In which nothing much is happening
Now that it is November, work is moving into the usual end-of-year crunch time. Yes, it goes on for two months. Fun times are had by all. In a manner of speaking.
So Ro is being ridden, sometimes. She doesn’t mind much either way.
Onyx and the kitten (who refuses to answer to either Pippa or Mica, or anything else, really, although a sharp “Hey, you!” will get a quizzical look, as if to ask why I am disturbing her activities—can’t I see she’s busy?) are settling down.
As I hoped, they are keeping each other amused.
Which is to say, the kitten has Onyx totally bemused. She sits on a chair somewhere safe and watches the kitten go. For hours. And then she looks at me and says, “You brought this thing in here. It’s insane. I am now questioning your sanity also.”
She has not quite forgiven me yet. She alternates between wanting to be petted and hissing and running away, usually at one and the same time. As far as I can tell, she believes I should be sterilizing my hands after touching the kitten and before petting her.
But every once in a while, when the kitten is otherwise occupied (read: climbing the curtains), Onyx joins me on the couch. I’m not allowed to touch her with my kitten-contaminated hands, but I am allowed to exist in her general vicinity.
This lasts until the kitten wanders over and tries to eat her tail, at which point they chase each other around the apartment for a while. There’s no more hissing and spitting while they do this, so I leave them to it. Onyx needs to burn some calories and the kitten will usually sleep for awhile afterward. All good.
The kitten also discovered the basket of cat toys that I had stashed on a shelf. These are the toys that Onyx used to teach me how to throw balls (seriously—Onyx’s sole interest in the various balls, toy mice, toy lobster, etc, was in seeing how many she could convince me to throw before I realized what was going on).
I am not entirely sure where all the toys are at this point in time. The kitten systematically pulled them out, played with each one for a while, and pulled some more out. Sometimes she went back to a previous toy, as if comparison shopping, and then she went and pulled out some more toys.
One should never settle for the first toy in life, after all. One must discriminate.
Here’s what I’ve learned about kitten’s tastes:
Flashing lights are not her thing.
Balls are far more interesting than mice.
Balls with bells are more interesting than balls without bells.
The lobster—which has a bell in its tail—is awesome. It has all sorts of claws and tail and such that she can grab and use to drag it around, and it makes noise.
I don’t mind the noise. It means she’s amusing herself and (probably) not getting into trouble.
Posts may slow down over the next couple weeks—with work ramping up, Ro is going to get a little bit of short shrift. And I am not (you may thank me later) going to turn this into a kitten blog.
But don’t worry. We’re all having a grand old time. It’s just the sort of comfortable, grand old time that doesn’t lend itself to posting much.