Emmy Wednesday!
Sleepy girl.
While Emmy eats, Darwin helpfully paws at the floor, trying to “cover” the food.
“Seriously. Can I get a break?”
“Mama, Mama, Mama, come lay down with me on the ham-mick!”
Emmy is determined to keep those kittens CLEAN.
See a kitten? Lick it!
You can’t see them all, but there were three kittens in the ham-mick with her at this point.
Then Razzie came along to play with any rogue tails.
And now there are four kittens and one mama cat in that ham-mick.
“My mama makes good milk. ::thlurrp::”
Today I’m going to clean the guest bedroom really well and get it set up for the baby Noms. Tonight when Fred gets home, we’re going to move the kittens to the guest bedroom and leave Emmy in the foster room. Emmy’s got her appointment for spaying next Tuesday and the babies are almost 8 weeks old, so I think it’s time. Hopefully it’ll go well and Emmy will be relieved to have some time without kittens walking across her (seriously, they are so RUDE) and won’t freak out.
We’re both making progress with Emmy. I’ve spent a lot of time recently petting her, usually just around her face and neck, which she likes a lot. Fred usually has her rolling around on her back, purring up a storm. In a big brave move last week, he actually picked her up and set her in his lap. She crawled out of his lap immediately and went to the other side of the room and stared balefully at him, but on the up side she did NOT react in a strong and freaked-out manner, so yay!
Hopefully once she’s in the room by herself and doesn’t have to worry about her babies (I mean, not that she’s terribly worried about them at this point anyway, but you know what I mean), she’ll come around even more. You know I’ll let you know how it goes!
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About Tom Cullen (Tommy)
I love this picture so very, very much. That’s Tommy as a wee one, jumping up for the feather teaser, Sugarbutt egging him on, and their sister Callie looking on.
Tommy will turn 7 at the end of June.
Tommy came to us in September 2005 as part of a litter of four. They were about 12 weeks old and all pretty friendly, but Tommy (who was then named “Barrett” – they came already named) was the friendliest of the bunch. I would go into the foster room and sit down, and before I was even completely on the ground, Tommy would be settled in my lap.
The litter was suffering from coccidia and giardia and the other three would fight being medicated, but Tommy would just swallow the medicine and go back to whatever he was doing. He was always the leader of that litter, and he always had at least one other kitten (but usually ALL of them) curled up with him.
The litter was with us for about six weeks, and the VERY day that they were scheduled to go off to Petsmart, Tommy started mysteriously limping. The leg didn’t seem to be causing him any pain, but there was a definite limp. We thought that maybe he’d come down off a cat tree particularly hard, and decided to keep him for a few extra days until he was feeling better.
With the rest of his litter off at Petsmart, Tommy really shone – he was sweet, he was funny, he was laid-back, he was snuggly. I mean, we’d already realized that he was an awesome guy, but without the other kittens around, his awesomeness was particularly obvious. By bedtime that night I’d suggested, in a non-pushy “You know, he is REALLY an awesome cat…” kind of way that maybe he’d be a good addition to the family. I didn’t beg or plead or demand, just made the suggestion and then moved on. As we lay in bed that night, Tommy snuggled between us, we talked about names for him – “I mean, we’re not keeping him, but what would be a good name for him?!” At one point, Fred suggested “Tom Cullen” (for those of you who don’t know, Tom Cullen is the name of a character from Stephen King’s novel The Stand. I will cut you if you ask if he’s named after a character from Twilight.) and we both laughed for a long time at the idea of using that name for a cat.
The next morning, Fred woke me up. “I have only one demand,” he said. “We have to name him Tom Cullen.” So we did. And that mysterious limp? Yeah, it went away just about the time I told the shelter manager that we wanted to adopt him. He’s no dummy.
Tommy is the cat who taught me just how awesome black cats are. He’s laid-back but not a pushover. He’s snuggly, but not pushy about it. Usually he starts out his night curled up against me. Eventually he gets warm and moves away from me, but if in the course of the night I move and touch him even the slightest bit, he responds by THROWING himself onto his back and flailing around so that I can give him a belly rub. There is nothing in this world that boy likes as much as having his belly rubbed.
I think I’ve mentioned that Tommy is our foster Ambassador. He is so good with the fosters, will tolerate them, tolerate their snuggling with him, and if they sit next to him long enough, he’ll groom them. He doesn’t seek out companionship from the fosters, but he is really good-natured when they come seeking friendship from him.
He’s a bit of an adventurer, too – if we should accidentally forget to put his collar on (and by “we”, I mean “Fred”, because he’s the one who’s supposed to collar up the cats before he opens the back door in the morning), you can just about guarantee that he’ll climb over the fence and look around. Luckily, he’s such a good boy that as soon as you call for him, he comes running.
Also, he loves catnip like nobody’s business. Last weekend when I was working in my raised-bed garden and absentmindedly left the gate to it open, Tommy came through to see what I was doing, and the next thing I knew, he was rolling around in the little raised bed where the two big catnip plants are growing. Boy loves his catnip!
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Previously
2011: No entry.
2010: No entry.
2009: Not scared of the Roomba, just skeedaddling to his Very Important Date!
2008: She’s a mean drunk.
2007: They definitely live the life o’ Reilly.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.