Kitten Interlude

“A catless writer is almost inconceivable. It’s a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the typewriter keys.” – Barbara Holland 

Because I spent yesterday taking care of a sick cat (which mostly involved making sure Karma did not pounce on him), and because I have pictures, we are taking a brief break from the all-writing all-the-time blog posts so I can show you pictures.

As many of you already know, I adopted a kitten a few weeks ago, after losing my extremely elderly senior cat, Nimue, to “complications of old age.” Cazaril, who is about nine and usually fairly rambunctious, needed somebody to keep him busy while I do things like writing and laundry and such. So we now have Karma, who is Karma on account of 1) a friend saying she was the luckiest cat in the world to be coming to live at my house (I don’t know why; it’s not like I spoil my cats or anything. Much.), 2) Caz used to leap over Nimmie when she wanted to nap; now Karma is doing that to Caz (what goes around, comes around), and 3) the listing on the shelter web site had her original name as “Monica,” which was my mother’s name. So, Karma.

This is Cazaril (named for the hero of The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold), pre-Karma:

He is a rescue cat, supposedly a Main Coon/Abyssinian mix, and just about the friendliest and sweetest-tempered cat I’ve ever met, let alone been owned by.

This is Karma, when she first arrived. She’s about three times this big now, and getting into EVERYTHING. She has already located the Special Cat Sleeping Spot right in front of the monitor and directly over the keyboard, which is used by all cats in the house according to some arcane rotation system known only to them. Fortunately, she is still much too small for her paws to dangle over the edge of the desk and interfere with my typing. Won’t be long, though.

 And here we have Karma and Caz in Caz’s favorite chair. Which is supposed to be my reading chair, but lately, it is always full of cats.

And finally, we have Naptime for Two. And here I was worried that they wouldn’t get along…

(And because I know somebody will ask, Caz spent Friday night at the vet; we were afraid he’d eaten some yarn or a rubber band or some other non-food item, but it turned out to be just too much of the regular cat food, impacted. So he spent a very uncomfortable time and will need to be on a high-fiber diet from here on, but is recovering well so far as long as Karma the fierce ninja kitten doesn’t jump on him and attempt to wrestle. I say “attempt” because even as much as she’s grown, she’s less than 1/3 his weight and can’t roll him over if he doesn’t want to be rolled.)