Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
As you can see from yesterday’s post, little Sam is quite the wrestler but this hasn’t always been the case. During his first week with us, even this little furry mouse was able to pin him to the floor. Cut him some slack though, he was just a little kitten.
Another of Emma’s traits that showed early is that she’s pretty good about playing on her own (at least until she shoves her toys behind a door). I also like how this picture shows the size disparity between the two cats at the time.
… and there are a lot of things I don’t know, but how exactly are we supposed to play with our mice if you keep shoving them under the door?
This is one of Emma’s traits that showed itself right from the beginning.
One of my favorite pictures of Sam, taken a couple of months ago when he was about 5 months old. He’s growing like crazy and is about as long as Scout now (but much thinner). He’s turning into a real lap cat, the past few evenings he’s been sleeping on my lap while I’ve been watching the basketball playoffs.
Back when we first discovered some bumps on Emma’s chest, she was rewarded with a trip to the vet and got the affected area shaved so we could treat it. She was also awarded this lovely bib to make sure she didn’t aggravate the area. This is what the bib looked like after two weeks, as you can see Emma didn’t think it quite the state of high fashion and often removed it on her own (the picture there shows the bib when new). I didn’t photograph the underside, even though it looked much worse, as some of that damage was done by Sam during their roughhousing.
Emma has been a rather shy subject so I’ve ended up with more pictures of Sam than of her. The only way I got her to sit still long enough for me to drape the bib over her legs was to play String with her (you can see the shoestring under her foot and trailing out of the bottom left corner of the picture). She stopped for a moment trying to figure out why the string had stopped moving while I moved the bib and snapped her picture. You can also see part of the shaved area on her chest.
The bumps went away with treatment and now we’re in the slow process of waiting for her fur to grow back.
Little Sam hasn’t seen too much sunshine in his young life with us (I mean that literally, not figuratively) but last week we had a spate of sunny days and he discovered the joy of sleeping in sunbeams.
During the first couple of days that Sam and Emma joined us, we kept all three cats separated. Emma was put into the downstairs bathroom, which worked well for the first day. She wasn’t too sure of herself yet, and slept behind the toilet when she was alone and wouldn’t leave my lap when I stayed with her. The second day she wasn’t dealing with her confinement so well, so we let her stretch her legs upstairs for a little bit while Scout was napping downstairs, and she settled down outside Sam’s door. I took the opportunity to take my first picture of her outside the bathroom.
The next day she and Sam passed their physicals and Emma got to join Sam in the guest bedroom.
I know I said this blog wasn’t going all cats all the time, but …
My right eye specifically.
A couple of action shots of Emma playing with her furry mice, in better focus than yesterday’s picture. She’s definitely feeling at home with us now, her first few days she didn’t play much and then pretty gently, but it’s controlled mayhem now. I’d describe Sam’s play as controlled mayhem but that would imply there was control involved. Some of my best shots of him today accidentally have him running out of the frame.
They are both playing quite a bit now and are very active, which I think is a combination of them feeling better as well as getting more comfortable with us and each other. They are also eating a lot, which may not be an issue given how much exercise they are getting, but it also means they are using the litter box a lot. Being in a closed room with them somehow becomes a little less appealing (what exactly do they put in that kitten food anyway?) — for the first few days it was raining so much I couldn’t open a window for relief, but the past couple of days I’ve been able to air out the room from time to time.
Boolie 