Monday, February 2, 2009

Fetchcat

The kitten is a fetchcat. I made her a little bat catnip toy - it has crinkly plastic in the wings, and catnip in the head and outer wings, and a cotton string tail/handle. For some reason entirely on her own, she decided that we are suitable to throw the bat for her.

(I don't think she learned it from me and Cersei. We live on the second floor, so I hardly ever throw The Ball inside for Cers. Our downstairs neighbor is almost deaf but a 65 lb dog crashing around chasing a ball is pushing it!)

She will periodically go find the bat and bring it to one of us and drop it. We are expected to throw it until she no longer brings it - that means she's tired and wants to take a nap, thank you. Jabber is the most fun of all the cats, and she's probably the most fun cat I've ever had. Getting her was one of those "good idea at the time!" stupid decisions.

I hang out in a vaguely pet-oriented IRC channel. (Sara, if you can/want to connect to IRC at work, come to #petisland!) Over the summer, when I was studying for the bar, my daily routine was this:

Wake up between 8-10 am. Make a big pot of iced coffee and study until 4 or 5. Take Cersei to the dog park and throw The Ball for an hour. Head home, cook something that fulfilled my daily caloric intake, and drink myself into a stupor while talking on IRC. Repeat the next day.

I think you can see the problem here. I was on IRC all the time, and I was drunk most nights, and drunk people agree to foolish things. My friend in Arkansas took pity on the pregnant stray and let her come in the house to have kittens... and couldn't find good homes for the kittens... and I agreed to take ANOTHER FUCKING CAT! What was I thinking? I already had two extremely strange cats. I needed another one like I needed a hole in my head.

But I couldn't just back out. One more cat is just an incremental cost. Going from no cats to one cat is a huge change in lifestyle, but adding another one isn't too hard. So I got the kitten... and she's adorable. Fetchcat is just the latest stupidly cute thing she does.

I am now super extra vigilant to never agree to anything while drinking.

6 comments:

  1. Aw! I love cats. :)

    It's funny how sometimes they sneak into your life, huh? :)

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  2. I love cats too! And you're right it's not much of a chance to go from one to two as long as they get along.

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  3. I know I was surprised as all hell when I saw the post where you suddenly ended up with one of the kitties!

    You know, I never even used IRC before. I wouldn't know where to begin. I'm so square.

    I can't use it from work though. They're looking for excuses to lay us off these days (20 went from my area today). It is not a good time to be at a bank.

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  4. Jabber, like Cersei, was one of my very best stupid spur of the moment decisions. :D I have finally taught her to be polite about human food, too - she sits on the back of my recliner purrrrrring til I'm through eating, then I feed her a tiny bite of whatever I had for dinner.

    Sara - shoot me an email one weekend and I'll tell you how. You can connect through a web client if you don't want to download and install something. It's fun when you're at home bored but definitely not worth getting fired over!

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  5. I'm sure Fetchcat is having a great time with you and admit it, you probably like playing with her too.

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  6. When I tell someone that I have four dogs (five right now, I guess) I also try to explain that the dog~effort relationship is not linear. Having two dogs is about 1.5 times as much work as having one dog, and having three dogs is about 1.75 times as much...some sort of curve. The hardest part is keeping everyone's The Ball straight when we play fetch. It's all relative I guess because I know quite a few people with 6-8 dogs and I think they are crazy.

    The Ball is strictly verboten indoors at Farcical Farm. You can always tell if the dogs have found one under a couch or something because the energy level goes instantly through the roof.

    Jabber is an awesome name for a cat.

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