every time I reblog this my sister sends me a message to the effect of “thank u for reposting that cat video on your tumblr i have seen it so many times but it delights me every time because their paws are so gentle and graceful”
Hey, so we have six cats. If you ever wondered what they all look like, Emma actually got all six of them to sit still and look in roughly the right direction for #internationalcatday. Four of the six were rescues, living feral, when we took them in. The other two were a friend’s cats we took in when she had to move and couldn’t keep them. Ginger, O’Reilly and Scarlett are about 17. Nick is under five, we think, and Sam and Winter are brothers born approximately September/October 2016. Ginger is deaf, Scarlett is blind, and O’Reilly is and always has been chronically clumsy. Nick could do with losing a bunch of weight, Winter probably could too, but right now, they’re enjoying food security for the first time ever, so, y’know. Also, Mum keeps overfeeding them despite us trying to explain to her what portion sizes should be, and she’s the one up at 5am, so we can’t intervene when she dumps a whole can in their bowls.
wallflowerarts Winter squeezed in between Ruth and his mum Nick and wants all the attention tonight #catsofinstagram
My ex feral snuggle bots
It’s another snuggle night for these former street kitties. Winter came and shoved himself physically between my knee and his mother, Nick, and demanded all the attention. My playing with his feet serves a purpose. I’m deliberately touching their feet when they’re relaxed/getting pets because if they’re used to me touching them there, it’s easier to make sure their nails and pads are in good condition, with no injuries, grass seeds, or burrs. This is something I got in the habit of doing with one of our senior citizens, O’Reilly, who since kittenhood has a combo of weak front nails and nail biting leading to lots of ragged nails and split nails, putting him at risk of infection. If you can get a cat used to casual touches to all parts of their bodies in a relaxed setting, it makes preventative health care so much easier. I also scrape tartar from my older cats’ teeth with my fingernails. They’re used to it, and at seventeen, still have great teeth.
Because they didn’t feature in my post the other day…
In the background is Nick. Mother, fluffball, waddler, Princess of Knives, singer of songs about her teaser toys. She has claimed my blanket.
In the foreground is Sam, who has settled against my butt to purr after a strenuous ten mintues gently gnawing and clawing my ankles. He’s always been more affectionate than his brother, but he does like to bite when he’s happy. It probably wouldn’t even hurt if I had fur. Alas, my ankles are unprotected and nommable.
We never pressure the cats to spend time with us. Nick is mostly with us, choosing a prime place on the back of a chair or on an unguarded lap blanket, but Sam has spent most of this winter sprawled on the arm chair on the back deck. He’ll occasionally come and take a turn around the room like an Austenian heroine, but otherwise, just accepts pats and food with happy purrs. Tonight, he felt like company, so I thought I’d document that Winter isn’t alone in wanting to be near us under his own terms.
November 2016, I saw a tiny tabby kitten slink under one of our cars. Soon, we realised the stray fluffy black cat that lived in Mum’s front yard had two kittens, one black, one the tabby I’d seen.
By March 2017, she’d relocated to the back of the house and, with her kittens was stealing Mum’s elderly cat’s food. I pointed out she’d been living on mum’s property for over a year, and that this was her second litter. We began the process of feeding, socialisation and medical care. We had to get them accustomed to being handled before we could get them desexed, for example. The mother cat was letting us pet her after a week. The kittens, who had never been touched by a human and were by this point close to six months old, took longer.
This evening, Winter, who has been enjoying the gas heater this winter season and coming up for pets semiregularly, climbed up onto the couch and parked himself on my lap for the very first time. It’s been about half an hour, and he’s still there, purring. My tiny scrap of a kitten is now a chunky tom who probably needs less breakfast (my mum overfeeds them), but he’s happy, and the living proof that rescuing animals is worth it. Perhaps I’m more willing to wait and have contact on their own terms because I’m autistic, but there are plenty of people out there who say that there’s a narrow, several weeks long window for socialising kittens born wild, and after that, there’s no chance of a cat accepting a relationship with people. Well, look at my boy. Never touched till he was six months. Not desexed till nearly nine months. Born under a car, and breastfed until I started feeding them, supplemented with whatever they could scavenge or kill. Maybe too many people out there just aren’t open to a relationship that you have to wait and work for.
knitting in the dark 