Plight of the Pudding Head

Grey kittens, it seems, are particularly prone to a type of goofy that is endearing. It is the kind of goofy where you just accept that there is “nuttin’ but puddin'” in that little head of theirs. Oliver, most certainly, is a pudding head.

My sweet grey kitten’s fluffy brain has kept him from being able to figure out where we’re sleeping. This was true before we moved to the basement but it is worse now. If I don’t remember to carry him downstairs with me, he cries and cries from the main floor. “Where is my Girl? Where did she go?”

Usually he goes back upstairs after I take him down, but at least he knows where I am. Assuming, of course, that he’ll take half a minute to think about it. At the very least it cuts the crying from half an hour to ten minutes.

When he finds me I get a head butt and a big purr.

***

It looks like Mr. Bear is taking an extended vacation. He was next to my bed when I got up yesterday so I put him in the cupboard on my headboard. Oliver looked for him a couple times. Lucky for me, pudding heads are easy to distract.

Obi almost ruined it all this morning when he was playing on the headboard and almost opened that cupboard.

***
As you can see, the Feline Heat Index measures “very hot.”

Obi has had a bad day. It is hot. He has a fur coat. He fell off the couch. He missed a jump to the condo from the desk and dropped to the floor in an undignified way. And he’s hot. Poor brown kitten.

***

It’s Thunder Thursday! Today we bring you Mechanic Cat. This cat showed up while my brother was out working on his car (my brother’s, not the cat’s). The cat not only helped under the hood, he walked down to the garage to help pick out tools.

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Tag Thunder

So. There’s this game of bloggy tag going on where you are supposed to link to the blog that tagged you and then answer these questions and tag other bloggers. Since we’ve been tagged by about everyone on ye olde blogroll, we are crediting everyone and tagging everyone there.

As it has taken me a long time to respond to this – you know how hard it is to get cats to cooperate in such things – I may very well be the last blog to do this.

Here it is, Kitten Thunder responds to the taggy questions:

1.  Book or movie and why?

Oliver: Books. The Girl reads in bed. I love bed. Though movies mean the couch. I love the couch. And sometimes there’s food on the couch.

Obi: Moving!

2.  Real book or e-book?

Oliver: Real books. I like the shape and texture under my back when I’m reading with The Girl. And sometimes her fingers get tired from holding the book up so she can see it over me – then she just puts it down and pays attention to me. As she should.

Obi: Depends. How many e-books do we have to stack up so I can see out the dining room window without standing? Right now we have four real books stacked there.

3. Funniest thing you’ve done in the last 5 years?

Oliver: Once I got The Girl up and down to serve breakfast without Obi noticing so I got both breakfasts. That was a funny joke.

Obi: I’m funny every day. I go into my cave and scare The Boy, The Girl and Oli when they walk by. They are ALWAYS unsuspecting! You’d think they’d learn! It’s so funny when I get them!

4.  Do you put yourself in the books you read/movies you watch?

Oliver: I put myself in The Girl’s book every time we read. I thought I answered this already.

Obi: Naw, I like to lay on The Girls feet. And to put myself in boxes. And paper bags.

5. How would your best friend describe you?

Oliver: Obi would say I’m comfortable to lay on and that I taste great. That comes from hours of bathing every day.

Obi: Oli would say I’m coming along nicely. And that I need a bath.

6.  Favorite kind of car and why?

Oliver: My favorite car is a dead car.

Obi: Any car I’m not in. And that The Girl’s not in.

7.  Would your choice of party be a catered meal or a barbecue out back?

Oliver: Yes.

Obi: As long as The Girl stays out of the kitchen, that’s alright with me. She makes the loud beepy thing go off. I don’t think she knows what she’s doing.

8.  What’s your favourite season and why?

Oliver: Fall. Smell-o-vision on and none of that stuff The Girl says makes me wheezy and gaggy. Plus the blankets come back out.

Obi: I like today. Lots of smell-o-vision and all the things on OutTV are doing stuff in pairs and chasing each other and stuff.

9.  What important lessons have you learned?  Spiritual, educational, and occupational?

Oliver:

   Spiritual – When all else fails, take a nap.

   Educational – Practice makes perfect; take a nap.

   Occupational – It’s my job to get us fed in the morning. Then I can take a nap.

Obi:

   Spiritual – Ear kisses are heaven.

   Educational – Laying with the people is a hard skill to learn. But it is worth it.

   Occupational – I still haven’t figured out why The Girl stores her peanuts on the window sill. But I have learned that the squirrels and nuts are on one side and I am on the other. Also? Glass is hard.

10.  Besides writing, what’s your favorite thing to do when you get some extra time?

Oliver: Writing? Napping. Eating. Sleeping. Playing with Obi. And snacking.

Obi: Cave monster. Bed monster. Blanket monster. Stair monster. Closet monster. Condo monster. And napping.

11.  What’s one place you can be found at least one time every week?

Oliver: The condo. It’s like our desk when The Girl has decided we’ve done enough work on her desk.

Obi: Our house! We live there.

Oliver Goes to the Vet

In the house:

I was running late. Of course. I found the carrier, pushed Oli inside, and we were off.

In the car:

OHMYGOSH WE ARE GOING TO DIE! I AM NOT GOING TO SURVIVE THIS AND I AM IN A TINY PURPLE BOX ITS LIKE A GIRLY COFFIN AND OHMYGOSHWEAREGOINGTODIE! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY KEEP YOUR HANDS AT TEN AND TWO. TEN AND TWOOOOOO! WATCH OUT FOR THAT CAR! AND THAT ONE! AND THAT ONE! AND THAT ONE!

Lest you think I exaggerate:

Repeat for ten minutes.

In the lobby:

Silence.

In the exam room:

Oliver refused to come out of the carrier. He had his picture taken from inside – looking quite handsome for the ordeal. Then I set to work extracting him. This involved pulling his towel out, then holding the carrier in the air, opening down, and shaking it. Like trying to get that last bit of Spaghetti-O out of the can.

If your Spaghetti-O weighs 13 pounds and willfully pushes against gravity.

He came loose just as the doctor came in.

In the back:

Our vet takes pets to the back for the weighing and sticking now. Dr. G says he was very sweet and even promised not to hate her forever when she set him on a piece of cardboard and it shot up to slap him in the face. The girl who checked us out confirmed that he was very charming.

Oliver weighs 13 pounds. He’s a little fluffy in the middle, Dr. G says while patting his belly and earning herself a sideways glance from the grey kitten, but that is okay.

Unable to stall any more, we load up and tell everyone about how loud he is when I am driving.

In the car:

Silence.

More silence. Then, some more silence.

When we were nearly home I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Oli, do you hate The Mama now?”

One tiny meow: “No.”

I choose to believe he said no.

***

It’s Thunder Thursday! Today we have Tika, my first cat that I remember. I know we had a Shadow, but Tika is the poor kitty that had to wear doll dresses and such. And, evidently, have little plastic horses ride her while she tried to nap in a drawer.

And yes, that pudge of a girl is me. I was full of adorable.

"Girl! Rub my belly."

"She's cuter when she's rubbing my belly."

When Tika was older her belly became huge. She wasn’t a fat cat; if she was walking down the hall she looked quite thin, actually. But if she ran, this giant hanging belly would swing back and forth – my brother and I always wanted to mount some of those big drums over her back to see if her belly would play them.

Tika was a good and patient girl.

Thunder…Friday

Yesterday was a long day.

First, this happened:

The lawnmower at my office threw a rock. I’m assuming this is what happened based on the number of spontaneously shattering windows we have on the days they mow the lawn. And the guilty look on the lawnmowing guy’s face – not that they came and told me about the broken window or anything.

The good news is that, with everything else going on, this pretty much just made me roll my eyes. And my sweet little car is junkyard bound anyway.

Then I went to blog last night and my mouse was dead. No blogging for me.

But! I know you need your Thunder Thursday fix, so here’s the furries from Monterey – where my aunt and uncle live – enjoying some OutTV.

"This is my favorite show. Do you think our Girl will make us some tuna snacks?"

That’s all for now. See you Sunday!

Real Thunder. And Kitten Thunder.

I’ve been planning a blog post all day in my head. Then this happened.

It took me twice as long as usual to drive home. For one thing, I could barely see. For another, people were making questionable shelter choices. Like the idiot who decided to wait out the storm in an underpass – next to an already flooded drainage – because he didn’t want hail to hit his precious Hummer. And a whole bunch of people parking under our 100 year old cottonwood trees that drop branches on a sunny day. Um, no. I kept going.

The result of the storm was about 100 dimples (Divots? Dents? Horrific canyons?) in my hood and on the roof of my car. And three places where pieces of my car are actually missing. Sigh. But it makes a good story.

After arriving home and sitting in the driveway waiting for the hail to at least get smaller than ping pong balls, I finally made it into the house. Kitten Thunder met me at the door. Oliver was fuh-reaking out. He wanted to be held. Obi wanted to show me what was happening on OutTV.

The storm passed and The Boy got home so we ventured out to see the damage. There’s a lot, but other than our cars there’s nothing valuable that is lost. I was a week away from peas and tomatoes…not so much any more. Oliver was NOT happy that we were in the Out. To calm him, I went inside and turned on the TV.

That’s when the TV flashed a tornado warning. I tried to get The Boy, but he was down the block. I sent him a text. Not too worried – the funnel clouds were to the east – I turned and looked at Kitten Thunder. “You want to go downstairs, boys?”

Yes. They did.

Faster, please.

Once I was settled in a chair and watching, coincidentally, a program on the Weather Channel about storm chasers in Wyoming, Oliver paced between me and the bottom of the stairs. The Boy arrived. Oli was content.

For the next 20 minutes, Kitten Thunder tried to convince us they needed to be airbrushed. Of course my camera was upstairs so I don’t have the very cute picture of them sitting together in the paint station. I’m pretty sure that’s why they did it.

The TV continued to beep in with warnings of flash flooding, tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. The watches and warnings are pretty common here on the high plains and most people I know were probably outside looking at the weather. But Oli doesn’t know that. So he did what the TV said and went to take shelter in his windowless box in an interior room. I also don’t have a picture of that.

Things are calm now. We have occasional big rain. Obi caught a miller moth. The Boy is reading in the living room. And Oliver is passed out from the effort of being a nervous grey kitten who is in charge of keeping the household safe.

Good job, grey kitten. Sleep well.

The Claw!

I believe most cat owners are familiar with the claw: a hand held, claw-like, then fitted over the face of a cat. Kitten Thunder has numerous uses for the claw.

My dad and I firmly believe that grey kittens, universally, love the claw. They’ll walk across the room for it. My theory is that their brains are a little fluffy and they like the feeling of having it tamped down a little bit. It is a favorite kind of pet. Even Gracie, my parents’ tiny cat who only allows you to pet the aura of her aura with the very tip of your aura when she’s feeling VERY lonely, will allow you to give her the claw.

Obi likes the claw as well. The fluffy brain theory would also apply to him. Though he always refluffs his brain with a head shake as he pulls away from the claw. And comes back for another round.

Kitten Thunder also enjoys claw fights. If one of them is feeling feisty but can’t get their brother to play, a good battle of the claw is very satisfying. I can set up several feet away and display a claw. With a fierce look a possibly a butt wriggle, a kitten face is thrust into the claw. The goal of course is to attack the claw off center so he can bite the soft spot between thumb and index finger while dragging the claw to the ground for kicking. There is growling on both sides. Then we break off.

The attack is repeated. And repeated. And repeated.

I love the claw.

—
I had totally forgotten about this until I saw it on someone’s Facebook today. If you have cats, you will love http://www.simonscat.com/
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Today’s guest star  for Thunder Thursday is cousin Spade. The grandpeople brought Spade to Cheyenne with them a couple years ago when he was too young to stay home by himself. Unfortunately he stayed just long enough for he and Oliver to get to the “I hit you but I think it is supposed to be fun” phase.

"You can't have a full house without a Spade."

Things you should know about Spade:

1. He looks like he is solid black but when he’s in the sun you can see he is actually black with black stripes. No joke.

2. His nickname is Spadosaurus because he’s basically a bowling ball on tiny feet and he is the LOUDEST WALKER ever.

3. His favorite toy? Rubber bouncy balls. Favorite game? Carrying them to the top of the basement stairs and throwing them down so he can watch. Them. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce all the way down.

4. He adores kids. You need someone to play cars or with your dolls or a video game? He’s in.