The straw is a coveted item in our household. River will walk around with one in each hand and pause to give it a good gnaw.
It is photos like these that keep me from wanting to chase the cats screaming after one of them have barfed on the floor for the third time in a row. Do Baby hurled all over this morning after gorging herself on cat food. She is the reason we stopped feeding them wet cat food each night as a treat. She doesn't have any self control. She will eat past the point of fullness with a speed that puts The Flash to shame and then upchuck it all with much gagging and heaving. Then I have to go pick it up, which I can manage, most of the time, without gagging myself. During pregnancy Jason would often come home to a cowering wife and piles of cat barf that I tossed papertowels over at a distance. I just couldn't clean it up without adding to the vomit.
Damn cats.
Mao is really named Maui, but she might get called that about twice a year. At some point her name got shortened to Mao- which means 'cat' in Chinese. We got Mao from a home out in the country after reading an ad in the paper and being hard up for a companion for Babette who had gotten used to the company of another feline while we were temporarily taking care of a friend's cat. Mao's original name, bequeathed to her by a shy, two year old, was Elephant. We thought the name was hella lame, but it turned out the child didn't have her animals mixed up, but was an undiscovered seer.
You see, we also call Mao, Fat Mao, because she is hella fat. Like so fat the wood floor creaks when she walks. So fat, she has rolls on top of her rolls. So fat, her human mother and father have to keep her groomed because she can't properly groom herself.
It became very clear early on that Mao was special. Not very social, she simply wanted the basics of food and warmth. She was a lap cat, sorta crossed eyed and not much in the personality department. Babette loved her dearly and they were good sisters to one another, just as we had hoped.
Two cats later Mao gained a lot of weight, the vet told us she compensates for being the lowest cat on the totem pole, by eating. Mao is every other cat's bitch basically. The last to eat if everyone wants at the kibble at the same time. The one the other cats torment when they want to feel better about themselves. She is the fat kid in school.
Regardless, she never holds a grudge and will groom all the other cats and sleep with them. She occasionally bats a kibble across the floor and makes her flub belly jiggle to and fro while pursuing her prey. She's the only cat that understands that she shouldn't scratch the furniture and makes frequent use of the scratching posts.
Just don't leave any gift ribbon laying around. She'll eat it and then we have to pull it out of her ass. It isn't pretty, but she's our baby. Our very big, kinda skanky baby.
Each Friday
I will share some adventures in the life of being the momma to four uniquely
different feline companions. But first, I should introduce my cats to the world
of blogging. This week you'll meet Babette- our main coon mix with a bad
attitude.
I often call
Babette 'Boo-Boo' for good reason. If any cat is going to put you in your
place, it will be our Babette. Or maybe I should rephrase that to just
pertaining to me. When the world pisses Babette off, she takes it out on me.
When we move, she'll slap me if I try to touch her. When we got new cats, she
hated me for three months. Jason can do
no wrong.
I'm sure you've
all had the experience of calling to a cat and getting a condescending expression
in return before being systematically ignored. This happens most of the time I
call Babette. When Jason calls Babette, a cute, flirtatious mew issues from her
little pink mouth and she trots over to him with her tail up, begs to get
picked up, and lay over his shoulder purring happily.
Babette is
our oldest cat, six years old this November, and was added into our
relationship before I lived with Jason. (let's just say THAT explains her
obvious preference for human company). We first met Babette when we went to the
house my father was staying in at the time. Babette and her littermates had
taken up residence in his bed. They were just beginning to walk: puffballs that
mewed feebly. Babette was the cowardly one that wouldn't take the plunge from
bed to floor and so whined sadly as her siblings explored new territory without
her.
In fact, we
totally planned on adopting Babette's brother, her spitting imagine until a
second visit around Christmas time, when Babette made herself at home on Jason's
lap and stole his heart. Of her three
sibling, Babette and her brother were very social- making trilling sounds when
you touched them, coming up to people as if they owned them, and purring at
human contact. Her sisters hated people and would run away and hide. We'd never
before met a cat that adored human contact as much as our Babette.
Something on
an "ugly duckling" Babette was sickly for most of her kitten-hood. Goopy eyed
and sneezing. This did little to effect her energy level. She was the type of
cat that attacked your face while you were sleeping or shoved her whole head in
your water glass then spilled it all over. She also would play fetch with
balled up socks, fall asleep on top of the computer monitor and then fall off, or attack a spot of sunlight on the floor.
When one of
us is sick or sad, this cat knows. She'll lay close and purr, pace and mew, and
hover close. She mewed when River came home and lay beside him. It's easy to
forgive her the occasional poo accident (when she wipes her ass all over the floor
while I run after her cursing) when she loves her humans so much.
We're
looking forward to growing old and gray with our Boo-Boos cat!
