Reveille at Camp Couch

I caught a cold last week and have been staying at Camp Couch since Saturday. I have mostly been alone; Oliver has decided that sleeping in the empty spot in my bed is much more comfortable. He’s come down to check on me, of course. And I think Obi has been sleeping on the loveseat.

So it isn’t like I’ve been alone or unsupervised.

Especially in the morning. On Monday, I needed to get up at 4 a.m. for drugs. Me playing with a foil package in the kitchen inspired the pitter patter of eight little feet. If I was up and getting a treat for myself, I might as well give them a little something something, right?

At 6 a.m., when The Boy got up, I heard them earnestly telling him that they needed breakfast. I lacked the will to move the ten feet to the kitchen to contradict them. I lacked the will to raise my head and see if I had a voice to say otherwise.

Kitten Thunder got a second breakfast.

The Boy kind of knew that and confirmed with me when he brought my coffee. But, by then, Oliver was laying with me – dutifully applying purr therapy – and no one felt like scolding him. Purr therapy is hungry work.

This morning, I woke to the familiar feel of a kitten paw poking me in the nose. I opened my eyes to see a grey kitten sitting on the floor by the couch, nose to nose with me. I lifted the blanket to see if he wanted to snuggle. His ears when flat. No.

I lowered the blanket and closed my eyes. Poke. PokePoke. Mew. PokePokePokeMewPoke. I opened my eyes. Mew.

“It isn’t time yet,” I said.

But, just as a well-aimed poke went UP my nose, the breakfast bell went off. A satisfied grey kitten turned and walked expectantly out of the living room.

I guess it was time to muster in the kitchen after all.

***

I’m feeling much better after two days of barely leaving Camp Couch. I’m packing up and moving back upstairs tonight.

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Purr Therapy Sunday

I have the plague. Or a cold. I had to work all day yesterday, followed by The Boy’s work Christmas party, so I had already declared that I’d be sleeping until noon.

That didn’t quite work out since Kitten Thunder saw the dread black cat in the driveway at 10 a.m. I got up to help The Boy talk them down.

Then I moved the condo into the dining room.

Oliver has spent much of the day administering purr therapy.

 

After dinner, which The Boy went a got when he went to the grocery store for me – above and beyond the call of duty, I say – Obi decided to administer some preventative therapy on The Boy.

 

 

We value your patronage…

…but I have a cold and I had to be on the road at 6:30 this morning to get to a conference in Denver at 8:30.  I am tired. Please enjoy these videos from Simon’s Cat.

The Clever Brother

Oliver was sick yesterday. All day. He was very pathetic and spent the whole day in the reading nook on his blanky. If he wasn’t better today we were going to the vet.

But! He was better. He was back in Thundering condition this morning.

Obi and Oli were playing on the rug with their big box and plastic intestines. They would thunder through the entry way, dining room, and into the kitchen before turning back through the hallway and into the living room. Oliver’s long legs give him the advantage; he is much faster than the brown kitten.

Oli would get back to the rug and hunch down behind the plastic intestines to hide. But Obi? He’s very clever. He knew where Oliver was hiding every single time.

Amazing! 

Combustible Cow Juice

So before we start today’s story, this:

I am sitting at my desk, ready to blog. Oli and Obi, of course, are on hand. On desk. Oliver is standing in the plastic bag that my new power strip (nerds say “yay!”) came in, and scratching his chin on the corner of the cardboard box that my new mouse (geeks say “hollah!”) came in. Scratching his chin makes his foot want to scratch. His foot is held down by a plastic bag.

Scratch. Lose balance. Scratch. Lose balance.

He’s given up. He’s laying down. Send tuna.

***

So, the real story:

This week I bought some massively huge steaks for The Boy to grill for us. Massive. Huge. And also? Delicious. They were so big that neither of us finished our serving last night. But kittens were waiting.

Hoping.

Since I am not one to disappoint my fuzzies, I moved my remaining steak over to  The Boy’s plate so Oli and Obi could lick the steak juice off of mine. And they did. And then…

Oliver exploded.

It wasn’t a literal explosion, of course, but things came forth from his head at alarming pace. On the rug. In the entry way. In the hall. Under my desk. Now, anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows that Oli has a sensitive stomach. Anything the wrong color, or temperature, or on the wrong day or served facing the wrong direction makes his stomach revolt. And it isn’t surprising that his stomach didn’t like our steak which – when ordering at a restaurant – we describe as “ask the cow to walk over the flame before she plunks down on our plate” rare.

So no big.

This morning I nearly forgot that I had a whole serving of steak left over from last night. Luckily The Boy came home for lunch. I held Obi so we could watch The Boy prepare a burrito type thing with beans (in a can but NOT tuna) and green chiles (GROSS) and chopped up steak (whatever). What Obi was waiting for was cheese (yes!).  I have never seen a look that communicated “where’s the damn cheese?” any more clearly than the look Obi gave The Boy.

There was cheese.

There was also fat. Now, there’s no way I would ever cut the fantastically delicious fat off of my steak. But The Boy did. So I chopped it up and put it on the breakfast plate for Obi. He looked at it in disgust and walked away once he’d finished his cheese. He is SUCH The Boy’s cat.

Not as interested in preparing food and starving, I did not make a burrito. I nuked my steak in the storage bowl, grabbed a fork, stabbed said steak and gnawed on it in a circular fashion. Still delicious.

The bowl went down on the floor for Obi. As The Boy headed back to work, we both congratulated Obi on his not exploding like his brother did last night. I played my turn in WordFeud. And then…

Obi started walking backward around the house…

No…

Explosion!

Obi walks backwards when he is sick. I don’t know if he’s trying to back out of the situation, if he thinks he can get away from that bad feeling in his throat, or if he just doesn’t want to get anything on his fur. Whatever his reason, the result is a solid trail of explosion that crosses four rooms. And today it was severe.

I was scared. I thought about texting The Boy to warn him but then I decided I’d wait to see if I started to feel like exploding. I didn’t. The Boy didn’t.

The biggest result of this kind of explosion, aside from the joy I derive from using half a roll of paper towels to clean it up, is the snuggle factor. I believe this is true of every creature on earth: your mama will make it better. I spent all last night with a grey kitten pressed into my chest. The situation was repeated this afternoon with a brown kitten.

No more cow juice for the kittens.

***

This week I realized that Kitten Thunder is never going to let me work outside the home ever again. We’ve become spoiled by lunch time naps and belly rubs on demand. I’ve assured Oli and Obi that I have enough clients and, if they could just stop laying on the keyboard, I’ll have no trouble paying the bills.

But, just to make sure – and because it’s a heck of a lot of fun – we opened a store on zazzle.com. Right now we have some ties with photos of landmarks – Devils Tower, Mount Rushmore, Niagra Falls, the Golden Gate Bridge, etc.

And we also have some photos of Cousin Spade. HIS people have already contacted MY people about his cut of this deal. MY people informed HIS people that he signed over his royalty rights during the photo shoot in exchange for a belly rub. Given his penchant for drawing blood during such an occasion, I’m pretty sure he got the better end of the deal.

Battle of the Super Cruds

That’s right, cruds. I’ve been fighting off a cold for a week and last night my body gave up the fight. So I blog from the couch with two kittens administering purr therapy.

In kitten crud news, it turns out that it isn’t okay for Oliver to have the sniffles while on antibiotics. We have upgraded him to bigger, badder antibiotics and a month of steroids.

We are a pathetic pair.

The upside? Quality time on the evil couch all day long. Well, until I had the audacity to sneeze at 2:45 this afternoon. At that point I lost both kittens to the upstairs for their afternoon nap.

***

It’s Thunder Thursday! Since I am blogging from the couch with a grey kitten on my arm and a brown kitten on my feet, I bring you Chip. Chip is the baby neon tree dragon that I did NOT buy last week.

Have a great weekend!