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Thursday Cats with G&T
So, my work week shifted from Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights to Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. Which makes Thursday mornings the new Friday. My patient bagged it at five this morning, so I ended up leaving quite early. Too early to go to the liquor store to buy champagne, which I really should have done yesterday, but forgot to. Which means that it's Thursday not Friday, and I am drinking gins and tonicses instead of mimosas, but there are still cats.
Lady Jane has leveled up several times since I last wrote about her. She really, really likes getting petted. About six weeks or so ago, she finally figured out how to signal that she's getting over-stimulated. She has both a quick head-jerk and a warning chirrup that she's started using. This means that I can stop petting her before she feels the need to scratch or bite me. It also means that she's developed some understanding of how to communicate with humans. I've always thought that she demonstrated the desire to do so, but she has developed a vocabulary that I can understand, and that's huge. There is probably also some learning behavior on my part, although I'm less aware of it. But we are developing a rapport, and that makes me so very happy.
About two weeks ago, it was warm and I opened the window in my bedroom. I have a king-sized waterbed, and it is flush against the wall, so to get to the window, you have to get up on my bed. Lady hads been in my bedroom a couple of times, and once she actually got up on the bed, but has always eschewed it in favor of the chair in the media room. But the window... oh the sweet, sweet window. She got up on my bed, got in the window. And somehow, that changed her conceptual space, and now she gets on my bed, even when the window isn't open.
Initially, she'd get on the bed, and then loll on my laptop. One of my favorite LOLcats is a kitten sitting on an open laptop with the caption, "If not for sits, why made of warm?" I let her do this a couple of times, because I wanted to encourage her to think of being on the bed and being kind of sort of on my lap as a good thing. She would purr and roll and loll, and my screen would go crazy as she pushed All The Keys. Then I started gently rolling her off the keyboard and onto my lap. And this worked. She's at the point now where, when I get home from work, she jumps up on the bed and demands pets. If I don't pet her when she wants them, she will either oosh onto the keyboard or, if that is too much trouble, she will just reach out a paw and push a random key. It's desperately adorable. Just at the moment, she's curled up next to me, sleeping. She will sit on my lap, sometimes. And she's clearly figured out that I don't actually want her on my laptop.
The other cats are less than entirely pleased with this development. Arwen, who has always considered my bed her territory, is very unhappy about this. I do encourage her to come up when Lady Jane Grey is there, but she usually declines. She didn't like it when Naomi started getting on my bed (ten years ago?), she was completely unhappy when the little black kittens started getting on my bed, so I guess I'm unsurprised that she's unhappy about Lady Jane.
Ninja is perfectly delighted with all things Ninja, and rather unimpressed with all things not-Ninja, so he doesn't care if Lady is there or not. He often gets on my lap when I'm dicking around on the internet before work. Last night, he jumped up on the bed, and came and sat in my lap, as per normal. Lady was also there, sitting right next to me. Lady found this upsetting, and hissed at him, and Ninnie just kind of looked confused. Then Lady was confused, and left, and Ninja settled down to purr and be cute.
Naomi continues to be difficult to feed. I continue to make homemade chicken broth each week, and buy more and weirder premium foods. She continues to insist that food that was perfectly scrumptious yesterday is, in fact, not food at all today. She has recently decided that all fish is emphatically Not Food. She also doesn't think that beef is food. She is still (usually) eating chicken and turkey. I haven't tried her on the kidney food. She's so picky that I don't see the point. She has stopped crouching when she pees, which means that she stands in the litter box and pisses outside the litter box. I have no idea what to do about this, so I clean up after her. I guess if I could get a litter box twice the size...but I don't know where I'd put it, so I haven't.
Nuit is her own little personette, and continues to have petting emergencies. She isn't as aggressive towards Lady as she was, but she continues issue challenge songs and occasionally charge her for no reason. On the other hand, she was up on my bed the other morning when LJG was here, and there were no words. She also romps with Naomi, which is delightful for all involved. Naomi, at sixteen, still has a playful streak. Arwen, her sister, has never been that playful, and after Aristophanes died, Naomi had no playmate until Nuit took up the role. Ninja plays a bit too rough for her tastes, but Nuit is just right.
And that is enough cats for now. If you made it to the end, I am impressed by your patiences. Next, I will natter about Neko Atsume.
Lady Jane has leveled up several times since I last wrote about her. She really, really likes getting petted. About six weeks or so ago, she finally figured out how to signal that she's getting over-stimulated. She has both a quick head-jerk and a warning chirrup that she's started using. This means that I can stop petting her before she feels the need to scratch or bite me. It also means that she's developed some understanding of how to communicate with humans. I've always thought that she demonstrated the desire to do so, but she has developed a vocabulary that I can understand, and that's huge. There is probably also some learning behavior on my part, although I'm less aware of it. But we are developing a rapport, and that makes me so very happy.
About two weeks ago, it was warm and I opened the window in my bedroom. I have a king-sized waterbed, and it is flush against the wall, so to get to the window, you have to get up on my bed. Lady hads been in my bedroom a couple of times, and once she actually got up on the bed, but has always eschewed it in favor of the chair in the media room. But the window... oh the sweet, sweet window. She got up on my bed, got in the window. And somehow, that changed her conceptual space, and now she gets on my bed, even when the window isn't open.
Initially, she'd get on the bed, and then loll on my laptop. One of my favorite LOLcats is a kitten sitting on an open laptop with the caption, "If not for sits, why made of warm?" I let her do this a couple of times, because I wanted to encourage her to think of being on the bed and being kind of sort of on my lap as a good thing. She would purr and roll and loll, and my screen would go crazy as she pushed All The Keys. Then I started gently rolling her off the keyboard and onto my lap. And this worked. She's at the point now where, when I get home from work, she jumps up on the bed and demands pets. If I don't pet her when she wants them, she will either oosh onto the keyboard or, if that is too much trouble, she will just reach out a paw and push a random key. It's desperately adorable. Just at the moment, she's curled up next to me, sleeping. She will sit on my lap, sometimes. And she's clearly figured out that I don't actually want her on my laptop.
The other cats are less than entirely pleased with this development. Arwen, who has always considered my bed her territory, is very unhappy about this. I do encourage her to come up when Lady Jane Grey is there, but she usually declines. She didn't like it when Naomi started getting on my bed (ten years ago?), she was completely unhappy when the little black kittens started getting on my bed, so I guess I'm unsurprised that she's unhappy about Lady Jane.
Ninja is perfectly delighted with all things Ninja, and rather unimpressed with all things not-Ninja, so he doesn't care if Lady is there or not. He often gets on my lap when I'm dicking around on the internet before work. Last night, he jumped up on the bed, and came and sat in my lap, as per normal. Lady was also there, sitting right next to me. Lady found this upsetting, and hissed at him, and Ninnie just kind of looked confused. Then Lady was confused, and left, and Ninja settled down to purr and be cute.
Naomi continues to be difficult to feed. I continue to make homemade chicken broth each week, and buy more and weirder premium foods. She continues to insist that food that was perfectly scrumptious yesterday is, in fact, not food at all today. She has recently decided that all fish is emphatically Not Food. She also doesn't think that beef is food. She is still (usually) eating chicken and turkey. I haven't tried her on the kidney food. She's so picky that I don't see the point. She has stopped crouching when she pees, which means that she stands in the litter box and pisses outside the litter box. I have no idea what to do about this, so I clean up after her. I guess if I could get a litter box twice the size...but I don't know where I'd put it, so I haven't.
Nuit is her own little personette, and continues to have petting emergencies. She isn't as aggressive towards Lady as she was, but she continues issue challenge songs and occasionally charge her for no reason. On the other hand, she was up on my bed the other morning when LJG was here, and there were no words. She also romps with Naomi, which is delightful for all involved. Naomi, at sixteen, still has a playful streak. Arwen, her sister, has never been that playful, and after Aristophanes died, Naomi had no playmate until Nuit took up the role. Ninja plays a bit too rough for her tastes, but Nuit is just right.
And that is enough cats for now. If you made it to the end, I am impressed by your patiences. Next, I will natter about Neko Atsume.
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I'm glad lady jane is chomping down less.
i love it when the cats play
everyone caught the flu here
and the old one moget is recovering slow.
worrying about parents
can create sleep problems
think after 3 years i'd be old hat
I never changed skin colors for them.
happy tonic thursfway
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