Meet the Cats: Kittens--Valerie, Fitzgerald and Cecilia

Here they are! From left, to right, Valerie, Fitzgerald and Cecilia. The separate picture is Fitzgerald (I added it because you can't see his markings when he's sprawled on his back.) Isn't it amazing how comfortable kittens can be in almost any position? Fitzy is a bit under the weather right now, but I'm giving him antibiotics and hopefully he'll be as right as rain soon. (Cecilia suffered from the same thing, but a few days on antibiotics seemed to do the trick.) I will, of course, hate to give these little sweeties up for adoption, but with all (something)-teen of our other cats, we just can't keep three more. These three have great personalities already, and I'm sure that our vet will find them all good homes. (sniffle!)

Meet the Cats: Dulcinea

Dulcie is our most mischievous kitty, too smart and too bold for her own good. We ended up keeping her because, when we brought a bunch of kittens to the vet to be put up for adoption, she was deemed too unhealthy (she has runny eyes from Bartonella's disease--supposedly extremely contagious, but to date only two of our cats had ever contracted it.) Dulcie loves to burrow under the bed covers, so if we see a lump in the bed we have to feel it to see if it's her. Her coat is beautifully sleek, which helps us to identify her in the dark! When she's in an affectionate mood, she'll butt her head against our hands, elbows, face, anywhere she can reach. Her ultimate sign of affection is a (more or less) gentle chewing on the tip of my nose (I say 'my' because Wayne is more wary of this habit, but I don't mind it so much--it's more stinky than painful.)

Meet the Cats: Mouse

Mouse arrived at our back door with her father, Smoky, one cold winter's night, looking like a fat miniature version of her dad. Although she wouldn't let me near her, her mother, Mamacita (a regular fixture at our back door practically since the day we moved in), and her brother, Butterball, were more sociable. Butterball was killed by a car when they were about six months old, and it was terrible to see how much Mouse missed him. Mouse eventually became pregnant (she still wouldn't let me catch her, so she hadn't been spayed.) When she went into labor, she seemed to be having a difficult time, so I sat near her and gave her moral support for a couple of hours, until we decided that we had to take her to the emergency vet. Apparently the one unborn kitten was so big that Mouse couldn't push it out without help, and the kitten was stillborn. However, that traumatic day cemented Mouse's relationship with me, and she became totally devoted to me after that. Her nickname was "Mousie Dung". Mouse was a fixture in my lap every night for years, and loved to wash my hands and face (which could be extremely uncomfortable sometimes!) She became terminally ill when she was about 12 years old, and died about a month before my mother did.

Meet the Cats: 'Becca

When Wayne and I moved into this house in 1990, we were renting half the house (we bought it outright about 5 years ago.) We had been married for just two years at the time, and we decided to adopt a cat as our anniversary present to each other. Having given it a lot of thought, we elected to adopt an adult cat from the Putnam County, NY, Humane Society. They had so many adults to choose from, but I made a beeline for "Rebecca", a female Abyssinian mix who had had a broken leg. Her entire leg was still shaved, but she had that beautiful 'ticked' Abby fur. She was in washing-up mode when we arrived at the shelter, and, as soon as I put my hand up to her cage, she immediately started washing that, too. That was enough for me! And thus, we adopted 'Becca, the smartest, sweetest, and most beautiful little girl we ever had. She died several years ago, but remains first in our hearts, and we both still miss her very much.

Meet the Cats: Kittens--Valerie

Okay, so it's only one of the three new kittens. I couldn't find clear pictures of the other two yet. (The others are named Cecilia and Fitzgerald.) This is Valerie, and the gray-and-white longhair behind her is her mother, Pip. Valerie seems to be the most rambunctious of the three, but is also just as happy as the others to curl up in my lap for a kitten-nap.

Meet the Cats: Troi

Troi was about six weeks old, her eyes still blue, when she decided to adopt us. Although her mother, Motley, tried to get her to leave after each feeding time, Troi resisted as much as possible. Even though many of the adult cats who had known us much longer still shied away from us, Troi was completely unafraid of us. Her penchant for sitting on my foot while I prepared the cats' dinner earned her the nickname "Foot Soldier". She was such a cute "little one" (a name we had taken to calling her), that we decided to name her that. Sort of. Actually she's named after Deanna Troi, a character on "Star Trek: The Next Generation". In that series, Troi's mother always called her "little one". So that's how she got the name "Troi". She has grown into a real sweetheart, and sleeps on our feet every night.

Meet the Cats: Tippy

This is Tippy, my Special Little Guy. He still thinks he's a kitten at heart. We named him that because he has a little bit of white fur on the end of his tail. When he was very little, he was very sickly. He used to lapse into semi-comatose states from time-to-time. Apparently he wasn't quite done yet when he was born, and his organs still needed to grow in order to function correctly. They eventually did and he's over that now, but he did give us quite a few scares. As a result of spending a good deal of his early kittenhood oblivious to the world around him (on account of his constant near-death episodes), it seems he didn't get enough oxygen to his brain. He also never properly learned from other cats how to clean himself up. Anywhere. He would decide that Daddy's (that's me) shoulder would make the perfect place to stand and start being pawful. [Some call it kneading, from when the kittens would knead at their mother's teats to get fed. I'm told it's also something they do when they're very happy to see their "parent" (that's me, again).] We call it "being pawful" because he likes to stand in place lifting one paw up and putting it down, then doing it with the other for a bit, then stopping and stretching his paw out sideways, as if to shake hands, with his toes completely splayed, meowing away. We call that "being pawfully cute." He calls it, "Where's my dinner?" But I knew he loved me, and he was so cute that when it came time to bring the kittens we had at the time to be put up for adoption, I couldn't let him go. He had grown on me. He had this cute habit of trying to scootch himself over on his back, but would often have a claw stuck on something. So he would move about five degrees of arc with each scootch until he got all the way on his back, with his belly up waiting to be scratched, and that same claw (such as his right one in the picture) still stuck where it was, stretched across his chest. But he would still purr and ask to be belly-rubbed. He gets very pawful when you do it, his eyes close and he slows down his pawfulness, and he's just so cute. It's enough to make up for the times his once-oxygen-starved brain makes him go wacky and tear around the place. Of course he's bigger now, but when I talk about him, just think of this face.