Kittenhood

03Oct06

Ah, yes, things out here have gotten progressively weirder, if such was ever possible.

First, Sunday, we picked up a kitten from the petstore. Her name is now Squeaker because that’s the noise she makes when she tries to mew. She’s fifteen weeks old and terribly undernourished (counting her spines is fairly easy), but she is a very furry creature.  We went to the pet store to look at bunnies and came out one cat more than we started with.

She’s gray and colorful and very cute with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. Problem is, she needs to be in a home where she’s the only cat because she’s extremely dominant. Squeaker loves people, enjoys curling, and hates other cats. Although ours are getting along with her, it’s mostly midnight hisses and angry glares. Of our two cats, Chibi (the girl) is much more tolerant and almost wants to play with Squeaker, though the kitten still hisses at her all the time. Oreo does nothing but hiss; at a wild guess, he’s very confused, even about his own sister. I don’t exactly blame him for it.

The small kitten is agressive and doesn’t exactly like to back down. She seems to grasp her name to some extent and comes when we make eye contact, but she also attempts to claw at the furniture and us consistently. This is apparently as normal as her kneading and  mewing. Middle of the night has become a battle ground between the cats. Yesterday we separated them for the day and that went well, but today we gave them free reign, and I don’t even want to know what that will turn into.

Sunday we tried to punsh and reward the cats based on how they behaved toward Squeaker. It’s Tuesday now, and we’ve given up that. Now we just reward them for not killing each other. Steve, our roommate, has taken to the little pip-squeak, which is great considering I have work all day along with my husband and the kitten needs time alone with humans.

As maybe a dose of progress, given their dislike of each other Sunday night, Monday went pretty smoothly. We may end up separating them again for a few days, but in the end, Squeaker will pull through fine.

That said, Linnea has managed to con both me and Brian (we all work for the same company) into getting a little black kitten currently named Clark. I have no idea how she did it, but she did. At first we thought that Seqeaker might not make it and the other kitten would be the only one, but now that she’s fine, we’re going to have four cats in the house at one time. How that goes, I am afraid to even wonder.

We were originally going to let them both at it and see which kitten was more comfortable, then find a better home for the other one. The idea is that Squeaker is much more independent, which we didn’t know until after she came home, and she would probably flourish much better in a home where she is the only cat. The new kitten has always lived in a muti cat home, so it may actually do better with our cats for company rather than living by itself. So, we figured that if Squeaker couldn’t adapt to having a younger ball of fur to boss around, we could find a home for her. But then, she did just fine.

Our older cats (1 year old brother and sister) are eating kitten food again because apparently they like it better and Squeaker needs the nutrition, since she’s so very young.
Brian and I are also working on a project for class that is way above our heads in every way possible. Somehow this fails to surprise me, but oh well. Right now we have a cheater’s way out, but if we have to create our own, we’ll need time, and kittens do not exactly make for a lot of spare time. May the world not fall apart.

Next week, school fees are due, so if we fail to pay those, we won’t have to worry about the deadlines, although my parents will probably murder me at that point. I may not think much of school (given that I have a full time job, a house of my own, a husband, a part time home business, and cats), but my parents are old school about it, and I tend to respect them. Plus, a diploma in computer science added onto a slowly forming computer game can’t possibly hurt.

So, right now, that’s life in a nutshell. Tomorrow it may totally change, or it may not. The cats may end up trying to kill me, or not. Don’t know.

All I know for a fact is work ends in an hour and a half, there might be college after that, then dinner, and then sleep. Tomorrow can take care of itself.

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