches. He mewls mournfully. He scratches. He scratches. He scratches. He scratches. OH MY GOD, HE HAS A DEATH WISH. HE DRAGS HIS NAILS DOWN THE BEDROOM DOOR. IT'S EAR-SPLITTING, AND I JUST MIGHT FORCE HIM TO WEAR LEATHER KITTEN MITTONS:



Early every morning, Onion wants to know why we have forsaken him so. He is bereft.



But look at that ear curled against the door frame. And that paw! The big galoot and I lay on our respective sides of the door on Saturday morning while he reached through to stroke my face with his fluffy little kitty foot. So what if he caught my lip on one of his claws and I bled a little, right?

Dude's cuteness bought his ass out of a snowdrift AGAIN. Cute is powerful, people.

New Cat Comes Home

When you have a cat, and he is a very bad cat, what is the best solution to remedy the situation? Why, it is to throw a second cat at the first cat, of course.

I had a professor in University about ten years ago who taught my Shakespeare class. She would veer off topic on extended monologues about her childhood in Russia, and she once told us the story about her method for finding lost jacks. If she could not find one from her set, she would throw another jack across the room, and more often than not, when she went to retrieve her second jack she would find the first sitting nearby.

My professor claimed that some solutions, while they may not be logically reasonable, seem intuitively practical.

Enter this brilliant idea to throw a second cat with an indeterminate personality at the first cat with a decidedly needy and stupid personality in an effort to balance out the mammaliam relationships in our household.

We embarked on our journey to get the new kitten on Sunday afternoon. I thought it would a good idea to fortify ourselves with burgers at a local burger joint, Burger Baron, that I had never been to.

The Fiery One read a newspaper, which had some of the most concise and to-the-point journalism that I've had the pleasure to come across.

The hamburgers were delicious, as you can see from the Fiery One's finger-licking in the background, and my fountain drink was just as watery as I like it.

My only problem was the Burger Baron Wasp. It was a feisty thing and insisted on visiting our table. He particularly liked the chip bag pictured below. We offered him onions smothered in ketchup, and that seemed to appease his aggression until we were able to grab all our things and run for the exit.

I was glad to leave, though, because our new kitten was waiting in kitty jail with a stinky litterbox, a neighbour cat that sneezed wetly, and leering humans poking him in his vulnerable bottom.

After filling out all the adoption paperwork and convincing the jailers that we were indeed nice people, they let us stick him in the cat carrier and take him home to our Oskar.

We put the carrier down in the middle of the living room and let Oskar discover the new kitten on his own. As soon as Oskar saw that there was a kitten in his carrier, he began the slowest creep around the living room that has ever been creeped by a housecat. It was very Mork-esque à la the slow motion time warps from "Mork & Mindy". After about an hour of this, he finally screwed up enough courage to get within three feet of the carrier. The new cat, who is one smart kitten, was perfectly happy to stay in the carrier and out of Oskar's reach.

When we finally let the new kitty out of the carrier, he made a calculated move and took immediately to higher ground. This gave him time to find out just how bad Oskar can be at coming up with an effective attack plan and then managing to carry it through. In truth, Oskar is not nearly as brave as he thought he was when my ankles were his favourite moving target, and for the first several hours, he only managed to swipe the new cat's butt a few times because he was far too afraid to come into close contact with the little guy.

And here is the new kitten sitting on our windowsill and likely wondering if it's true that he has to live with that dweeb who keeps crying on the floor.

I feel for our new kitten. One day soon it is going to sink in that he actually lives with us in our apartment now and that Oskar is indeed his permanent roomate. That is going to be a dark day for the new cat, especially when Oskar comes for his feet again.

That's right. Oskar's podiaphilia is no longer visited solely upon my feet. The new cat's paws are apparently for Oskar's pleasure, as well, or at least they are for a couple of minutes at a time before the new cat rally's and sticks a claw or two in his face.

I have to admit that seeing tufts of Oskar's fur rolling across the hardwood during his battles with the new cat is deeply satisfying. Take that, freak. Is it wrong to take pleasure in allowing the new kitten to commit acts against Oskar that the law doesn't allow me to commit for reason of humane treatment?