cat love

me, holding the wacko cat. "isn't she pretty? (in cat-baby voice while scritching cat's head) she's such a pretty widdle lunatic, yes she is. (in my own voice) don't you think she's pretty, honey?"
spouse. "yes. she'd make a lovely hat."

what does godzilla have to do with bedtime, again?

part of the standard bedtime routine around here is a "special extra story" that used to actually be special and extra. ;)

the two older kids start every day with an assumption of three storybooks at bedtime, plus the special extra story (which razi used to earn by reading a book to ME, but that sort of evaporated when his little sister who couldn't read at all got into the act).

one book is for staying clean and dry all day, which should be a given since zora is almost five now, but sometimes she gets lazy. argh.

the other two books are for cleaning up the two downstairs rooms in a timely manner at clean-up time. if they finish in under half an hour, they get both. if not, fifteen minute intervals come to take away the other two books and then the special extra story.

last night zora lost everything. then she had to lose something else even beyond the special extra story, so she lost the priviledge of drinking soda next shabbat. she was devastated. good. maybe she'll learn that screaming fits are not the best way to deal with disappointments.

razi, though, still got the special extra story. now, my spouse is a genius for making these things up on the fly, with prompts the children give him right before. our cats, hello kitty and godzilla are regular stars. but last night it was apparently my turn, so i told a story of godzilla rising from a laboratory at the local university and destroying the town we live in. of course, my spouse - genius that he is - saved the day with the judicious placement of a sleeping-pill-laced lean cuisine on top of a freight car.

everyone knows that godzilla's favorite snack is a train. ;)

yes, it was a goofy story, but razi seemed to like it.

the cats

I know it's fun to look at pictures, and since I won't post pics of my children here, I figure I can do the next best thing and post pictures of the cats. :)

This is Sozo. Her name is, according to what we googled up, greek for "to heal, to cure, to prevent destruction" a good omen but not necessarily an accurate description of her. We saw the name on a coffee shop on the way home from the cattery.

You can't tell from the photos, but she has blue eyes. Also, she's very small. She probably weighs about six pounds. She's four years old this month. She is very... aloof. She loves me, she loves to have her head scratched like this.

She spends most of her time sleeping on my bed, and she and Tiamat still don't like each other. They have learned how to live in the same house without (usually) drawing blood, however.

And this is Tiamat. She is a little over a year old. Her name is from a Babylonian/Assyrian creation Goddess who often took a dragon form. If I recall correctly her children chopped her up and built the world out of her parts. Yikes.

Anyway, Tiamat is pretty much our perfect cat. She puts up with more nonsense from the children than any cat should have to suffer through, and she seems to love them nonetheless.

Tiamat is also very small. She weighs a bit more than Sozo, perhaps 7 pounds. Between the two of them they weigh what one ordinary cat weighs.

People tell me often that she is very pretty, but I confess I don't see it. It really doesn't matter though, sicne she is so good with all three of the kids.

And here, because I could not resist, is a picture of my silly Fourth of July fingernails.

cat update

We have decided to keep both cats. They are getting along much better now, though they still annoy one another sometimes.

Tiamat has learned that she can scratch the children and my son is enamored of playing roughly with her. We've had to set up a system of negative consequences for him having new scratches on his face, arms and/or hands. It seems to be helping, but both big kids still want to pick her up constantly. She is a remarkably patient cat and we are lucky to have her. She has her annoying habits, though. She is a licker and a meower. I've never heard such a loud cat that wasn't part Siamese. I suppose, since she seems to be a total mutt, that she could BE part Siamese, but if so it certainly isn't something one can see by looking at her. She's a calico (who looks like a tortoiseshell, as the white is confined to two spots) with yellow eyes.

Sozo got really loud for a while there, but it turned out that she was in heat. We got her spayed so that won't happen again, thank goodness. A Tonkinese in heat is LOUD. Sozo still spends just about all of her time in the bathroom in the little "cat condo" I bought for her. She's quite the anti-social animal, even taking into consideration that she is a cat, but she will put up with me extracting her from her condo at night after the kids go to bed. I put her in my lap and pet her while I sit at the computer. She allows this for a while, then retreats back to her condo. Hey, at least she's happy.

Cats.

So we haven't had good luck with animals. Had to return a few cats to the pound, back before we had children. Got a dog who seemed great but that was her "pound personality" and Loki, too, ended up going back to the pound after the second child was born. Loki couldn't handle the competion.

Anyway, it has been obvious for a long time that the children wanted an animal in the house. So hubby made a proclamation. Not till the baby turned three. (September 2007). Well, that held for months. Then suddenly, three or four months ago, hubby decided that having an adult cat would be good for our oldest now. I wasn't opposed. But he didn't want a pound cat. He was adamant. We'd had terrible luck with all the pound cats we'd ever adopted (I couldn't argue with that). Pounds are dirty, you don't know anything about the animal... he was immovable.

So, I figured that gave us two options. Purebred, or getting a nice cat off a good friend who was willing (or eager) to give it up. No friends were in that situation, so I started doing research on purebred cats. A friend who actually owns a purebred cat gave me a web address for breeders, and I emailed a ton of them. This is a story all by itself, so I'll just say I settled on a breeder of Tonkinese cats who lives about 3 hours away from me - practically in Kentucky. Negotiating took weeks, but eventually we drove all the way down there and hubby picked a cat.

I would have been more involved, but I have to admit, I was overwhelmed. The house was gross, there were cats all over, they all looked really similar and I couldn't keep them organized in my mind, and lots of them were much older or younger than what we were interested in. Hubby ended up telling me that I could choose a different one if I wanted, and then took the kids outside, away from all the wet food, poop filled litter boxes and suspicious looking pools of goop on the floor. Blech.

So, I figured the one hubby wanted because she didn't pull away when he went to let her sniff his hand and get a scritch was a good choice, and I bought her. I tried to carry her home on my lap but after a while she really wanted to explore the car and I thought that could turn dangerous, so I put her in the carrier. So she spent over two hours in the carrier and an hour of that listening to the youngest kid scream. Turns out the baby doesn't like long car rides. Ugh. Anyway, maybe it was the awful drive that inspired Sozo (named after a coffee shop we passed on the way home - it is apparently Greek for "to heal, to cure, to prevent destruction") to crawl under the furniture and not come out for days and days and days.

The kids were miserable. We'd gone through this horrid experience to get a cat, and the cat seemed to hate them. They wanted to PET the pet. I was upset for them. And I wanted to pet her, too!

So hubby and I waited about a day, and still no love from the little beast. So we wondered, is she lonely? She's spent her entire life in a house filled with dozens of kittens and cats and one little old lady. Maybe she needs a friend? So, entirely spur of the moment, we call PetSmart, find out they have cats and close in one hour, I rush the older ones into coats and we rush to the pet store and I try to pick a cat that likes us.

So I get there, and I find the cats, and they have two adults labeled "good with children" and "good with other cats". One really likes the kids, and she's spayed and pretty and friendly and, oh, look at that, she's a pound cat. PetSmart doesn't really sell cats. They take cats from an animal shelter south of here, and put them up for adoption. This was a pound cat. But the place was spotless, and this cat seemed friendly, and we'd essentially promised the children, and it wasn't my rule. So I adopted her. On the way home I kindly gave her a name we'd considered for Sozo that hubby had rejected. Her name is Tiamat. You send me out to fetch the beast, I get to name the beast.

Anyway, we get her home, and she is (or close enough) the perfect cat. She was friendly with all three children from the moment she came out of the carrier, she puts up with all sorts of nonsense from them, hasn't scratched or bitten a child yet, doesn't hide under furniture, is extremely friendly and patient with family and friends alike, is pretty, is spayed... and she loathes Sozo. Wants to shred Sozo into little bloody bits, actually. I am now covered with scratches because I've had to rescue Sozo from Tiamat multiple times. Tiamat has even attacked Sozo while Sozo was resting in my lap!

Oy.

So we've set a deadline. If Sozo and Tiamat can't get over their differences by April 18, we ask the "cat lady" to come get Sozo and take her back to the cattery. I don't really want to give her up. She's so sweet and pretty and teeny (she is fully grown and weighs about 5 pounds!) and she loves to sit on my lap for hours at a time. I've become very fond of her. But I can't in good conscience keep a cat who is terrified of the other cat and ends up spending most of her life hiding as a result. That would be mean and selfish. And we certainly aren't getting rid of the one whom the children adore and who adores them. I'll blog again when this situation is resolved.

Oh, and having a cat has been very good for our oldest.