On Kitties....

Nothing's really going on that I want to whine to LJland about, so....

I'm going to talk about my two cats instead. For some background:

For the majority of my life (no, seriously, this cat is ancient, attilatehbun can validate this!) I have had an ornery tortoiseshell named Claudia. I found her as a stray kitten when she was tiny. Bottle-feeding her formula and everything. We assume this is the reason she likes me. She doesn't like many other things that breathe. The exception, as observed over years, seems to only include people who are allergic to her. People allergic to cats? She loves them. This is because she is made of evil.

I'm not entirely kidding. She has two favorite games. The first involves my parent's overly-excited terrier/shih tzu mix. Pepper is, opposite of Claudia, made of love. There has only been one person she has ever not liked. And she loves Claudia. She spent years trying to make Claudia her best friend. And Claudia takes delight in rubbing up against Pepper, purring, and giving every indication that all she wants is to snuggle and play. And as soon as Pepper settles in to snuggle and enjoy the kitty....Claudia whips around and starts beating her in the face.

The second game involves waiting by a doorway that my father commonly passes through. Claudia will settle there and tuck in like she's going to nap. She even closes one eye completely and just slits the other. The one that's facing my dad's chair. She will wait like that until she sees him get up. Then, the moment he passes her, she will leap into action and attack his ankle.

This is Claudia's house, you see, and she is the queen.

Then we have Sheila, my eight month old Siamese. Sheila is...well, my dad alternates between calling her Space Shot and Holy Beast. She gets into everything, she's faster than a cat is allowed to be, and she has learned to turn knobs to open doors, and she never stops. We have never seen a more energetic or athletic cat before, and we have known a lot of cats. She also knows how to turn on sink faucets and likes to play in the water. And she talks. Well, trills when she's just making noise and the siamese wail when she wants something. Now while she is picky about what people she likes, everything else under the sun is a potential best friend. She even plays with the ratty girls - and they play right back. She's constantly trying to get at the bird, but not to hurt him, just to make friends. We caught her on top of his cage once, and she was just curled up purring. The bird was terrified. She's not allowed outside, since her reaction to a family friend's giant shepherd/pyranese was 'zomgyou'rehugeIloveyouplaywithmeeeeeeeeee!'. This would not go over well with the local coyotes.*

( Claudia was Not Happy when Sheila came home... )

Whatever's up with the big grump lately, I'm just glad she's happy and energetic!


*(She had never in her life seen an animal bigger than a fifteen pound terrier at that point.)