It's the beginning of December, 2022 and I can't believe how fast the year has slipped by. Trite but true.
Unlike the past few weeks which were chock full of seriously great activity, I had a really quiet one this past week.
So, I thought I'd rummage through my hundreds of (ok, more than a thousand) cat photos and attach them to a few words about our wee family.
This is my favourite shot of Calvin (left) and Hobbes. The two orange boys were not, I repeat, not posed for this. It just kind of organically happened. Hobbes is still hanging in there - at 10 and as a rescue AND having had a serious stroke-like episode in July - it's kind of a minor miracle. We think he's having mini-strokes every few weeks - his pupils go large, he wanders around aimlessly, and one day, he couldn't keep anything in his stomach. Yikes. Thankfully, we had an anti-nausea pill on hand from our last vet visit, and that seemed to do the trick. His head-tilt persists, so his view of the world is slightly askew and he has become VERY sucky with head-butts and tail taps and big purrs all the time. We'll keep him.
It's hard to tell in this shot, but Calvin is our rambunctious one with an appetite like a Hoover. He's four now and, at meal time, he hooks his front paws on the top of the lower kitchen cupboard doors in front of me as I'm trying to fill five bowls. Because of his bottomless craving for food, doing breakfast and dinner is a bit of a military operation: Rob leads Calvin into the sunroom and shuts the door. Meantime, I lead (actually follow) the youngsters Fred and Wilma into my office, where I shut the door. Rob circles back to the kitchen to feed Hobbes in front of the sink and Bea on the bench in the dining room - which has a door that shuts to cut off access to the kitchen. I knew we bought an old, multi-roomed house (no open concept here) for a reason. After about 10 or so minutes, one of the humans 'unleashes the beasts'.
Bea's the grand old dame of the house at 14. She's the last one standing from the lot we had in Guelph. Katie, Nick, Nora and Lilly have all gone to their permanent rest.
She has developed a bit of a limp - only after she's been immobile for a while - and it resolves fairly quickly. It doesn't seem to bother her much, and lord knows we humans have a few aches and pains, so we've put it down to an aging body. She spends most of her day either 'lumping' under the coverlet on our bed or ensconced in the bottom of the cat tree where she can see (and growl and hiss at) Calvin if he gets too close. When insomnia plagues me, she likes to jump up on the love seat where I'm reading, rub my head and sometimes cuddle down on my lap. Nice.
The youngsters aren't so young any more. Fred and Wilma are now three, and they couldn't be more different.
Fred is pretty laid back and he still gets into the weirdest situations. Like here, when he decided to explore the insides of that white machine. Don't know what it is about being inside things, but Wilma felt the urge to check out the wooden box I use for recycling in my office. She's still pretty skittish - she dives into a dark corner behind the love seat whenever there are other people in the house - but loves to have a nice head rub and chin scratch from us.
So that's it. I think we have enough real cat pictures to not need a gratuitous one. Oh, what the heck. Until next week.
