The obligatory blog about cats

Since I live in a house with five cats, it had to happen at some point. Words must be written about them. Here it is:

Day before yesterday, I walked into my room to see Street curled up on my bed. It is not unusual for there to be a cat curled up on my bed, but things have been odd lately and the adult cats have been avoiding me, so seeing one of them making herself comfortable in my room was a nice surprise. I turned on the light and realized why she was there.

The look of death on her face should have been enough, but then I saw her tail. Still wet from the flea dip. And the giggling started. She was not pleased with me and trounced out of the room throwing me a nasty glare over her shoulder as if to say that she was not speaking at me anymore ever. The insult was somewhat mitigated by the presence of Ethel crashed out on the blue down throw, looking for all the world like a very fuzzy dead weevil larva (of the rhinocilus persuasion)(which are just cute) and snoring. She snores. At three months.

I went down to the kitchen to find some high calorie gut-fill and found Street on the bottom step, watching me very carefully. I know that it's been some months since her dad had to bathe her to get all of the alley grease off of her loveliness and fur, and I think she was hoping she could forget it forever. I picked her up and we sat down and she chirped and balanced on her paws, refusing to get comfortable and shaking. She left my lap shortly thereafter and I suggested that she go pout somewhere else. (We haven't spoken much since then. Some quick morning rubs, but nothing lasting.)

Ethel sleeps like the dead and takes very long naps. With my food in hand, I shut my bedroom door, turned off the lights and prepared to commit to my daily afternoon rest period (still a must-do after everything. not so bad, but somewhat annoying). She rolled around some, stopped snoring for a minute, sort of opened her eyes and then burrowed back down, nose in paws, back feet curled, tail all kinds of everywhere, giving off the faint odor of flea dip.

I ate and snuggled into my sheets for my nap when there came the sound of someone else snuggling in somewhere. Looking over at the source of the sound, I noticed a bulge in the blanket that is draped over the folding chair in the corner. The bulge was on the floor and very small and moving slightly. My eyesight likes to make things move when they oughtn't, but not that much, so I investigated and found a damp, sleeping Novice.

Novice doesn't sleep as long or as hard as Ethel does, so her time on the blue down blanket was restful, but hardly the repose her sibling got. She slept nearer to my knees and watched every movement Ethey made as she snored and rolled and stretched and dreamt and snored some more. Novice and I are finally developing a relationship with purring, so I tend to leave her be mostly and let her come to me as she is comfortable (not including the requisite kitten-grabbing attacks, of course).

By the time it was time to go out that evening, they were both sound asleep, Novice in a gray and white ball of mostly dry fluff, Ethel under the throw, front leg stretched out, holding the blanket to her.

I caught sight of Wigs on Anne's bed, licking at her tail. I didn't see Boris at all until last night. I have decided to call him Boris. Now he is called Booger, so I don't think it will be all that difficult a transition for him as he likely reacts mostly to the "b" sound. He didn't seem all that affected by the bathing process, but if you had your own balls to lick all day long, would you?