snuggling – Page 10

Don’t Mind if I Do

I was sitting on the floor this afternoon when Boo came over unprompted and crawled into my lap and fell asleep. I wasn’t prepared for it and not sitting in a comfortable place, but I let him stay as long as he wanted. He’s still pretty skittish but the transformation he’s undergone in a few days is incredible. There’s a downside to this. I’ve been sleeping in the bedroom so Sam can keep his routine of sleeping on me, while my wife is sleeping in the basement with Boo, who kept her up most of the night showering her with affection.

Two Days Today

Two days ago Boo trembled in fear at our introduction. Today he curled up beside me and slept with his head on my chest.

Remarkable.

Psst! Hey Em! Do You Want to Know a Secret?

I think she just wants to sleep, Samwise.

Sam & Emma

A shot from last fall of Sam and Emma.

The two are friendly but don’t often cuddle up like this, which is unfortunate since in the six weeks since Scout passed away, the ever-snuggly Sam has been on constant lookout to replace her affections. A lot of the time the two spent together they spent with me, so it’s not so much that he’s spending more time with me but rather that he wants to be up close rather than out on my legs, a favorite Sam spot since he was a wee kitten.

I don’t know if we’ll ever adopt another kitten in the hopes that the two will become close friends, just as he and Scout did five years ago, but in the meantime we’ve tried some commercially available Scout substitutes, such as

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Scout
Skout
Kiss Me I’m Scouttish

but so far none have worked.

For such a tiny little cat, she left a big hole to fill.

A Slow Recovery

Hard as it is for me to believe, it’s been almost five weeks since Scout passed away. Her loss has been particularly hard on little Sam but he’s been making a slow recovery and is now nearly back to normal, or perhaps has reached the new normal. Sam loves snuggling on my legs (shown here a few years ago), to the point that if life were a cartoon I’d have permanent Sam-shaped divots on my legs. But after Scout died he’d only sit in my lap tucked up tight against my chest, as though he was huddling against the cold. After a couple of weeks he relaxed a bit and while still in my lap moved a few inches away, and then a few inches more, but he still stays so close that I can’t really work on my laptop.

I don’t know if he’ll return to sleeping on my legs or if I’ll have to adapt to his new position on my lap. Sometimes he’ll walk down to where he used to sleep but he’ll turn around and come back, so perhaps it’s just going to take a bit more time. He did go all the way down to my feet the other day, but not unaided. Our dog Ellie was snuggling up next to me as well and suddenly sat up and began licking him in the face. He put up with the indignity for a little while but when it was clear she wasn’t going to stop, he moved down to my feet until the coast was clear when she fell back asleep, and then he came back.

His purr has finally returned. It didn’t completely disappear after Scout died, but it got very quiet and hard to come by and didn’t last long. Just in the past few days he’s purred loud and long when we climb into bed at night, so he is definitely recovering.

So too am I.

Scout was my near and constant companion so when I’m at home even now her absence is clearly felt. After getting past that initial wall of grief in the days after she died, a shadow of sadness lurks and at unpredictable times I feel her loss most acutely. But that is at it should be, she was one of the best parts of my life.

With Sam snuggling too close for me to do much typing on my laptop, I’ve been catching up on a lot of old classic movies and British mysteries, usually with Sam on my lap, Ellie tucked up beside me on my right, with our other cat Emma a few feet to my left in her heated bed. Scout’s heated bed lies empty, and that in and of itself is surprising. Sam loved sleeping in her bed and I assumed after she died he’d take it over as his. But right after she died he’d only occasionally get in, then for a few weeks actively avoided it. Now he’s back to occasionally sleeping in it, but mostly it lies empty.

He has been sleeping in Ellie’s beds quite a bit, but that’s not unusual, he’s always done that. Emma has started doing it too, and I had to laugh the other day when both of Ellie’s beds near my office were full of cats and Ellie was scrunched up over on the floor beside them.

What a blessing they are, these little ones.

Treasures

We weren’t sure how Templeton would react to having another cat in the house when we brought Scout home in May of 2001, but thankfully he accepted her quickly. She idolized him and snuggled with him every chance she got, and he’d often lick her head and sometimes give her an entire bath. The two friends have been reunited again. As we did with Templeton, we had Scout cremated and my wife picked up her remains on Saturday. Scout’s ashes now join Templeton’s up on the mantle.

I took this picture of Templeton and Scout snuggling in the window seat of our old house in November of 2001. Nearly everything in the picture has changed since then. Both Templeton and Scout have since passed away. We moved half a year after the picture was taken and I no longer have that wonderful window seat where the cats and I so often snuggled. The pad that lined the seat, just visible in the lower left corner, was made by my mother-in-law who passed away a few years ago.

The blanket though, made by my wife for me years ago, remains. Time has taken its toll and there are tears in the fabric, but it remains the blanket I use every day in my office. It links all the pets together, as all past and present spent many hours sleeping and snuggling on it. I took it into the bedroom when Scout and I stayed there at the end of her life, she spent her last day on it as she slept on my chest.

There are more valuable blankets, but none more treasured.

Temptations

Another change I made to the Giving of Treats is to swap out the treat I give to Scout. While she still likes the WildSide Salmon dried salmon treats, she wasn’t eating them with the same fervor so I decided to mix things up a bit. I started off with Whiskas Wild Alaskan Salmon Flavor Temptations, a little treat with a crunchy whole grain shell and a meaty treat inside. Despite the name, the first ingredient is chicken meal and the wild Alaskan salmon flavor (whatever that is) is one of the last, but Scout loves them. She’s normally a bit picky about food so it’s nice to find another treat she gets excited about.

Sam likes them too, but that’s not too surprising, Sam likes just about everything. He has gotten more tolerant of Flea Medicine Night, a monthly ritual necessitated by Scout’s flea allergy, partly with experience I suppose and partly because I started giving the cats a few treats afterward to soothe their injured souls. Now instead of hiding from me for a few hours afterward, Sam has learned it is treat time and he doesn’t even resist his treatments with the same vigor that he used to — in other words, I don’t end up bleeding anymore.

Emma is another picky eater and while she likes the wet food she gets in the mornings, and sometimes eats the dried salmon treats, I have not yet found a dried treat she will consistently eat. I picked up a couple of new Temptations flavors, Free Range Chicken and Yellow Fin Tuna, to see how they would be received. I had little doubt Sam would love them but really hoped Emma would take to them too.

On the latest flea night I assembled the three cats after their treatment, each a little irritable but each eyeing the treat bags I held in my hands. Emma didn’t like any of the treats, a disappointment but not a surprise, while Scout loved them all. The biggest surprise was Sam, who not only didn’t like the new flavors but actually spit them out!

Scout, who was learned well from her Snuggle Twin, body blocked Sam out of the way and devoured his spurned treats and Emma’s too, not a normal behavior for our gentle Queen. I guess it’s safe to say she likes these treats!

I have given her the Tuna flavor the last few days in the mornings, the first time after I handed her the last treat she swatted my empty hand with her paw. I thought it an aberration until she did it again the following morning. This morning though she just buried her head in my empty hand and rubbed her head through my fingers to capture any fleeing evanescences from the departed treats.

The Little Wolf Hunter

Sam curled up and slept on my lap as I watched a documentary about the Druid wolf pack in Yellowstone. He woke when they showed some noisy ravens on a wolf kill and stood transfixed before the television, something I’ve not seen from him before. Suddenly wolves dashed across the screen and he jumped up and swatted madly at them. His claws were retracted so I let him have his fun attacking wolves and coyotes and elk and bison and all the animals of that great land. Finally, exhausted from the hunt, he settled back down to sleep on my legs. The documentary didn’t flinch from the brutality of the wolves to other animals and neighboring wolf packs, but even so, I hope for their sake they never have to face my little hunter. Particularly if I were to let slip the lie that they’re the reason he has to get his flea treatments.

These pictures are the first I’ve taken using the live view on the back of the camera instead of the optical viewfinder, something I can’t do with my older cameras. The live view allowed me to lower the camera to his eye level as he slept on my legs and get a much more intimate portrait.

Little Sam & Little Ellie

I have a dog bed in my office that sees heavy use from more than just our dear Ellie. When my wife made it she didn’t have quite enough stuffing so peaks and valleys form, an irresistible draw for crevice-loving Sam. Emma often sleeps on it as well and with her black fur resembles a little Ellie. She’s rather fascinated with the dog and often snuggles in beside or behind me while I toss the hedgehog with Ellie.

Emma’s also been snuggling with Sam lately, although to be honest I didn’t see who snuggled up to who, it could be that Emma was just tolerating our Grade A snuggler.

The Long Arm of the Paw

Little Sam likes to sleep tucked down in crevices. The other morning when I woke on my back with my left arm kinked by my side, Sam was snuggled in tight between my arm and chest. If I’m on my side he’ll tuck in behind my knees, and if I roll over slowly enough he’ll move with me in real-time, tucked in tight. When I’m sitting in my comfy chair, I usually drape a blanket over my legs so he can hang down between them, a favorite spot of his ever since we brought him home as a little kitten. He likes to sleep on my chest too, but since this is Scout’s favorite spot, it’s a good thing he doesn’t mind snuggling up elsewhere.

It’s led to many an evening where I’m laying in my chair with Scout asleep on my chest and Sam asleep on my legs, the two stretched out nose-to-tail, me covered in kittens. Since I can’t get up, I make my wife bring me my food and refill my glass. It’s not that I enjoy being waited on, but what else can I do? Wake them?