Cat post

I haven't talked about the Kitten in some time. She's hardly that anymore, though--a kitten. It seems to have stuck as a name anyway. It's either that or "hellspawn" and she doesn't answer to either. As cats go, she's fairly nuts, and that's saying a lot about a cat. She chases the big cat around incessantly, and the hours of the night are punctuated by protesting cat yowls. Lately, big cat has learned that Kitten's only fear is the piano, and so she leaps off of the low A and C notes to her corner on the upright, whilst the kitten peels out in her terrified sprint in the opposite direction.

Kitten is happiest when she is biting; she purrs loudly in rhythm with her chomps on your hand, arm, calf--whatever's closest. She has a weird bathroom fetish, but don't all cats? When she hears the shower start up, she races onto the ledge, where she balances between the shower curtains and gazes, curiously. It is quite disconcerting. She can be sweet, as when she jumps onto your chest or shoulder and proceeds to sand your face with her tongue. She aims for eyelids. It hurts.

Vicious as she may be, what with the stalking of kneecaps and chomping on forearms, she is remarkably tender and careful with young children. She didn't leave my niece's side the entire time the one year-old was here and, even when the little girl grabbed hold of Kitten's favorite toys and swished them dangerously, the Kitten only reacted by kindly batting at the object in motion (as opposed to her usual death rattle, etc).

To chalk up a few more points (it almost gets her out of the red, some days) she is quite attentive to me these days. I hate to get overly-sentimental about livestock, but she seems to know things are changing. She also seems to know when I'm upset, or overly worn-out, and she comes to sit with me--something she has never done before.

Today I took her to be spayed, and she's sitting on the couch behind me now, doped out of her mind and trying to remember how to purr. It sounds like she's got a coupla pebbles rattling, but she's happy. I was slightly bothered, taking her in to get her goodies taken out, particularly considering my own scenario. Is it right for the prego pet owner to prohibit the animal from procreating? Well, the answer is yes--particularly when the animal's gene sequence likely contains some mutation from Hell. I can't help but see an accusing look come from her direction every so often...and it's vaguely disconcerting. Then again, what's more disconcerting is the Big Cat we didn't get spayed right away--we couldn't keep any pencils lying around, the way she looked at them...Then she came in the house one day, with her "sex fur" and we knew, but it was seven kittens too late.