kittens

by

Two Months with Kitten

After examining a recent video I sent her of the kitten, my mother asked, “Is he getting really big?” I don’t think so, I told her. He’s just a baby.

But I dutifully got on the scale, got on the scale with him, and then did the math. (Actually, I tried for about ten minutes to get him to stand on my kitchen scale, which he refused to do with more than two paws at a time.)

When we first got him, he was somewhere around four pounds. Now he is EIGHT AND A HALF POUNDS. 

He’s still just a baby though. 

We’ve had the kitten for two whole months now. I think it’s safe to say that he’s completely changed our lives. For the better, I hasten to add. Of all the life choices I’ve ever made, getting him is right up there near the top. 

Names

The first thing you should know, is that I lost the naming battle. We call him the name my daughter gave him, Leo; Lenny is a blog-only name. Oh well. There’s always next time. (Although now I have a desire to name a kitten Lionel, so we’ll see.) (We have no current plans to get a second cat. Desire, yes. Plans, no.)

We hardly call Leo by his given name, though. We all refer to him as Cat, or The Kitten. I have a variety of nicknames I use for him, namely Buddy or Baby Cat or Floofy McGee or Cutie Patootie or Blinky Baby. 

This is how he looks after a nap, and the reason we call him Blinky.

Likes

At this stage in his young life, the kitten has many preferences. His favorites, in no particular order are:

  • Playing
  • Looking out the window
  • Scratching things, especially things he should not be scratching, but also, fortunately, things we bought specifically for him to scratch
  • Colorful plastic springs that of course get lost SUPER easily under chairs and couches and the stove and doors (I now understand why they come in a pack of 60)
  • His people
  • Shoes
  • Water dripping from the faucet (to bat and bite)
Why yes, the mirror is filthy because after “catching” drips, Leo flings them around the bathroom
  • Lying in front of the open freezer door
So coooooolllll
  • Filtered water (to drink)
  • Our robot vacuum (although I suppose instead of liking Rocky, the kitten could possibly harbor a deep and suspicious hatred for it???)
Rocky is not a toy, Leo
  • Being blow dried
  • Boxes
  • Back-foot rubs
  • Paper bags
  • Paper in general
  • Jaw scritches
  • Top-of-head scritches
  • Tummy scritches
  • Cat grass
Excellent camouflage
  • The plastic slipcovers we bought for our chenille armchairs
  • Chasing his springs into the chenille armchairs so he can jostle the plastic slipcovers
  • “Hiding” under the plastic slipcovers we bought for our chenille armchairs
  • Climbing onto the chenille armchairs beneath the plastic slipcovers
  • Concealing himself underneath the coffee table or couch, or behind doors or walls, and leaping out at whomever walks past him in an attempt at ferocity (he does not use his claws or teeth when he attacks, which I find so endearing)

Dislikes

The kitten is an extremely agreeable fellow. The parent of Carla’s friend, on first meeting the kitten, said, “He’s really pliable, isn’t he?” I think he was looking for the word “compliant,” but “pliable” is accurate too; the kitten is very floppy and amenable to existing in all sorts of strange and uncomfortable looking positions.

He does, however, have a few dislikes.

“Please don’t bathe me, I promise I’ll be good.”
  • Baths
  • Being held when he wants to PLAY
  • Postponing a meal by any amount of time AT ALL
I was washing berries when I SHOULD have been getting his lunch what was I THINKING?????
  • Staying inside when his people are going outside
  • Car rides
  • Being excluded from any activity

Contributions to Smooth Running of the Household

The kitten has undertaken several jobs and has committed to doing his work as effectively and adorably as possible. In many cases, he has been promoted to manager and takes his supervisory duties very seriously. On any given day, you might find him:

  • Supervising the robot vacuum
  • Overseeing the cleaning of the litter box
  • Investigating anything that takes place on the kitchen island
  • Ensuring the safety of his humans by accompanying them at all times
  • Scrutinizing all shoes that enter our household, even while still on a visitor’s feet
  • Examining the interior of any rooms or cupboards usually unavailable to him
  • Disposing of flies
  • Testing his humans’ Emergency Response System by performing daredevil acts on the second floor balcony
  • Reminding whichever human happens to be in the kitchen at meal time what their primary purpose is (he does this first by sitting patiently near the human’s feet, then by rubbing the length of his body against the human’s ankles, and finally, if the human still isn’t getting it and requires disciplinary action, by stretching his front paws up as high as he can reach on the human’s leg and gently biting the human’s knee)
“I am sitting here very calmly and patiently but that does not mean you should take your sweet time getting my dinner.”
  • Keeping a close eye on the housecleaner and performing spot inspections of her tools
  • Monitoring the loading and unloading of the dishwasher
  • Administering the assembly and installation of new furniture
  • Inspecting the laundry
  • Assessing the sinks

Allergenicity 

So far, I am not allergic to the kitten. I mean, if I pet him and immediately rub my eye and get cat hair in my eye, my eye will get itchy and red. But that’s IT. I am so incredibly grateful for this. After yearning to have a cat for decades, I finally have one and it feels like a miracle.

Toys

When you are a kitten, everything is a toy. A current favorite is the unlucky wool dryer ball that dropped out of a pile of clothing and into the kitten’s line of sight. 

The dryer ball is not supposed to look like this.

State of Purr

When the kitten first joined our household, he purred near constantly. I wonder if some of the purring was born of anxiety from being extracted from his family of origin and deposited in a new house with strangers. He no longer feels the need to purr at all times. But he still has a roaring, appreciative, sometimes intense-to-the-point-of-chirping, purr that he deploys frequently when:

  • we return home from being anywhere, including the backyard where he can see us at all times
  • someone begins to prepare his food
  • it’s cuddle time (not to be confused with play time, during which he will submit to being held but will decline to purr)
Post-breakfast, post-playtime snuggles

Daily Routine

We are slowly developing a routine of sorts. One that will get thrown into disarray, I’m sure, when Carla returns to school. 

  • 6:30: Breakfast with Mom.
  • 6:45: Help Mom clean the litter box. Sometimes he will interrupt his own breakfast to ensure that Mom is doing the job appropriately.
  • 7:00: PLAY.
  • 7:10: Wait a second, that’s not enough playing! MORE PLAYING.
  • 7:30: Help Mom wake up Carla, which involves intense purring and then falling asleep in Carla’s bed. 
  • 7:45-11:30: Combination of sleeping or playing, based on some internal schedule his humans don’t fully understand. Join Mom in her office where she pays way too much attention to that clicky rectangle.
  • 11:30: Eat lunch! 
  • 11:45: PLAY!!!!!!
  • 12:00: Seriously, that’s not enough play time.
  • 12:30: Cuddle with Mom, which involves thunderous purring and falling asleep.
  • 1:00-6:30: Mainly sleeping, with some occasional interludes of play. 
Worn out, but not by too much screen time.
  • 6:30: It is DINNER TIME, PEOPLE. Get it together. 
  • 7:00: PLAY!!!!!! and/or entertain the humans with his antics if they are sitting down to dinner at this time.
  • 8:30: Accompany adult humans to Carla’s room, take up spot of honor between the pillows, and commence full-body purring.
The pillows are pink, and he lies on his back between them just like this and purrs until he falls asleep.
  • 9:00-3:00: Sleep in a cinnamon roll shape on Carla’s bed. 
  • 3:00: Awaken to Mom removing him from Carla’s room and closing her door so he can’t see her probably ever again. Despite the disturbance, initiate appreciative purrs for encountering a human at this time of night.
  • 3:03-5:00: More sleeping. 
  • 5:00-6:30: TIME TO EXPLORE AND PLAY!!!!

Evidence of Brilliance

The kitten:

  • Plays air hockey
  • Plays fetch
  • Communicates his needs (his water spilled, a plant tipped over, his spiral got stuck under the oven, he wants to play with the wand toy but it’s on top of the bookcase) via a combination of meowing, sitting, and leading his humans to whatever needs their attention 
You’ll find at least two spirals under the stove at all times.
  • Sits on command
  • Comes when called

Regularly Uttered Phrases

The kitten isn’t, so far, a big talker. But we talk to him (and about him) a lot. 

“Why are you so pretty?!”

“Where’s the cat?”

“Oh, hi, cat!”

“Where’s your spiral, Buddy?”

“He’s just a baby!”

“Leo, in this house, we don’t [climb on counters] [scratch the carpet] [climb on tables] [climb on desks].” 

“Are you the cutest cat ever?”

“Whatcha doing, Buddy?”

“Excuse me! Are you supposed to be doing that?!”

“Who’s the best kitten?”

“Such a seepy eepy weepy baby!”

“Yes, you are so fierce. The fiercest babycat I’ve ever seen.”

“What is the cat doing?”

“Biiiiiig stretch!!!”

“Biiiiiig yawn!!!”

“Leave Rocky alone, Leo.”

“Where’s my purr?”

“There’s my purr cat!”

“Are you so happy???”

“Good job, Buddy!”

“You’re so perfect.”

“We need a kitten for our kitten.”

by

Kitten Update, Dinners This Week

It continues to be extremely difficult to get anything done with a kitten around. Saturday, my husband went upstairs with the kitten to wake up our child. When no one appeared after a reasonable amount of time, I went up to investigate. And then the three of us both ended up lying on our stomachs, crosswise across Carla’s bed, staring at the kitten for some undetermined amount of time. I don’t even know what the kitten was doing; being cute, obviously. That’s just how things seem to go these days.

Or, as with this morning, I woke up nice and early to spend some time writing before I needed to wake my child for camp. But Lenny was so full of purrs and gratitude when I released him from his room (he is still sleeping in an enclosed room for… now) that I was forced against my will to cuddle him, and then he refused to allow me to type on my computer, so I ended up sitting with him on my lap, purring, while I petted him and told him how handsome he is. 

I did also download a free trial of a decibel meter app to see just how loud his purr is. At one point, it briefly tipped into the 70 decibel range (similar to the sound of light traffic, according to the app), but mainly his purr stayed around 50 to 60 decibels. 

We are enduring, I assume, all the typical challenges of Kitten Parenthood. Carla and I purposely bathed Lenny last weekend because we want to get him used to being bathed. He did not love it, although no one required stitches or even a Band-Aid. But then he got into Carla’s shower while it was running but before she was in it, drenching himself in the process… two nights in a row. This means I had to blow-dry him three times last week. (I use the lowest setting of heat and air strength.) I think he likes being blow-dried; he tolerates it well and started purring the third time we did it. Then, this past weekend, there were two incidents that required partial bathing. Only one required blow-drying, though. 

“Oh look, Mom, the drain thingy just popped out totally without my intervention.”

I think I also mentioned that we bought entirely new living room furniture at about the same time we brought Lenny home. He seems to love nothing more than scrambling up on top of the brand new chenille armchairs and scratching and biting them. I am not mad at him; he’s just being a cat. I am also not crazy about the idea of sacrificing our first ever set of grown up furniture to his hunting instincts. We already have three scratching posts, plus the scratching elements of the cat tower; I calmly remove him from the chairs and place him on a scratching post, and give him a treat anytime he scratches the scratching post. We’ve tried spraying the chairs with Feliway. We’ve tried covering the chair he prefers to abuse in a large blanket; he simply climbs under the blanket and scratches it anyway. So we are looking into double sided sticky tape and vinyl furniture covers. It’s about to get very Marie Barone up in here.

The kitten: exceedingly challenging; nonetheless adorable.

This is the basket where I keep all his toys. He was clearly unsatisfied with the selection I’d made and decided to rectify the situation himself.

Kitten aside, we continue to require sustenance! Whatever shall we eat this week?

Dinners for the Week of June 15-22

  • Chili-Honey Chicken and Sweet Potatoes: I have everything I need to make this already, so this is on the menu for tonight. That way I can postpone going to the grocery store one more day. I’ll serve it with some steamed broccoli. The only thing I’m dreading is turning on the oven. If only I’d ordered the magical air fryer Jen recommended after my post last week. Some day, magical air fryer, you will be mine.
  • Pasta with Goat Cheese and Chicken: I’m not entirely sure if a glorified mac and cheese coordinates well with the heat we’re expecting, but I’m going to roll with it. 
  • Fish Tacos: It’s been ages since we’ve had fish tacos, and fish tacos always seem so summery and fresh to me.
  • Green Goddess Salad with Shrimp: Nearly two decades ago, my first Real Job required me to travel to the home office every quarter. One of the restaurants nearby made an absolutely perfect salad with grilled shrimp and a gorgeous green goddess dressing. I’m going to try to recreate that this week. 

What’s distracting you these days? Anything on your meal plan you’re especially looking forward to?

by

KAT and Dinners This Week

It’s summer, and I have a kitten. Things seem to be moving at even a more languid rate than I expect from summer hours. I blame the kitten. There are the additional tasks that come with caring for another creature – food, litter box cleanup, grooming – that I have tried to adjust for, waking up half an hour earlier than needed to make sure everything gets done. But there are two aspects of Having A Kitten I didn’t really factor in to my timing: playing and ogling. 

I guess I knew that I would play with the kitten. But I didn’t realize that he would have specific Play Times that would require so much human participation. Don’t get me wrong – he can entertain himself. But sometimes, “entertaining himself” means getting into mischief, because he’s very curious and has no idea which activities/areas/objects are restricted. I have found it better for all involved to dedicate intensive one-on-one attention to him when he’s feeling playful. This turns into 30 minutes about three times a day where I am doing nothing but playing with him. We have a wand with some attachments that he loves to chase. We have some balls with bells inside that he loves for me to throw. I mentioned previously that he adores the little mylar crinkly balls. He has at one point had two spirals, which he loves, and also loves batting under the stove. Both of them are currently MIA. 

The internet has implied for years that cats love boxes, and this cat does indeed love a box. We got a new vacuum and the box it came in has holes on two sides for handles. He loves hiding in the box and batting at things from inside the “windows.” He loves it when I throw a ball inside the box so it bounces of the far wall. We introduced him to the joy of a paper grocery bag today and he is having big fun with that. In fact, I had to take a fifteen-minute pause in writing this post because he hopped up onto the chair with me, purring loudly, planted himself firmly between me and my laptop, and then started biting my arm. So I got him a fresh bag and a feather toy which are currently distracting him very nicely. They are also distracting me, though. 

That brings me to the next time adjustment, which is for ogling. He is so cute that I spend waaaaayyyyyy too much time watching him be cute and taking pictures and videos. Carla is also spending waaaaayyyyyyy too much time doing those things, and also picking up the kitten every time he’s not already in her arms, and also saying, “Mom! Look at what Lenny is doing!” and also giving me a play-by-play of what the cat is doing anytime I am not looking directly at him.

Anyway, I am living solidly in Kitten Adjusted Time (KAT) right now, which is super adorable but also super non-productive. 

Let’s see. Despite the kitten and his darling antics, we still need to plan and prepare and consume meals. What shall we eat this week?

The rain persists, with little bursts of occasional sunshine. This makes it hard to know what I want to eat. Do I want warm and cozy things, like chicken paprikas and lentil soup? Or do I want fresh summery things like grilled chicken caprese salad or grilled summer squash with lemon-scallion dressing? 

I better come up with SOMETHING.

Dinners for the Week of June 9-15

  • Slow Cooker Balsamic Pork: We haven’t had this in a while but it sounds good. I have never simultaneously had a cat and a crockpot though, so… hmm. We combine this with caramelized onions, feta, Kalamata olives (for me), sun-dried tomatoes (for my husband), and put it all over brown rice to make yummy shredded pork and rice bowls.
  • Cold Noodle Salad with Spicy Peanut Sauce: We haven’t had this in a long time but it sounds like a perfect summer meal. I may buy some flank steak so we can have some teriyaki steak to go on top of it. Bonus: my kid will eat steak.
  • Pickle-Brined Chicken Tenders: This is a big hit around our house, even though it is a bit fussy to make. Carla hopes to have a friend over for a sleepover one of these nights, and this will be a good friend-friendly meal. (I typically make tacos for sleepover nights, but we just had a tacos-and-sleepover evening last week, and I’m not ready to do that exact combo again.) I need some sort of veggie for the side. We’ll have to see what looks good at the grocery store.

Okay, that looks like a respectable list of meals!

In case you were wondering: The kitten tired himself out attacking the paper bag I got him. He is now fast asleep, inside it.