Sleepy River

I think River is enjoying the bed (with heated mattress pad and fleece-covered down comforter) as much as we are.  She snuggles in with us every night now.  Look at those sleepy happy eyes! 

Cubby cats

Simon intermittently climbs into the kitty bed I made for them in the Ikea cubbyhole set.  The other day he was particularly enjoying it.

Two levels of kitty

The cats really seem to like doing this two-level thing, with one on the chair and one on the floor.

Zonked

Simon fell asleep in my lap while I was working on the computer.  I got this picture by holding the camera down beside me (so as not to disturb him).  He was completely zonked!

String again!

Now the cats have several strings to play with (including the ties from two plaid shirts that we knotted end-to-end into one big long plaid toy!)

Here's a montage of recent playing and mischief:

Lap kitty

Simon jumped into my lap tonight, and I got a reasonable picture with the laptop.  He's such a cuddly boy!

Nighttime crazies

Simon and River have both been getting the "nighttime crazies" recently.  They'll tear up and down the hallway, chasing each other or just running like mad and then stopping suddenly.  They wrestle and chase and hide and then pounce on each other.  It's a blur of motion and fuzz.

Of course, River gets camera-shy when I'm filming, but I got some cute nighttime clips of Simon this week.  Here he is pouncing on River, attacking a moth through the window, and nuzzling with me (after his energy ran out, clearly!).

Bedtime games

The cats have recently made a game out of attacking our feet when we move under the covers.  It's a good thing there's a down comforter and two layers of fleece between us and those claws!

Here's some video snippets of their bedtime games:

String!

This week River stole the drawstring out of one of Sarah's sweatshirts that was on the hat stand.  I think the cats like it because it's soft and a bit stretchy.  They've been playing with it ever since!!

Here's a little montage of their string games (they were doing a tug-of-war thing at one point, but I wasn't fast enough to catch it on film).

At one point I say "crescent kitty!" because River is doing the thing they both do a lot, where they floomp down and stretch backwards so far that they make a crescent shape from their front feet to back feet!

New nicknames

The list of nicknames has grown.

River's now include Princess, Squeaky Princess, Squeaker, Rivaletta, Sweetie Girl, Little Crazy, and Snugglefloompen.

Simon's new ones are Floompenbutt, Floompenpants, Crazy Man, and (our personal favorite) Buttlicker.  :-)

Photogenic?

It is nearly impossible to get the two of them to look at the camera at the same time.  Seriously!

First, he can't be bothered to look at the camera:

Then she turns and scolds him (like a good sibling) for wrecking that photo:

Then they both face forward, but looking down and not at me:

Sigh.  Photogenic?  Yes.  Easy to photograph?  No.

Vacuum

This is the first time I have had a cat that is not terrified of the vacuum cleaner.

Simon sits and watches me when I vacuum or use the dust-buster.  He doesn't jump or run, just sits and stares, intrigued.  River doesn't seem to be either scared or interested, but she stays where she's sitting and doesn't hide.

On the other hand, if I crinkle a plastic bag, Simon jumps a foot and bolts under the chair to hide for several minutes. 

What a wuss!

Waiting

Simon keeps going to the door every time there's a sound of people coming up the stairs or keys jingling. He wants Mama Sarah to come home so we can have family snuggle time!!!

Lazy Sunday

Sarah and I have been doing work all day (like good grad students) and our furry children have been "helping."

Soooooooo lazy, these kitties.

And adorable. And perfect.

One month!!

We've had the babies for one month today!!!  We come home to their furry faces and wake up to their little voices.  We play with them and pet them and feed them and brush them and scratch them and call them ridiculous nicknames and take way too many pictures of them.  We cannot imagine our lives without them, and we love them so much it's beyond words!! 

They still are growing more friendly and snuggly every day.  Just this morning River was curled up in the crook of Sarah's arm while they were both sleeping; when Sarah got up to get dressed, River was meowing pathetically and pawing at her arm as though to say, "no, don't go, we were so comfy!"  She really is a snugglebug.

(Here they are wondering why I am holding the string toy and that weird thing that flashes...)

Picture with Shauna

There's finally a picture with me in it!! I'm not asleep, just snuggling with River on the big chair.  She really is turning into a major snugglebug. :-)

Snoozing

This is what our bed looks like right now.  I love my life.  :-)

S-curve scratching post

We recently got the cats an S-curve scratching surface, which I had never seen before we went to King Street Cats.  But the kitties really like it - the scooped part cradles them.  River uses it to hold her back closer so she can groom it more easily!  The day we brought it home we introduced them to it and got a lot of cute pictures.  Here's a sampling:

(There's a feather toy on the underside, and River was batting at it!)

(Treeeeeeeeeats?)

(Awww, Simon is melting into a kitty puddle in Sarah's lap!)

(Floooooooomp!)

Ying-yang wrestling

The cats have been doing this since the first week, after they came out of hiding.  It's fairly unpredictable when they're going to erupt into this, but I finally got it on film!!  We call it the "ying-yang wrestling" because of how they curl together.  They just hang on and kick at each other!!!

Bookends

I have bookend kitties snuggling on the bed with their chins on my knees. Heaven.

Morning routine

This is the prequel to the breakfast video... as soon as they hear me get out of bed the meowing starts.  But it's cute.  :-)

This freeze-frame is one of my favorite pictures of them thus far.  I think it's the first time I've gotten both of their faces close-up and together.

Huntress

River now comes running from her hiding place whenever she hears the sound of the Fling-ama-string turning on!! She's such a precise little huntress, catching the string perfectly with just one claw!

Greetings

Coming home to this makes every day a good day. :-)

He really liked my boots...

He was super duper excited to see me...

More laptop snuggling

Simon definitely likes curling up alongside Sarah when she's working on her laptop. Warm = good.

Holding Simon

Sarah has been working on holding Simon and getting him okay with it.  The last few days have been more successful.  :-)

Recycled cardboard scratching surface

River seems to like the recycled cardboard scratching surface full of organic catnip from Trader Joe's.  :-)

Apartment issues follow-up

Our property management company sent a rep to our apartment today.  She apologized for the contractor incident, guaranteed that we won't be charged for the carpet damage, and gave us a generous PetSmart gift card as a "sorry for your trouble" token.  The contractors have been spoken to, and the managers are making sure nothing like this will happen again.

We're feeling good about how it all turned out.

Rachel follow-up

After I posted that entry last night, River crept up to the laptop staring intently at Rachel Maddow.  She looked for a few seconds... and then pressed her paw up to Rachel's face on the screen!!

Clearly she's a demo-cat... and has as much of a crush on Rachel as we do.  :-)

River watching Rachel

River is adorably perched on top of Sarah right now.

She is also watching Rachel Maddow.  Very intently. Our liberal indoctrination is working!!!

Feeling better

River is snuggling on the bed with us. They are both chirping happily today and requesting their usual attention.

I think the effect of yesterday's trauma has mostly passed, for all of us.

We heard back from our apartment manager, they have apologized profusely and are taking steps to make things right. I think it's going to turn out alright.

Protective mother bears

There comes a time in every mother's life when her babies get traumatized and she has to rise up to her full, claw-and-tooth-bearing height and defend them.  Or, when that's not possible, she must comfort the babies after the trauma has passed.

Tonight we came home from the first full day with both of us at our internships, and the kitties didn't greet us at the door like they usually do now.  We heard pathetic meowing from the back of the apartment, and found both the bedroom and art room doors closed (which we had not left like that).  River had been stuck in the art room, and Simon in the bedroom.  We know they aren't strong enough to close the doors that tightly themselves.

It turns out that the next phase of the sprinkler system construction, which we had been notified in writing was going to happen tomorrow (Thursday, February 2, 2012), had actually happened today.  The workers must have come in, found the cats and shut them in the bedrooms so they couldn't escape during the work.  The babies were trapped with no food, water, or litter, for heaven only knows how long.  Simon had clawed up a bare patch in the carpet trying to get out of the bedroom. 

No one from the apartment office or the construction company even tried to get in touch with me or Sarah by either phone or e-mail, which they definitely have on file.  And the workers didn't bother to let the cats back out again before they left.  The kitties were so upset they didn't touch their dinner for over an hour.

We had been all prepared to set the cats up in the bedroom, together, with all their necessities, tomorrow when the apartment managers said the work would be done.  The coordination of this whole construction project has been crappy, with last-minute notifications and contractors not talking to each other about what order the work needs to be done in (that's a whole other rant).  But we've been flexible and accommodating, because we know the work needs to be done, and until today we've been around to protect our babies and make sure they were safely in the bedroom with everything they need.

Oh lordy, we were PISSED!!!! Our poor kitties!!! Here it is, three weeks today that we've had them, and strange people come in while we're not home, herd them into the back rooms and separate them from each other without their food or water!!! 

Thankfully, they seem to be alright now; they've eaten dinner and had some treats and played and gotten brushed and patted and snuggled.  They don't seem to associate what happened with us at all, because we weren't here to keep it from happening. But we felt so terrible, our precious babies were scared and hungry and confused. We've tried so hard to be such good mommies!! 

So tomorrow we will be going into Mother Bear mode and marching down to the management office to demand that, 1) any future work will happen according to the agreed-upon schedule, 2) we get it in writing that we will not be charged for the carpet damage, and 3) that any contractors working in our apartment will be respectful of our animals and our possessions.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

2:00 am purring

Last night a little after 2:00 am, when Sarah and I were both fast asleep, I awoke to soft meowing and the feeling of little feet walking onto my legs. River had jumped up onto the bed, walked over my back to sit beside my shoulder, and was purring and snuggling in with me!! It was very sweet.

Simon was meowing from the hallway, which made me wonder if they thought that chirping and being cute would get them a (very) early breakfast. We sat up and patted them a bit... and then when they walked into the hallway we shut the door and went back to bed. :-)