Shameless Pet Momma

If my two amazing sons were still itty bitty I'd surely post photos of their antics everyday on Facebook.  But, sigh, they had the audacity to grow up. And so.... my friends and family surely tire of photo after photo after photo of my little man, Rusty, and my little lady Miss Annie (as in orphan), but I. don't. care.   Lately, due to discovering the many youtube videos of Maru the Cat I've started to bring home boxes and bags for Annie.  Oh. word! The fun! Who knew???  I haven't got any videos yet (because she's so dang fast!) but just wanted to share a few of my favorite shots of her new (and free) toys. Oh, many thanks to the "give away" shelf at work for the cool boxes!

Ahhhhh, that first, special box.

She really DOES have her own proper, soft bed. 

"Rusty will never find me in this crinkly packing paper tent!"

Every cat should have an upscale, downtown, fancy, schmancy shopping bag cave.

"But, like Barbara, I'm partial to Trader Joe's!"

Sitting on TOP of a box is such a joy ride!

Awwww, no bag or box, but she's so pretty when she's drowsy in the sun's rays. 

Ok, now show me your cat! Tell me about them!

AND POOF ! SHE WAS A CAT !

And it came.....to pass. This scripture from the Bible describes my "Annie" saga perfectly.  For six full months she was an adorable cute, bouncy, playful photo op that bloodied my fingers and arms in daylight and my toes and thighs as I slept in the night.It's in the 100's in my part of the world in the summer so we sleep on top on the covers.

My first plan to tame her was to get her spayed. And I did. Just as soon as she turned four months old.  I had to drive 30 miles away to a world famous cat sanctuary Cathouse on the Kings to get it done for $15, but it was worth it.  Within ten days of her being spayed I began to notice that she was sleeping more deeply. I could move around the house and she wouldn't awaken.  Next, a week had gone by when it suddenly dawned on me, "I've not been bitten in a week!"  

Then, I took her to Rusty's groomer to have her nails trimmed.  I did this myself when she first arrived, but now she deftly slithers from my grasp.  I couldn't fathom how she'd sit still for someone else, but by gosh she did!  Alisha trimmed her nails in less than a minute as Annie curled in a ball against her tummy and chest. I was stunned! Now, since the shop is just a few blocks away, I trim her nails every four weeks.  There should be laws against people like me who forget to do things the easy way :p

But the pièce de résistance was the evening she came up to me on my armchair where I was relaxing and wedged herself between its arm and me and went to sleep like she owned the place. AND SHE WENT TO SLEEP. Did you get that????  That was the very first time she slept by me, touching me. Waaaayyy cool.  Now it's a regular thing. She will jump up to my lap, circle me a few times, and eventually plop herself down somewhere and be cozy.

I thought the day would never come.

 

Sure! I'd Love a Sweet, Cuddly Kitty !

It had been a long, dry summer. Literally. The middle of California, well, actually, all of California was in a period a drought. We still are.  But, even worse, so was my life. I'd moved back to the city in which I'd raised my sons, retired, due to health at the time, from my teaching profession and felt  like my soul was walking through the same desert as my checkbook. 

It was June and I'd just entered my sixth month of unemployment.  Yes, I was able to substitute teach, but it meant no summer income and it was scary not to have medical insurance for the first time in my life. So I began to mull about ways to get out of myself, my misery. Ways to mentally remove myself from the panic of my circumstances....a summer with no income. Rusty and I had been visiting local assisted living and skilled nursing facilities then we stopped, when our valley 100+ temps arrived.  But we started going again.  Just to give of ourselves. To think about someone else. To care. To feel. To laugh.

One day three high school girlfriends I'd managed to reconnect with met for lunch. One of them, Cyndi, desperately needed to find a forever home for a kitten her Aussie shepherd had caught and she was caring for.  Now,  I thought she was talking about the cat to which she'd recently changed to be her Facebook profile photo.  A stunning dark blonde amber-ish cat/kitten.  'Cause you can't tell the size on a teeny photo.  Cyndi knew I'd been talking about getting a kitten so she invited back to her Mom's to see this kitten.  Thinking, "Wow, I would love to have a kitten with that beautiful coat, I said sure.  We walk into her living room and the kitty comes bouncing through. I'm surprised Cyndi and Dot couldn't hear my heart thud to their floor because this kitten wasn't the one in the photo. No no no no.  This munchkin's coat of fur was the drab gray kind of cat we used to call an alley cat when I was a kid.  Not a thing special or beautiful about her looks to me. Gray, black stripes, a little white. Eh.

But I did want a kitten. So I said yes to help out the poor ugly thing. (The kitten, not Cyndi!) They delivered her to me a week or so later when it no longer had to be bottle fed. Poor thing didn't even have a mommy (me, people!) who loved her.  Sigh.  I was hoping she'd grow on me because, after all, what's cuter than a teeny kitten to cuddle and play with. Right?  WRONG!

Good gracious God Almighty, was I a dumb blonde!  After a few hours I realized I'd never had a teeny kitten, I so did not know what I was in for!  I had no clue as to the behavior of a kitten other than if I had more than one they'd happily roll around on each other. Cuddles???? HAHAHAHAHA. People! Kittens don't cuddle! Who knew? Well, okay, not me.   Now they might fall asleep on you after their private play session, but if you do more than breathe they wake up and it's game on! And that means they just run away into another room or area to the next piece of paper on the floor or other diversion and they are happy campers. Almost.

It seems that another factoid I did not know about kittens was that they can be biters and boy could she bite. Three times that summer she bit either my leg or once my big toe in the night and clamped down so hard I had to apply alcohol and band-aids after limping and dripping blood to the bathroom! So she had to sleep the rest of the summer  in her carrier so I'd feel safe at night!  Another skill I didn't know about was that, yeah, it's okay to call me stupid, but, no, be gentle... call me uninformed, I did. not. know. kittens. claw ! By the time I started subbing again in September my little first graders were asking, "How did you hurt your arms, teacher?"  So I'd ham it up and regale them with stories about my little devil kitty. They loved it.  

Hey...I wanted to love this kitty.  But, pain is pain, and is not conducive to fond affection especially without the cuddles which were clearly a fantasy. But, hey, she was fun to watch and photograph so she was staying.  I kept thinking, "Surely she'll grow out of this biting, clamping, clawing, digging by time she's a year old.  Surely Shirley.  Question was: Did I have enough band-aids to last eight more months of this?! (To be continued)

Too many, too little, too late....

Kittens and I go way back to the summer one found me at Gramma's house in Avenal in second grade.  I called her Joopie.  Have no clue where I came up with that name. She loved me and played with me through the summer, but in a household with six kids to feed spaying kittens wasn't in the spending plan. Or maybe it just wasn't spoken about in those day. I know, as a child, I certainly didn't know to ask....so she ran away and broke my heart.  And then, there was the orange and white poofy cat who adopted our house that I named Fluffy.  But when she decided to sleep behind the wheel of our neighbor's car, well, you get the picture. Those are the two kittens that stand out in my mind, but there were lots of others. I loved them and lost them. So I finally gave up on cats and accepted loving our family dog as good enough. 

That decision changed one rainy day when I had two sons, 3 & 5, of my own.  A calico itty bitty kitty walked onto the driveway. I told my sons we'd put signs around the 'hood, but she couldn't stay. I told the boys curtly, "Kittens come, but they leave and they break your heart."  Yeah, I said that! But, hey, I was the overworked teacher/mom absolutely certain I had the power to prevent my boys from runaway cats! But, don't worry! The kitten stayed....for sixteen fun years. 

They named her Tigger, as most Calico cats are probably named and the memories she gave my guys would fill a whole wonderful book.

But Tigger went to Cat Heaven ten years ago. I retired from teaching, moved from The Bay Area of California back to my smaller hometown and whittled my possessions down to fit into an itty bitty cottage.  I thought I would return to the old friends I'd always surrounded myself with, but you can't go home again and I found myself pretty much alone expect for family. And for the very first time in my sixty-two years.....really lonely.  I still had my amazing pooch, Rusty, but it was a long hot first summer back when Cyndi told me about the kitty she'd found.  The rest, as they say, is history.  I brought her home, called her Annie (for little orphan Annie) expecting lots of cuteness and cuddles.  Well, clearly I hadn't had enough life experience with kittens because I was only half right. (To be continued )

She Came, She Saw, but She SO Did Not Conquer

Itty Bitty Annie

Look. at. that. face. How could it hurt to love that face?  Well, I'm going to tell you how! The itty bitty cute kitty face up there is representative of kittens everywhere who completely get off the hook for mauling their humans because they are that cute! But I digress.

My friend, Cyndi, hooked me up with that hunk of cuteness up there.  Cyndi has a marvelous Australian Shepherd dog, Roo, who has a special talent for chasing squirrels....and catching them! Then he often proudly presents them to Cyndi for approval and validation of his prowess. But, on a hot June day, at her mom's house, Roo presented Cyndi with this little diva in his mouth! He had evidently seen this kitty when she climbed under the fence from a neighbor's yard. Surely Roo thought, "Hey! It's the same color as a squirrel! It moves like a squirrel! It must be A SQUIRREL!!! YUM!"  And so he caught it! Mighty easily, I am sure, since as an itty bitty kitty she surely couldn't have possibly even tried to run from Roo. 

Seeing movement on the patio, Cyndi glanced up to see something in Roo's mouth at the door and thought, "That's not a squirrel! No, Roo, no!!!!" Then rushed to rescue "the squirrel" much to Roo's disappointment I am sure. (To be continued)