August 28, 2002

Irresistible (An On Display entry.)

I don't know why, but lately it seems that the draw of obtaining another kitten for the household has been irresistible. Long time readers will recall The Great Vacuuming Incident which ended up with Min finding a new, happier home elsewhere. At that time I proclaimed that no cat shall shed on our doorstep until Calvin becomes more feline friendly.

My friends, that day has arrived. Meet Oz.

He's a Belgian kitten, 8 weeks old, and we got him on Sunday. Calvin had been perusing the newspaper for ads for kittens for a few weeks now. He came upon an ad for Belgians, with a URL. He looked it up, saw the pictures, and that's all it took. He was hooked (rather reminiscent of how we got Gadget, come to think of it). I think, with Calvin, the acquisition of an animal cannot be a run-of-the-mill experience. The animal has to be unique ("cool"), exotic ("cool"), or somehow a creature that will cause people to ask "What is that?" ("cool"). I'm hoping that since getting the cat was his idea, he found the ad, he picked the breed, and in the end he picked the actual *cat*, all will be peaceful in the household.

Crossing my fingers, toes, and eyes on that one. Nah, really, he isn't the ogre I laughingly make him out to be. He and Min just Did Not get along. And, to be sure, Min was a bitch. It was in her half-Siamese nature to be so. Bengals are known for their outgoing, friendly personality (which has been amply demonstrated over the past few days). And Calvin has already been caught snoofie-snoofie-ing to him ("Iddums is sooo cooot! Wookit the widdle feet! Who's my big man!"). And he just gets this *look* on his face when the cat falls asleep snuggled up to him.

Aww. (He's gonna kill me for writing about that. I live on the edge.)

Anyway! Oz. Wicked cute. We drove to the breeder's house and picked him out of the three that were left of the litter. He was the most active and adventurous of the three kittens, and kept coming up to us to say "hi" before racing off to tackle his sisters, or chew on the plant, or try to climb into the little fountain the woman had on one of her shelves, or arch his back at her Chihuahua. We intended to keep him in the carrier on the ride home, but he yowled so much that we couldn't hack it. He spent a good portion of the ride under my hair behind my neck, gnawing on my hair, staring out the window, or batting at Marie's fingers when she wiggled them at him from the back seat. Then I handed him over to Marie, and he hung out on her shoulder for a while before climbing down onto her lap and falling asleep in a little fuzzy ball.

The very first thing we did when we got home is set up his litter box for him. The very first thing he did when we put him down is make a beeline for it and christen it (to a chorus of "Good boy! Good boy!"). Hallelujah for a box-trained kitten. He's only had one incident since we got him, which was this morning. We misinterpreted his meow at the bedroom door as "Hey, I want to know right NOW (mwow mwow) what's on the other side of this door", instead of "Let me the hell out (yow yow), I gotta PEEEE!"

Squattage. Yellage. Spankage. Cleanage.

The cat actually *pouted* for the rest of the morning, consenting to let me cuddle him only for the last few moments before I had to go to work. Feh. Eight weeks is too young to know how to pout, already.

Oz has a massive personality. He's incredibly adventurous and has to know everything about everything. What are you eating? What are you holding? What's up there? What's under there? Who's that? Where are you going? Where have you been? What's in here? What's behind that? Where are you? What are you eating?

He'll climb up onto any available chest (and has even climbed up our legs as if we were a tree) and get in your face, poke your chin with his nose or nibble along your jaw, then launch himself off your shoulder and find something else to hold his attention for 3.5 seconds, before moving on to something else. Sometimes he'll sleep, snuggled up in a ball or sprawled on his back with his paws in the air, for hours. Other times you can't get him to sit still to save your life, and all he wants to do is play play play.

Such is the evening sleep ritual. Oz has been sleeping with us at night - the house is just too big and echoing and dark, and he's just too iddle. The first night he curled up in the curve of my body and didn't move at all. We thought we were golden. Until the second night, which he spent wrestling with the covers, playing with my hair, crawling down to the foot of the bed *under* the covers and biting our feet, falling off the bed, trying to climb back up, failing, yowling his discontent...

He's SO getting declawed. He's trashing the ("ten thousand dollar") couch. For something so tiny, though, he's got an astonishing ability to leap. Soon the days of scrambling to achieve the summit of the couch or bed will be over. Cat's got hops.

He follows us from room to room, and if he's lost sight of us he'll holler and holler. We'll holler back, and play this Marco-Polo game with him until he figures out which room we're in and comes bounding in. Yeah, *that* won't take long to go from cute to annoying.

His purr completely disarms me.

We've introduced him to the dogs (though carefully, with Kye, bull-in-a-china-shop as she is). Gypsy plays with him, tail wagging fit to be tied. He bounces around her, back arched, tail like a pipe cleaner, making like Mr. Big Bad. Gadget is petrified of him, which Oz takes advantage of by chasing him all over the house, Gadget scrambling to get away on the slick tile floor. The cat's breed ensures that he is destined to weight the same as, if not more than, Gadget. He's all kinds of doomed.

Yep. Declawed.

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©Laura Charon 2000 - 2002.