Sleep: The Final Frontier

I've been keeping the kittens locked up in the nursery at night. Various experiments with napping had proven that sleeping with them was fraught with uncertainty (I thought it was proven, anyway). So I didn't want to let them out at night to play and bother and keep me awake until I had something a little heftier than my usual sleeping aids.

Last Friday I went to my doctor and got some of a new prescription sleep medication that works differently than Ambien and all the others. I don't like those, so I was waiting eagerly for this one to become available. I've been following its progress via my chemistry magazines for a while now. And, because it was brand new (it's only been on the market since early January of this year) she actually had samples of it. Good thing since it's expensive and, well, didn't actually work properly for me.

So Friday night, after I closed the door with the kittens behind it and played with Apricot exclusively for a while, I then opened the door, much to their delight, and let them out. I took my new sleep helper (the lowest dose possible as I sometimes react oddly to drugs) and went through the ritual of going to bed.

Luckily with my nap experiments I'd already mostly trained them not to play with the light-darkening curtain that hangs over my bedroom doorway, and that wasn't an issue.

They got on the bed with me, but were mostly just curled up. They weren't the restless ones. That was me.

Unfortunately it appears that this new sleep med does exactly what it's supposed to, but the part of the brain that it affects is not the part that natters at me all night and keeps me awake. So I could feel part of my brain and my body going to sleep, but not the fretting part.

I knew there was a reason I really shouldn't do this, but I didn't want to stay awake all night, and I couldn't think of the reason. So I got up, went to the kitchen, got my usual sleep meds and took those too. That's a low dose xanax and a low dose of a muscle relaxer (because the new sleep med wasn't doing much for the tightening leg muscles issue, either).

As I lay in bed waiting for those to take effect, it finally occurred to me why this was a bad idea. I'd just taken three different CNS depressants. That's "central nervous system" depressants, and that's what keeps you breathing and your heart going while you're asleep and not paying attention to them. Yeah. Oops.

I thought about fighting to stay awake and dismissed the idea. I then thought, with some mild amusement, 'well, I hope I wake up in the morning.' But as all three were very low doses, I didn't figure I was actually in too much danger. Only late the next night (as I obviously did wake up the next morning) did I realize I had actually phrased it "I hope I wake up" and I'd meant it. A year ago I wouldn't have.

But I woke up Saturday morning feeling surprisingly refreshed and cheerful, even though I was alone. Apparently 8 or so hours of me thrashing around was too much for even stubborn kittens, and they had left.

Since then, however, I've woken up with both kittens multiple times, and always Thimble. Colby's the one that gives up about fifty percent of the time. And about fifty percent of the time (not the same fifty percent) Apricot comes up and says good morning after it's obvious I've woken up.

He comes up on the bed and walks up to my head, avoiding the kitten(s), and gives me a head bump, which is his good morning greeting apparently, and I extract a hand and pet him, and then he leaves again. It's strange ... I've never had a cat do that with quite such regularity.

Thimble has pretty well determined that right by my shoulder is a good spot to be in, as I don't usually thrash above elbow level much. He hasn't had me try to smack a snooze button to my left and hit him instead, so he sleeps on either side, but mostly on the left side. My alarm clock is directly above me on the headboard, so I won't be trying to hit the snooze button and hit him accidentally in any case.

Pippin always slept on my right due to a misunderstanding about where the clock actually was. I remember that morning being sleepily confused about why the alarm was still beeping and why instead of a "click" as I hit the button on the clock, there'd been a "mrup?" and the clock had felt fuzzy. Poor guy. It only happened once, but that was enough to convince him that to my left was a dangerous place to be.

So it's a bit odd having Thimble there a lot.

Colby either sleeps on the other side from Thimble or sleeps right below Thimble, if he's there at all. If he's there when I wake up, he's very sleepy and doesn't want to get up and he makes it darn difficult to get up and face the day when he's being all sleepy cat at me.

Luckily Thimble is always ready to get up and go. But he waits politely for me and even enjoys the time I spend waking up with smartphone games before I actually get out of bed, as I often pet him and Colby while doing that.

This is in direct contrast to his naptime behavior. I don't know if Ginger (the breeder, remember) actually had them out at night to train them how to sleep with humans, or if there is just enough difference in my sleep during the night as compared to naptime to tell Thimble how to behave. It's very odd but very welcome!

With two cats on the bed during the night, I have actually slept better the last week than I have in a very long time ... since Pippin was with me. There's something about having that pressure on the bed that's comforting, even when I'm asleep and not truly aware of what happens around me.

In Which I Get Scratched and Colby Gets Wet

Sometimes, whenever I talk about something too much or even write about it here (perhaps it correlates to page views ... ) the universe conspires to turn me into an inadvertent liar. 

This past Tuesday I ended up talking to several different people at work about Colby and Thimble, and in each conversation somehow I managed to say that I hadn't gotten scratched because they don't scratch me. Except for once when Colby was small and I was lifting him to investigate the headboard of my bed; I was too far away and he almost fell and as he was scrabbling for a hold, any hold, his back foot got my wrist in a scratch. Which wasn't deliberate on Colby's part and I doubt he knew about it.

Well, saying it that often must have done it, because Tuesday after work I got scratched on both wrists. It was sort of Thimble's fault and sort of my own. He wasn't deliberately scratching me, but what he was doing was deliberate. 

You see, here's how it happened. I was in the bathroom preparing to take my shower. As he's done for the past month or so, Thimble was inside the bathroom with me. The door was shut, and Colby was outside, waiting to play footsie, and sticking an occasional exploratory paw under the door in impatience for the game to start. 

After I divested myself of my many layers of clothes, I realized that yeah, I should probably use the toilet first before my shower. (I hate doing that right after a shower because I never manage to get the backs of my legs perfectly dry, and so the damp skin sticks to the seat. Nasty sensation.)

My first mistake was not putting clothes back on. My second mistake was forgetting that I lean forward slightly while sitting ... the same lean forward motion that is part of the trifecta of signals to Thimble to let him know it's okay to jump onto my shoulder. (The other two are patting my shoulder with the same-arm's hand, and saying "come on up.")

Thimble wanted to be on my shoulder and decided that one out of three was good enough. He launched. 

I didn't particularly want an 11 pound cat on my bare shoulder while I was trying to pee. So I fended him off. With my hands.

My third mistake was not having a squirt bottle handy, because that would have told him the behavior was unwanted in no uncertain terms. 

He is very persistent about things he wants. And he wanted to be on my shoulder. So he launched himself again. This time when I fended him off, a claw on each back foot contacted my corresponding wrist, leaving a long shallow scrape from the base of my hands to the middle of my arm (but closer to the wrist than the elbow). 

Well, at this point I was starting to get upset and angry, which is no way to deal with a kitten whose only fault is wanting to be close to you a little too much and at an inopportune time. Luckily I recognized this and decided to simply put Thimble outside the bathroom door instead of trying to fix the situation any other way. 

He was already coming forward again (my last fend-off had dropped him almost on the other side of the admittedly narrow bathroom) and so I just opened the door (which is right next to the toilet, bad planning overall but nice at the moment) and guided him gently out the door into Colby's astonished and waiting arms. Granted he was waiting for Thimble's foot to come under the door, not the entire Thimble. 

Now Thimble seemed fine with me when I came out from the finished shower, and he seemed fine the next morning. However, I don't actually spend enough time in the morning with them to notice what I observed Wednesday afternoon when I came home. Thimble seemed a little standoffish. Just a little. Nothing big, no turned back or indignant glares, just a little uncertain around me. He had to be encouraged verbally quite a lot before he leaped onto my shoulder (in the appropriate place) but he purred once he was there.

I think I hurt his feelings!

Thursday he seemed back to normal, but Friday, on the next hairwashing day, he didn't want to come in the bathroom when invited. And Colby joined me instead. 

Well, I thought, at least they can still play footsie together. Which, judging by the paws under the door, Thimble was very eager to do. I believe Colby played footsie during my actual shower, but for all the bits before and after, he was fascinated with what I was doing. Remember, he's never been in the bathroom during my shower before.

I let the hot water run and fill the bottom of the tub, just enough to heat the surface so that when I step in, I don't freeze my feet off on the cold whatever-my-tub-is-made-of. I also keep the tub outlet closed until halfway through my bath, and this gets the water up to my ankles. Making it easier to clean my feet with the skin soaked like that, and keeping me warmer.

Colby watched the water run into the tub out of the shower head which is hanging near the faucet. (The shower hose is flexible and I have to hold the end above my head to use it as an actual showerhead). He went to the other end of the tub, around the curtain, and promptly got in.

There's a layer of water already filling the entire tub. This isn't Thimble's get in the dry end and retreat hastily when it became apparent the water puddle was rapidly approaching him. This was get in and get wet. 

He decided soon enough that he didn't want to take a bath and got back out again, but it wasn't the instantaneous launch you would expect. As he sat on the bathrug and inspected his damp feet, I looked at him in bemusement and said, "well, at least you'll have something to do." (I meant he'd be washing himself dry while I was in the shower.)

Now when I finish, there's a thin layer of water everywhere in the tub and on the walls. Because of the hair conditioner I use, if you let that dry, the surface of the tub the next time you get it wet is extremely, dangerously slippery. So I dry the tub. I have to dry the walls, too, because if I dry just the tub, the water on the walls eventually gets to the tub and then I still have the problem. (Yes, I found that out the hard way.)

It's a thin layer, but it's thick enough to drown a towel with all of it, so I use a squeegee on the walls and floor of the tub first. 

But before I dry the tub, I dry myself and wrap my hair in a towel so I don't freeze to death (noticing a theme here?). And I was doing that, drying myself off, and hadn't gotten far when suddenly I feel fur against my wet leg. I looked down in astonishment.

Colby has gotten back into the tub, and is sitting on the bottom, watching the drip from the faucet. He's totally ignoring the fact that his tail, draped on the tub floor behind him, is getting wet enough that I can see from my height and without my glasses that the fur is beginning to clump together in wet strands. Which means his feet and tummy are getting that wet, too.

He stayed in the tub with me throughout the whole drying-of-the-me process and the drying-of-the-tub process. In which I got his shoulder wet with drips off the squeegee, despite my best efforts not to. He only left when I wanted to dry the part of the tub he was currently sitting on, as he had moved down to the faucet end and was almost underneath it, watching it drip.

I got out too at that point, because I'm done, and he washed himself rather half-heartedly as I got my clothes on. When I let him out, Thimble was right there and inspected him very carefully. He started washing Colby's wet shoulder immediately ... which was probably why Colby's self-washing had been lackadaisical at best. He knew Thimble would help him out.

So that is the tale of how I got scratched and how Colby got wet. 

Portrait of Apricot (2 years old) (more or less)

Apricot is, above all else, a gentle cat. He is the last cat who should be an outdoor cat, fending for himself, but that's how he was born and grew up. When he was finally caught and taken to a shelter, it was an extremely good thing he was taken to a humane society shelter where he could live as long as he needed to. Since he is terrified of humans he was not very adoptable, despite being a very pretty cat.

But I didn't behave like any human he'd ever encountered. When I interacted with him in the beginning, I used a lot of cat body language adapted for the restrictions of a human body. I was slow and quiet and gentle.

He responded to this by concluding I must be a giant deformed cat, and therefore, I was okay to be around. 

I really don't know if there are many people he would have been happy with, but he's happy in my house. I still use cat body language, and I still move slowly and carefully around him, but less so for each, as he's gotten more and more used to me. 

He loves his new baby brothers, Colby and Thimble, and he's learning so much from them. 

For instance: when I make my bed, I rotate the mattress (just rotate, not flip). I got tired of my mattresses wearing out so quickly, so I decided to rotate it often, and when making the bed is the perfect time. This means that, although the mattress never fully leaves the box spring, part of it does swing out over the floor as I'm walking around the bed, dragging the mattress with me. Apricot always found this terrifying and wouldn't even stay in the room.

Since the kittens have come, who find this whole process fascinating, Apricot has stayed closer and closer. First he just stayed in the hallway where he could watch through the open door. (It's a small bedroom, for a master bedroom, and a queen sized bed, so most of the bedroom consists of the bed.) Then he came in and would leave halfway through the rotation. I start from the far side and move around to the door side of the room, so he'd leave as the majority of the mattress came toward him. 

Last week he stayed in the room the whole time, over against the closet edge. This week he seems to have thrown caution to the wind, because not only did he stay in the bedroom the entire time, he stayed underfoot. I had to step over him (very carefully and slowly) as I was dragging the mattress around. This meant the mattress was in motion over top of where he was! And he just stayed there. (I am baffled.)

The kittens usually are playing on the cat stairs, because the stairs are in a different location (against the wall instead of against the bed) and have the comforter and blanket draped over them, thus making ambush places. 

Last December.
Apricot prefers being beside me rather than on my lap.

Another thing he learned from the kittens was that human laps are fun and good to sleep on. Before they came, I had managed to get him to spend thirty seconds or so on my lap at a time. Once or twice it lasted longer, even five or ten minutes.

Now mind you, I never make him do anything. I rarely carry him, as it scares him, and so most of the time I coax him to come where I want him to be by holding my hand out at petting level and using my voice to ask him to come over. Sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn't, but more often than not he'll come to me. (I find this behavior quite wonderful and it boosts my self-esteem no end!)

So those times on my lap were from me coaxing him, never holding him in place, and just petting him and trying to make being there a pleasant experience. But he was never sure of his footing, as my muscles slide over my leg bones most distressingly, and forget about the clothing slippage!

However, he observed the kittens, who sprawl all over me with complete abandon, and have no sense of a proper lap. They'll curl up on me when I'm cross-legged, sitting on the floor with my knees up, sitting with my legs bent beside me, as well as the proper legs together and forward. 

Much to my surprise, he has started wanting to be on my lap, without any coaxing or invitation from me. He'll come over and look disappointed when my lap is occupied by someone else! And while he always tests his footing for each step, he will now relax on my lap instead of sitting stiff and guarded, and he's even fallen completely asleep many times.

How far he's come from the cat who wouldn't eat if I was closer than six feet away. Now he keeps eating even if I stand over him on my hands and knees and kiss his head. He does pause to return the head bump!

Before the kittens came sometimes he'd
fall asleep during Apricot Cuddles.

His special thing with me is "Apricot Cuddles" when I come home from anything other than my morning walk. He hangs out in the kitchen while I change out of my shoes into my slippers (my feet get cold easily) and in the winter, while I get my hands damp. And then I sit down with my back to the pantry door, and he rushes over and comes very close indeed and presses into me (how hard depends on how long I've been gone and how much he missed me). 

Since he didn't like laps I had been doing this with my legs at a 90 degree angle. Now I'm stuck with that because it's part of the ritual. Cats love ritual and you are not allowed to change it. Apricot barely let me change it to include damp hands, and that was only because he didn't particularly like being shocked by the static electricity any more than I did once the air dried out in the winter. I've only had him since last summer, so this is our first winter together.

But since Apricot's been with me longer than the kittens by a good six months, and he was an only-cat during that time, we have other special things. Upside-down kitty is one of them, where I'm bent over at the waist to untie my shoes and I pet him during this. Thimble likes to be an upside-down kitty too.

Apricot doesn't like conflict, and will back off if Thimble gets in the way. However, he really likes upside-down kitty, and he figured out that Thimble can only be on one side of me at a time. So he just goes on the other side. This means I have to make sure I don't stand too close to the door when I'm untying my shoes, so that there's room for a cat on each side. I also have to make sure I actually bother to untie my shoes, as sometimes my hands are both busy and I might forget. (Early morning after my walk and late afternoon after a long day at work are not particularly good times to be trying to remember petty details.) 

Apricot is not particularly pleased by his bunkmate.
Apricot was there first ... 

Another special Apricot thing that he came up with on his own is the daily supper sniff. He'll come to the right side of my chair when I sit down to eat my supper. He'll sit down on the floor and look up at me expectantly. I am supposed to get a small portion of my supper on my finger and offer it to him. He doesn't want to eat it. He wants to know what it is. 

I swear, if I have something five days in a row, which I do sometimes, I get this look from him, as if to say, "Again? Your meals are not very interesting!" (Oddly, he doesn't mind eating the same food all the time. He just seems to mind if I eat the same food all the time.)

Colby and especially Thimble were, and are, baffled by this. They think he should at least taste it. Thimble tried for a few days to get in the way and lick it off my finger, but I've decided, given that they are allowed on the table, that they don't get food from the table, ever. So I wouldn't let him, and he's gone back to watching Apricot do his dinner sniff moment with a very puzzled expression.

After Apricot sees what I'm having for dinner, he leaves to do other things. I've actually started saying, "This is what I'm having for supper" as I offer him my finger to sniff with the food bit on it. Sometimes, when I'm not having anything that lends itself to staying on a finger well, the part he gets to sniff is only part of supper. (A deli meat sandwich is like that. The only thing I can get to stay on the finger is the mayo I put on the bread!)

One of the new wand toys.
Which is an old toy I found
in a closet. It appears to be
one of Apricot's favorites.

Apricot really does not like conflict, and when we play with the wand toy in the evenings, he will usually participate but only when the other two aren't currently playing with it. Sometimes they both have to take a break at the same time, and then he'll jump in. I do try to engage all three of them, but I don't worry too much about it.

That's because the wand toy playtime is from before the kittens came, and it's another special thing that's just for me and Apricot. While the kittens are included initially, once they finally start winding down, I shut them in the nursery and then Apricot and I will play with the wand toy, just us two.

I got more wand toys than just the Bird one, and that seems to make playtime more fun for everyone. 

Apricot will have seemed very sedate and cautious while the kittens were playing. He'll grab the toy if it comes near him, and will sometimes run after it, but he won't go up the cat trees after it (that's Colby's thing) and he won't tear after it at high speed. You'd think he wasn't all that interested.

This wand toy can occupy two cats at the same time!

Until you put the kittens in the nursery. Then Apricot lets loose and you see he's just been bottling up all that energy, waiting until now. It's like when you get stuck behind traffic going really really slow, and finally you get to a place you can pass them and/or get on a high-speed road, and you just have to go zoom because you've been patient for so long and all that energy is wound up inside, and you've got to release it. That's how Apricot plays once the other two are taken out of the equation.

Apricot is a bookish sort of cat.

Nurturing Apricot's spirit and coaxing that frightened ball of fur into a happy, confident, gentle, sweet cat companion has restored my own soul. Perhaps one day another human will be able to come to my house and experience the joy that is confident, happy Apricot, but for right now, the one thing that hasn't changed is that he is still terrified of humans.

Portrait of Thimble (5 months old)

Thimble, at five months old, is a very definite person. He knows what he likes and doesn't like, and is trying to convince me that I won't talk him into liking being kissed on the head. (I'm pretending I don't get the hint, because I'm convinced that if I do it enough, he'll give up and accept it as a gesture of affection.)

He's still the boss, although he's got some subtlety to it now, and places where he doesn't mind not being the boss. When Apricot said you are going to be washed by me and don't you give me that guff about turning this into a playfight, Thimble actually seemed a bit relieved. As if he didn't really want to be responsible for everything all the time.

Thimble being washed by Apricot
while Colby sleeps through the whole thing.

He loves to interact with people. He's my greeter cat--when I have visitors, he meets them at the door and sniffs at them and observes them. And no, you're not allowed to actually pet him yet; he's got to finish his assessment and record it in triplicate and turn it into the head office before you can pet him. Luckily for the patience of my visitors, he's usually very quick in his assessments! 

When I come home, he's in the window waiting for me. Colby may or may not be there, depending on the state of his nap, but Thimble is always there. And when I open the door, Thimble is right there at the door, necessitating a greeting that goes somewhat like this:

"Hi, Thimble; hey Colby; back up Thimble; Apricot, I'm home!" Luckily Thimble doesn't mind being "hoosh-ed" back by grocery bags, postal-service-delivered boxes, or whatever else I'm carrying extra that needs space to come through the door that's more than the space I normally take up.

If I'm doing anything even remotely interesting, Thimble is right there. Sometimes closer than others, depending on what it is and how much space I've requested in the past. For instance, cooking requires more space because I'm moving back and forth along the counter space from the fridge to the oven and back again, and despite my efforts to improve, I rarely look down before moving my feet. 

Things that don't qualify as interesting: reading a book, playing games or checking email (etc) on my phone. Things that do qualify as interesting which are unusual given those things that aren't: watching tv! and taking a nap. I am apparently very interesting when I'm napping. It's not that he wants me to wake up, exactly. It's that he wants to take a nap with me. Very much with me. 

Napping with me on my birthday.
He's out like a light.

Thimble has a quirk that's physical. The last vertebrae of his tail goes off at a 45 degree angle to the rest of them. You can't really tell unless you feel it. I think it's cute, but I'm glad Ginger (the breeder) didn't keep any of his litter for further breeding because I think that sort of thing is genetic (thus, Colby probably has a recessive gene that, if paired correctly, would cause it) and I think it's not an accepted part of the breed standard. I still think it's cute. (It's not a physical problem for Thimble or anything.)

He also snores. On rare occasions.

It is great fun having him around, because he's always involved with what I'm doing, except during the times when it's okay by me if he isn't (I mean, when I'm reading I'd rather not be pestered, but when I'm watching tv I have these helpful petting hands not doing anything and a kitty is welcome). 

His special thing is jumping onto my shoulder. I taught him to jump up on something that's mid-height to me because I certainly don't want him jumping the five feet from the ground to my shoulder. As a grown cat, he'd probably knock me over! 

Then I ask him if he wants up and pat my shoulder with my hand. He has to consider things first, but he'll then launch himself at me, with the aim of getting his front feet over top of my shoulder and his back feet and body somewhere at my chest. He has no intentions of grabbing me. He just launches at me and expects me to catch him. Which I do. When I've invited him up.

Occasionally he forgets that I have to ask him up first, and he launches without warning. Generally this results in him "dribbling" down my front and landing on the floor, with me looking at him going, "well? It's not like I was prepared or anything!". Hopefully he'll get the hint and learn not to jump without my at least knowing about it. Again, the grown up cat size will be a little harder to catch, and impossible if I don't realize he's coming!

He and Apricot are getting along quite well, and often mirror each other. (Mirroring is a sign of getting along.) They have plenty of playbattles but also just times of being together. They don't sleep together yet.

Mirroring. Thimble took a nap with me;
Apricot showed up when I woke up.
He's not asleep, but Thimble's halfway there.

A great battle.
When Apricot's supposed to be cuddling with me.

Thimble's brown part of his tabby coloration is slowly becoming more visible. It's really there around his face, and a gorgeous shade of brown that I'm not used to seeing on cats, but the brown that's currently hidden in his back and side blacks is emerging as he grows. It's fun to watch. I noticed he had brown tabby showing up in his back leg "britches" the other day.

At five months he was ten pounds and a little over half a pound, and taller than Apricot. Perhaps I will rethink my position when he's full grown, but right now, it's nice to have a bigger cat. Oh, sure, I miss the days when I could get all three on my lap, but now I can actually hug Thimble without feeling like I'm going to squish him, or wondering what I'm supposed to do with all the extra arm space.

And he does like being hugged. He has to be on a surface, like the bed, and be hugged against me, to truly enjoy it. But he also likes being hugged when he's standing on my lap, which is quite nice. He's a very hug-able cat.

Portrait of Colby (5 months old)

This is Colby around five months old. (March 9 is the exact date of five months old.) His personality is starting to emerge.

Colby's phrase is, "if it's going to happen, it's going to happen to Colby." Despite the two of them spending equal time underfoot, it's Colby I end up tripping over most often. If someone's going to fall off the cat tree and hit the edge of the hearth with his back, it'll be Colby. (He's okay.) If someone's going to get a pill stuck halfway down their throat and have to wait for it to dissolve while breathing around it, it'll be Colby. (Again, okay.) If someone's going to be washing their neck ruff and get their fur tangled around a tooth and be unable to disentangle themselves, it's going to be Colby. (Not pleased at use of scissors to cut the hair and then me pulling the hair off his tooth, but okay.) He seems to attract bad luck.

He's my puzzler cat. He likes to figure things out and sort out the way things work. I was playing with them with a wand toy and tossed it into the cubby hole of the cat tree in the nursery. Colby was on the tree at the time, but he was facing the wrong way and didn't see where it went. It took a minute or two, but he figured out by tracing the string where the toy was, and you should have seen the ecstatic look on his face when he came out of the cubby hole holding it in his mouth!

Colby's also the one that figured out the baby teething toy. I got some teething toys for human babies because the selection for cat babies is a bit thin. This one is a segmented thing that each segment can rotate at the point it joins the next one, so you can deform it out of shape. Each segment is a different type of plastic for chewing on. I come home and find it in a different form than the way I left it, and given that I've only seen Colby playing with it, I believe it's Colby who figured out how to change it around. Even without opposable thumbs.

He's the one that plays with the food dispenser ball. It's a ball with a maze of plastic inside (it looks like it'd be fun to run matchbox cars down the plastic maze if it was larger and you could get them inside somehow). I put their normal food in it, not treats, and Colby rolls it around until the food comes out. He'll do it when he wants a snack and doesn't want to leave the living room, but he'll also do it when the other two ask him. I've seen him rolling it around, with Thimble and/or Apricot following close behind and scooping up the food bits as if they were quiet vacuum cleaners, and Colby only bothers to eat one if enough fall out that the other two are busy and some food is left over.

Sometimes the other two don't understand the difference between Colby dispensing food from the treat ball for them, and Colby doing it for himself ... I can tell because of the speed with which Colby goes after the dropped food bits! He doesn't growl at them or anything like that; he just darts in under their heads and snipes the food out from under them.

Colby's also in the process of figuring out the vacuum cleaner. Today as I vacuumed, I saw Colby in every single room I vacuumed, watching me. I never actually saw him follow me, but he must have. He's figuring out how it works. Oh, not the electricity and the suction and all that part of a vacuum cleaner. That's of no interest to a cat. He's figuring out that it doesn't move without me; that it follows a pattern across the floor where it rarely covers the same area after leaving it; and that there are certain points throughout the house where it stops and I disassemble it and do things off the floor and then reassemble it. Once he figures out all of this, he'll be able to hang out and watch it without the worry that it might suddenly race across and attack him. But as I only clean the house once a week, he's not had a lot of observation time yet.

He's the one who likes the tent. I'd gotten this tent many years ago but Pippin never used it, so I gave it to a friend of mine. Well, we're still friends, and her cat hadn't really been using it either, and she gave it back to me.

The tent is a popup kind of thing, and Colby figured out if you jump on it, and then get off of it, it will collapse and then pop back into shape. To Thimble, this is really kind of a "and? so what?" revelation; he doesn't see the fun. Colby loves to jump on it and make it collapse. He does it even when he's not trying to get another cat to leave. I come home and I find this tent moved and sometimes on its side. I anchored it (it has an elastic band for the purpose) but he didn't play with it then, so apparently, he doesn't mind if he turns it over or upside down.

Colby takes a while to warm up to you. In fact, he takes a while to warm up to me every time I come home. But I actually understand this, although I doubt I can explain it. And it's not like he watches me from across the house; he hangs out with me and stuff. It's just that, well, like if I try to kiss his head--if I've only been home a few minutes, he'll back up and stare at me. If I've been home for hours, he'll move in for a head bump. Thimble doesn't have the same hesitation, so it isn't just that I smell funny from being outside the house.

But Colby prefers a less interactive type of interaction than Thimble. He likes to be asleep on my lap, or a cat's half-awake napping on my lap, while I do other things. If I'm sitting down and reading or playing phone games, he's likely to be on my lap.

However, if Colby decides he wants attention, heaven forbid you don't give it to him. He can be the worst pest when he wants to be. I've discovered that when he jumps up to be on my lap, it's best to shower him with attention until he indicates he's had enough and he'd like to curl up and be "with" without all that direct interaction now.

Once he kept giving me the "go back to what you were doing" signal and then contradicting himself a moment later. Really being a pain. Thimble was beside us on the settee, observing. When I said something along the lines of "would you stop?", Thimble got up, put a giant paw across Colby's neck, and pinned him down onto my lap, as if to say, "now look, you really are being a pest right now, behave."

I love giving him attention, don't get me wrong. It's just the mixed signals were getting a bit much.

Colby plays harder than Thimble does, but that's nothing new. What is new is Colby's increased desire to look nice and have his fur be all sorted out. In fact, it was his distress over his neck ruff getting stuck in his harness' collar that led me to take the harnesses off them both. There were other reasons, but that's the one that made me decide to do it. (Of course, a few days thereafter, we had the aforementioned hair getting wound around a tooth incident.)

They each have a special thing they do with me. These things were initiated by them and continued by me. Colby's is jumping on the antique end table that Apricot's food and water are under. (They both prefer to eat from this bowl rather than the two in the nursery. I can't wait till I can put all three bowls in the same area!) When Colby jumps onto the table, I say, "Oooh, does Colby want a kiss? Colby wants a kiss!" and stop what I'm doing, whatever that is, and go over to him and kiss him on his head.

The first time I did this I'm not sure what exactly Colby wanted when he jumped up there, but that's what he got. The fact that he continues to do this means that he enjoys it and likes to be able to have me do something just with him, whenever he wants.

And I enjoy not only kissing the top of his soft, warm head, but also the communication between us that is plain and clear and no guessing involved. If he gets onto the end table, it means he wants a kiss!

Braving the Vacuum Monster

Last week when I vacuumed, I moved both cats to the other end of the house when I was halfway through, just like normal. Both of them moved themselves back into the kitchen and then had to leave in utter terror when I got to the kitchen with the cleaner.

Well, I was rather disgusted by this behavior--Pippin did the same thing, and I began to suspect that he liked scaring himself--so I decided the kittens were on their own after this. They could deal with the vacuum cleaner as they wished.

Apricot, of course, is a sensible cat and hides himself. He moves when I have the vacuum cleaner's back turned, so to speak, and the hallway has been finished and is clear for a run to the bedroom. This hasn't changed and I don't actually think it ever will. He has, however, started coming out sooner and sooner after I put the cleaner away, and yesterday he came out before I had it in the closet! (After, of course, it was no longer running.)

Yesterday Thimble apparently decided that his supervisory duties extended to the the vacuum cleaning. He climbed the tree in the pink room and settled in to watch me from the beginning. He did really well until I started using the non-rotating brush extension to clean the bottom parts of the cat tree. (I wasn't planning on doing the level he was on, or above it, but he didn't know that, I guess.)

At that point he lost his nerve so completely that he fled to the kitchen, and when I got there eventually (it's the end, the pink room is the beginning) he fled from the kitchen in an utter panic.

Colby had put himself in the living room to begin with, and watched me while I cleaned that room, and then moved himself to the kitchen. When I got to the kitchen and Thimble left hastily, he watched Thimble leave with a puzzled look on his face. I shrugged and started cleaning the kitchen floor and carpets.

Colby was in one of the cat trees. I started cleaning the other one with the brush extension. He disengaged himself from the cat tree he was in, walked the edge of the table over to the one I was just finishing up, and climbed onto it.

I observed this in astonishment. I still had the brush extension set up as I was just about to put it back on the cleaner and continue with the floor.

Colby looked curious. He was watching the brush, but with a "what is that" expression instead of a "save me from vacuum monsters!" look.

I moved the brush closer to him, slowly, and watching his body language and his face the whole time. He leaned forward and sniffed the curve of the brush. I held it still for the inspection. Then when he pulled back, starting to look a little like, "okay, now I've had enough," I withdrew the implement and put it back on the cleaner, finishing the kitchen with Colby watching from the cat tree.

Perhaps one day I will be able to use the brush to brush him?

The Great Tuna Salad Incident

I made tuna salad for sandwiches. I don't often do this, as tuna salad is one of those things I only get a craving for every year or so. Thus I hadn't done it before while either Apricot or the kittens were with me.

Amazingly enough, I opened the can and squeezed out the juice into three little plastic dishes without anyone in the kitchen but me. I actually had to go into the living room and call Colby and Thimble before they came in the kitchen.

I have a feeling that's never going to be the case again.

I put the two dishes down. There was sudden sniffing of the air and then both kittens dived into the same dish. I picked Colby up and moved him over five inches to the other dish. This was deemed acceptable and they both polished off their dishes with great studiousness.

While they were busy, I took the third dish out to Apricot in the hallway to the kitchen. He stays there a lot to watch me in the kitchen as this keeps him out from underfoot and away from the impacts of excited kittens not watching where they are going. I put the dish under his nose. He's never showed interest in actually eating people-food.

He has this weird thing where he wants me to put a little of what I'm having on my finger and let him sniff, but he only wants to see what I'm having, he doesn't want to eat it. So I didn't know if he'd eat the tuna juice or not.

(By the way, I only get the tuna in water. I wouldn't actually give them the oil from tuna in oil, even if I got that version ... which sounds disgusting to me but then I've never had it, so maybe it's not disgusting after all.)

Apricot's nose twitched. His head came up. The nose twitched a few more times as he leaned over the dish. A tentative lick of the contents. Then with great approval he dived right in.

Everybody licked their dishes clean and dry. Apparently, tuna water is a hit with the CAT.

Now they are allowed on the table but if I'm eating at the table, they have to stay an arm's length away. My arm, not theirs, dearly though they'd love to interpret the rule that way. Mostly the kittens have decided to simply stay off the table entirely since it's too much temptation to stay on it and watch me eat. Apricot's never been on the table while I was eating, so it never came up with him.

That changed the night I ate my first tuna salad sandwich. Of all people, it was Apricot who jumped up on the table and tried to put his face into my food. I had anticipated something of the sort (just not from him) and I had the water squirter ready.

Apricot's been squirted once. It was for scratching the carpet when he knew very well that he shouldn't. I don't like to squirt him because he mostly behaves if you just give him a chance. The kittens are actually slowly falling into that category too.

So all I had to do was lift the bottle and give Apricot a significant look and he backed off and left the table, but not without a longing, backwards glance as he jumped down. Colby and Thimble didn't even try after that.

However, each night I've had tuna salad sandwiches (I made enough for several nights) I still have the water squirter with me.

Just in case.

(The second night Thimble thought they should be getting tuna water again, and was disappointed to find out that wasn't the case.)

Leftover February Photos

Thimble's Last Fit

Thimble loved to slide between me and the kitchen pantry in that little recessed area that all my counters have. I suppose it's so you can stand closer to the counter and your feet go into the recessed area. Anyway, this day, he got stuck. I had to move for him to get out. He hasn't tried to go there since. Aw, poor Thimble.

Colby decides to put himself in "jail."

The Grand Battle

This is the first time I've seen all three of them in a play fight at the same time. It was always two of them with the third either watching or just off doing his own thing. This day, all three of them got into it. And shy, scared Apricot was the one that pounced into the middle of the other two and made it three.

Playing footsie

Colby and Thimble just adore playing footsie under the door of the bathroom when I take a shower (because that's the only time the door is shut). Thimble comes in to "help me take a shower" and then he plays footsie with Colby half the time (the other half the time he spends on the edge of the bathtub, between the shower curtain and the liner, watching me have the astonishingly bad judgement to get myself all wet with water).

This day they discovered that they could play footsie under my ankle when I sat like this. Or rather, it worked until one of them realized you could go over top, and everything deteriorated from there. I removed my leg from the middle at that point.

Some toys just inspire happiness

The Box of Protection

I have this really cool ornament storage box which is made out of cardboard. It has drawers with separations that can be altered to fit the ornaments you store in it. The problem is, it's cardboard, and it's old, and it's not exactly sturdy.

When Apricot back in December landed on it jumping from the cat tree, I could see the sides bow out. Oops. Apparently I needed some kind of protection for it.

So for Christmas my brother made me a wooden box that surrounds it and protects it from the impact of landing cats. If an eleven pound cat like Apricot caused the sides to flex out, what in the world would two full sized Maine Coons landing on it do?

Unfortunately, I'm really ultra sensitive to the smell of paint drying. You might not even know that it takes normal paint months to fully dry. I believe it's called curing. But I can smell it the whole time, and it's the kind of smell that makes my head feel funny and compromises mental processes ... and I don't need any more help in that area!

My parents live in a house with a basement that they could leave the wooden box in to cure by itself without driving me crazy. They very nicely allowed me to do just that. And, to make life better, my mom, who can paint flowers and stuff on furniture (I already have a chest of drawers in the pink room that she decorated) painted the front of the box with little tiny flowers and leaves and hearts (as per my request!)

I got to bring it home two weekends ago. It finally stopped smelling like curing paint!

Thimble's the model. This shows you the whole thing (almost)

Colby's the model for the closeup of the painting

It's just such a nice ornament box; it holds almost all of mine, in a nice organized way. I've searched for something similar in a more supportive material, and I've searched for years, but I've never seen anything like it. So I'm very glad I have the ability to protect it from the accidental damages done by heavy weights landing on it.

Paw Comparison Photos

That day we had the ice all over everything and I got to stay home all day rather unexpectedly, I had time to goof off and think of random things.

Well, this was mostly inspired by Colby putting his paw in my hand, for me to hold it and pet it. He's discovered I do this; I hold the paw in my hand and kind of massage it back and forth in my hand. A lot of cats really like this. I called it Pippin's sleep buttons because I could, if he was rather calm anyway, cause him to drift the rest of the way into sleep if I massaged his paw.

Colby's paw against mine.

So this is Thimble's

These are four and a half month old kittens. I'm hoping to remember to take a similar picture at say, 6 months or 8 months and do a comparison against these ... I've always heard that their paws don't grow that much, that they are huge to start with and then they grow into them. I'm curious to see how accurate that is.