An Unfortunate Lack of Resistance

So...um...

Remember those other two kittens, the calico and the orangey, we weren't going to keep?

See.....What had happened was.....

Okay, what had REALLY happened was, they were too damn cute to let go of. Squeaky had totally bonded with the little orange one, and when Tim said something to the effect of "When he's adopted..." and Squeaky's face just crumpled up and she started BAWLING. After that, there was no way either Tim or I could take that cat away from her. And once she had her cat, Tim and I figured "in for a penny, in for a pound and a quarter of fluffy, longish calico fur". We've agreed to co-parent her, which is fine; I'll keep her for now, and then when Tim is in a better place, he can take her.

All four cats are still in my room, which is now a scene of kitten-induced madness. And Snickers is terribly upset with me; he's not allowed in my room because the kittens are still carrying some fleas around with them. (Tim and Squeaky are such a pair of drama queens..."Ewww. It's disGUSting. I can FEEL the fleas all built up on their skin." Okay, see, if that's ANYTHING flea-related? It's flea dirt. It washes off. And Tim is so damn particular about how things are to be done; he bought a flea dip and dipped them once, but now all flea control is on hold because the lady at the pet store convinced him that he could not in all good conscience consider himself a cat-lover unless he bought this particular out-of-stock flea powder which was supposed to be in Tuesday. It's Saturday, and it's still not in, and the cats still have fleas, and this whole problem could have been solved if we had just dipped them again, I think. But Tim will do it Tim's way.) My poor Snick just sits outside the door and tries to run in; one of the few times he succeeded, I grabbed him and he hissed at me. My baby--hissed at me!!! So needless to say I'm looking forward to letting him back in the room and letting him have his space back.

But the kittens...OMG, they are completely and utterly teh cyoot. My little calico (currently named Marigold, because in her early awkward days as the runt of the litter, she reminded me of this character....Now, not quite so much.) is so soft and fluffy....and has such WICKED pointy ends....my arms look like I've been juggling chainsaws. But these are the things we live with, when we have no defense against the utterly cute.

(What did Squeaky name her cat? You know, I think I'll make this a guessing game. The winner gets to be the one who wins, and will be applauded for their graspage of the very, very very obvious. I'll even post a pic, just so you can see who's being named.....)

New Post

Um.
Let's see.
Short version, for condensedness:
Spent a weekend with CR; he came in from Bunglepoot, HL (Hickland--it's a state!) I nearly cried when I saw him...he looked really, really bad. His health is probably way worse than he's telling me. But overall, the weekend was pretty good....

...until.

I got an e-mail from CR's sis-in-law, saying that she'd got an e-mail from CR's ex, claiming that CR's brother and I were holed up in a hotel together. This made her laugh, because the brother in question was at that moment in a hot tub with her, eleventythousand miles away. But CR had apparently told her that he was going to Chi to see his brother.....anyway, the tone of things changed markedly after that.

The tone STAYED changed, however, after CR left on Monday. In my infinite wisdom, I'd decided he was screwing me over and was back with the ex when he didn't call for a few days; where he WAS, however, was the Hickland bus station (overnight--his ride didn't show to pick him up and drive him the 90 minutes back to Bunglepoot); then, he was trying to keep his ACTUAL living situation from exploding, an effort which ended in failure when his friend beat the hell out of his wife, snatched their baby, and took off. When he finally got in touch, it was after I wrote him two really, REALLY nasty, fuck-you-lying-asshole e-mails....

...which I had to apologize for when he told me the whole story, and then informed me that he was on the way to the E.R. because his back was killing him. They kept him overnight and told him it's either kidney stones or something requiring back surgery. He finds out this week, and in the meantime he's on pain pills so strong that he can barely stay awake for a paragraph at a time.

And then....

....there were kittens.

Squeaky's friend Bella (also pregnant, and a couple years YOUNGER than Squeaky) and her family were moving to a new place last weekend. Unfortunately, they were leaving one apartment where there were no pet restrictions, for a place that said "One cat only. ONE. And we're watching you move in to make sure that's ALL." This, unfortunately, left Mamacat and her four kittens in the lurch. Mamacat was a stray, a brownish-calico they let into the house; Squeaky was the one who figured out she was having kittens. The kittens, three girls and a boy, were about eight weeks old when Bella informed Squeaky that because of the move, Mamacat and her brood would be turned loose to fend for themselves when moving day came around.

This was what Bella told Squeaky. The REAL mistake, though, was Squeaky telling ME. There are a few things I cannot tolerate, no matter what, and one of those is just discarding a living creature as though it were an empty wrapper or a torn shirt. That goes double for kittens, alas; it's pretty hypocritical of me to value certain creatures more because they're cute, but there it is. I got an I-Go car after work, and we drove up north to Bella's old place.

When we got there, we put Mamacat and three kittens into the carrier; kitten #4 was in the hands of Bella's stepdad, who was holding it like a baby and crooning to it in Spanish. In broken English, he explained that he had promised that one to a friend, but the way he was cuddling that kitten, I would bet the farm that the "friend" in question is imaginary. (And there is nothing cuter than a grown man playing with a little kitten--just nothing. Also, I think I may be adding "speaks Spanish" to my list of attributes for the perfect guy.) We drove home with Mamacat and the three kittens, then ensconced them in.....my bedroom closet. (Well...we had to keep them separated from our four, in case they had any illnesses; and mine is the only room other than the bathroom that closes off from the rest of the apartment. And I surely wasn't going to have them running amok through my room while I was trying to sleep!) The only one who seems to mind the confinement is Mamacat, who was apparently an indoor-outdoor dweller and who sees staying indoors as the ultimate insult.

Mamacat is a darkish calico, kind of a black background with an orange and brown foreground. The kittens are a motley bunch; a long-haired calico girl, an orange tabby boy, and a silver tabby girl. All four, including Mamacat, have a slight upper respiratory infection; all three of the kittens had pinkeye, but a couple days of eye ointment has tamed that rather nicely. Someone is coming over on Friday night to take a look at the kittens, with an eye towards adopting probably two of them, or maybe Mamacat and one kitten. Though Squeaky wants to keep the boy kitten, and Tim's grown attached to the gray, and the calico just charms the socks straight off of me...yeah, no. We really don't need to up the census any further, and Squeaky and Tim already have two cats they can barely take care of.

I'll stop here, since I promised everyone a new post; it's been bonkers around here, for those reasons and one more, job-related one; but all in all, everything's good. Now, if you're still jonesing for bloggage, how 'bout you go over to eatmisery's blog) and say "congratulations!!" twice...?

Coming Soon

Everyone please stop worrying; there's a new post coming tomorrow.