Seventeen Things Worth Knowing About Your Cat

and

CATS FOR GOLD!

dear cat,

you laying on my hand makes it rather difficult to type. and forget about soing capital letters.

oh well. at least you're warm.

your devoted slave master,
tsaiko

Dear cat,

That bit of sandwich I had sitting on a plate next to my seat? That was not for kitty! That was the rest of my breakfast. Now that you've put your mouth on it, I'm not going to eat it. And no, you're not getting it either. I'm not going to reward that kind of behavior.

No love,
Tsaiko

Right now my cats love me.

However, in three days they will be put in a crate, placed in the car, and will go on a 10 hour ride.

I think it might be awhile before I am forgiven.

At least as long as it takes me to open a can of cat food. XD

Tsaiko: *types on laptop*
Nadia: *starts grooming the laptop*
Tsaiko: What are you doing?!?
Nadia: *gives laptop a final lick and then plops herself down next to me*
Tsaiko: Cats.

Yesterday was spent cleaning the apartment because my family will be visiting next weekend and I am kind-of a slob without motivation. Especially when I'm scrambling to do other things. The apartment has been in a state that usually corresponds to the end of the semester, though it's been in that state for much longer than it should have been.

One of the things that I did was do a cleaning of my bathroom. This included putting out more than the two towels I usually use everyday (one for drying and a separate one for drying hair). Most times I clean the towels, stackthem in the linen closet, and then pull them out when I need them. This means that I tend to use the towels on the top of the stacks and almost never use the ones on the bottom.

Little did I know this was a problem.

( TMI warning of the kitty kind. )

I have all these ideas for writing and absolutely no urge to write. It's like as soon as I open a blank document, my mind goes blank as well. Hopefully once the thesis is done this will go away. Of course, I keep saying that about a lot of things. "Once the thesis is done I will read more books... write... update my webpage... work out more... be able to think once I get home instead of just vegging..." Getting a Master's degree is hard.

miome is attempting to make banana bread pudding with rum sauce. I get the feeling it's not going well. I get this feeling from the fact that random curse words keep coming from the kitchen.

( And now, have some pictures! Very picture heavy. )

This morning was a vet visit for Kira and Nadia. They were getting their yearly exam, rabies vaccination, and bloodwork because they are going to need their teeth cleaned soon. Since they are both rescues that got poor nutrition as kittens (they were found in an attic and were the only two of the litter to survive), their teeth are pretty poor. The vet is a cat only vet, which miome and I have found to be better for the kitties.

One of the problems I wanted to talk with the vet about was Nadia's ears. Last time we were there, the other vet at the practice had prescribed something to clean her ears with once a week. We've been doing that, but her ears have still be bothering her. This vet got a sample from Nadia's ear. Sure enough, she has an infection. In this case, a yeast infection. So now we get to medicate her ears twice a day. I am sure she is going to be thrilled.

I have the camera cable! It came yesterday. I'm in the process of getting pictures off of the camera and resizing them so they aren't huge. Then I shall do a pic spam post.

Name: Nadia
Nickname(s): Cat!, Nadia-chan
Birthday: 1997... I think
Origins: Adopted from a no kill rescue. She and her sister were found in someone's attic and they were the only two of the litter to survive
Breed/coloring: Domestic shorthair/Tortoiseshell
Distinguishing features: Standard tortie except she's small (around 6lbs)
Favorite food: Anything you put in front of her. She's the kitty vaccuum cleaner
Favorite sleeping position and spot: Any plastic bag on the floor
Enemies: None
Bad habit: Eating too much, too fast and then proceeding to puke it back up on the carpet -_-
Most anthropomorphic trait: She will complain at me if the litter box is not up to her specifications. She has a distinctive meow for it.
Other strangeness: She knows my routine in the morning and at specific points in it (when I open the bathroom door, when I pick out socks, etc.) she will demand to be petted. If I'm not at that point in the routine, she wants nothing to do with me.

Name: Kira
Nickname(s): Kira-kira, Mrs. Whiny
Birthday: 1997... we think
Origins: Adopted from a no kill rescue. She and her sister were found in someone's attic and they were the only two of the litter to survive
Breed/coloring: Domestic Longhair / Tortoiseshell
Distinguishing features: She is poofy. Seriously, she's a long haired tortie.
Favorite food: Unlike her sister, she will sniff a treat to death before she eats it. So I don't think she has a particular favorite
Favorite sleeping position and spot: Back of the chair.
Enemies: None
Bad habit: The constant, unending whining for attention. She has the whiniest meow I have ever heard on a cat
Most anthropomorphic trait: Will talk at you if you talk at her. You can have conversations with her.
Other strangeness: She's allergic to fleas. So if she gets them, she over grooms everywhere she can reach, leaving her head very fluffy and the rest of her... not so much.

Every time I scroll through this series of pictures, I can't help but laugh. I think it's both the expression on the kitties faces and the expression on the guy's face at the end that does it.

1. Open paint.
2. Close your eyes.
3. Draw a cat.



Wow. I can't believe that actually came out looking vaguely cat like. o_O

Kira, the long haired one laying down in my icon, is a special kitty sometimes. Tonight she kept looking up into the lamp shade, cocking her head from one side to the other. Occasionally she'd reach a paw up as if she wanted to bat at something. Then she'd go back to intently looking at something.

I though a bug of some sort had gotten into the apartment and Kira was watching it. After several minutes, miome wandered over to see what was going on. She didn't see any bugs. Kira did her usual meowing to be petted. Miome obliged. Then she sat down and lost all interest in the lamp. Miome did make the comment that it looked like Kira's eyes were watering slightly from looking up into the lamp.

That's when it dawned on me that Kira had stared at the light blub and gotten spots in her eyes. Kira was fascinated by her own eyes spots and trying to bat at them.

Special kitty is special.

I am back home with my kitties and my girlfriend. Life is good except for the fact I have a butt load of schoolwork to do and I got no kind of writing done.

But kitties! And girlfriend!

So for the first time in three days I have woken up and not felt like death. This is good! I'm going to take it easy for the rest of this week considering I'm flying out on Friday. I do need to go in this afternoon and work on my Stats homework for next week. Otherwise, I'm just going to keep it low key.

Also, my kitties have appreciated having their own personal heating pad (me) in the apartment over the last few days. It's been cold.

miome and I were sitting on the couch waiting for our pizza to arrive. Behind us, we hear Nadia playing with one of the paper bags. We keeps some lying around as a quick and easy place to store our recycling until we can take it out to the recycling center. The bag is russling as she's playing in it. All of a sudden, Nadia comes tearing across the room with the bag chasing her. Seems she tried to fit through one of the paper handles on the bag, got half way through, realized "OMG, THE BAG IS CHASING ME!" and took off.

"Hold on a second," I told Miome between fits of laughter. "I have to go rescue my cat from a paper bag."

I cornered her in my room and got the bag off of her. She was slightly traumatized by the horrible monster that had chased her and promptly slunk under the bed. I'm sure my laughing didn't help the situation.

My cats = hours of entertainment.

One of the things about our cats is they suffer from an excess of ear wax. It builds up really bad in their ears, makes them really cruddy looking, and irritates the cats, especially Nadia, who spends a large amount of time scratching and messing with her ears.

This isn't good because excessive scratching can cause blood vessels to burst in the ear at which point the ear blows up to three times it's normal size because of the blood pooling in it (I believe the technical term is hematoma). You then wind up taking the cat to the vet to get it drained, at which point their ear crumples and stays crumpled. I've had this happen with two cats who suffered from continual ear mite problems.

Our previous vet suggested cleaning their ears twice a week with mineral oil on a cotton ball. As you can imagine, the cats loved this. Not. I eventually stopped because it didn't seem to be stopping the build-up at all, the cats messed with their ears even more afterwards, and the whole procedure stressed the kitties out. When we went to the new vet a few weeks ago, I mentioned the problem. She prescribed a cleaning solution that would soften the wax, wouldn't be as greasy as the mineral oil, and would get farther into the ears where there was a problem.

I've been using that for the last couple of weeks and it is so much easier. I still have to wipe the ears out with a cotton ball, which the cats hate, but I can tell this irritates them less. Instead of bolting and hiding for an hour, both cats with trot about 4 feet away from me, sit down, and start grooming themselves. Heck, they'll even let me approach them and pet them afterwards. They don't mess with their ears nearly as much and it's much easier to catch them to do this.

Doesn't make them any happier about the whole thing. I am a terrible person for putting stuff in their ears and they let me know it.

Why is this scene being such a pain in the butt to write?

Why do people ask so many questions when some random person crashes their harem for two months?

Why does my cat insist on walking across my boobs in order to get my attention, thereby blocking my computer screen?

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY miome!

The kitties also wish you a happy birthday.



Er... well maybe "happy" is a bit of an exaggeration.

Be safe. I'll see you when you get home. I LOVE YOU!

PS- You can no longer make "dating an older woman" jokes now that you're the same age as me again. :P