The Virtual Stoa

One of the things we did in San Francisco was visit Best in Show, a few blocks away from where we were staying in the Castro. It’s an excellent pet shop. And we bought something that looks a bit like this, but in the purple colour (to match our sofa; scroll down), as our cats didn’t have a bed of their own.

(Well, they did have a nasty cheap one which I bought back in July, but Enkidu decided early on that it was a latrine, back in the days when his digestive system wasn’t entirely in working order, and we ended up throwing it out, unlamented by all.)

So the question for the cat psychologists out there is this: how do you induce kittens to start using their lovely new bed, imported all the way from California, instead of their usual sleeping places (at the top of the stairs, on top of my head, wherever)?

Andromache will occasionally rest in it for a few minutes when she’s placed in it; Enkidu just marches off immediately if we put him in it. I know several Cat Experts read this site, so any advice gratefully received.

(We did think about putting some catnip in it, but my guess is that that would overstimulate them just when you want them to be feeling calm and relaxed.)

Enkidu decides that Andromache’s head needs a bit of a wash…

Though he is quickly distracted by the need to wash his own front leg…

He quickly returns, however, to the important work of washing his sister…

Both kittens are distracted by a noise from somewhere…

And Enkidu jumps onto the photographer…

In other kitten-blogging-related news, I recently learned that this site is the internet’s #2 site for a search on “weird kitten clicks noises“.

Sometimes Enkidu doesn’t make it especially easy to spend the afternoon at home reading through a pile of UCAS forms…

We let Enkidu back outside at the week-end for the first time since his accident, and he seems happy to be back in the garden, and in the neighbours’ gardens. And, thinking of our neighbours, I’ve just seen Andromache out of the window sniffing next door’s rabbit, though sadly I wasn’t able to snatch a picture in time before she stopped

Here’s Andromache, paying attention to the slightest movement of vegetation:

Here’s Enkidu, cultivating his affectation of sophisticated boredom:

And here’s Enkidu, playing his favourite game of batting the catflap into Andromache’s face in order to annoy her:

Vita activa:

Vita contemplativa:

UPDATE [7.30pm]: Andromache’s worrying away at the same strip of fur just behind the swivel-chair I’m sitting on to type these words, and purring so loudly that I thought it was my hard-drive on the point of collapse.

One carpet, two kittens:

(See here for the relevant precedent.) I’m delighted to report that Enkidu is out of his bandage-and-stupid-cone set-up. What we hoped was his final bandage slipped off quite by accident on Sunday, and he was very happy to have a reasonably functioning paw back again; he went to the vet yesterday to decide what we should do, and the upshot of that was that he went for his x-ray a bit earlier than planned; and the x-ray showed that there’s bone again where there used not to be bone; and so he doesn’t have to wear the bandage-and-cone anymore.

We have been asked to keep him pretty much confined for the next couple of weeks, as the paw’s still a bit vulnerable, and the more rest he gets over the next few days, the less likely he is to have an accident that might snap the bone again, so he’s not quite out of the woods. But he seemed to dislike the bandage-and-cone far more than he dislikes being up in the attic, and he shouldn’t have to go to the vet again, so I’m quite pleased, and I think he is too.

Pictures to follow, on Thursday, as usual.

UDPATE [2pm]: Here’s a picture, with the relevant paw in the foreground: when the bandage came off, the leg was pretty scraggy after being in a bandage for three-and-a-half weeks, but half an hour of determined kitten-washing has made an enormous difference:

Enkidu has what seems to me to be a conventional set of cat noises: he’s got a good “miaow”, which can be made in a number of different ways, in order to express different moods. Andromache, by contrast, has a much wider repertoire of cat noises, including clicks and whirrs and a variety of things that aren’t quite honks or buzzes, but for which there aren’t really words in English, in addition to mews and miaows. Is this a boy-girl thing, or is Andromache just weird?

Here’s Enkidu, with collar-and-bandage, taking it easy a few minutes ago:

And here’s Andromache, keeping him company in his Attic exile, which is very nice of her:

You didn’t think I’d stay away for long? Last week’s instalment was written when we were all feeling quite gloomy — we’d just got the news that Enkidu would have to spend at least four weeks in our attic with a big bandage on his leg and a stupid plastic cone of a collar. He’s only five months old (today!), and it seemed like an intolerably long time for such a young animal to be so constricted and confined. Well — one week on, and he seems to be doing fine. He likes company, but doesn’t mind whether it comes from me or from Josephine or from Andromache, so we’re taking it in turns to sleep in the attic with him, to combat loneliness and despondency. And he’s developed a tremendous new mode of self-expression: when he wants companionship, isn’t getting it, and thinks there’s someone in the house, he thumps on the door repeatedly with his bandaged leg, which makes a terrific racket in a house where noise carries easily. And what we know, that he probably doesn’t, is that quite soon he’ll have a functioning paw, and can go back to being fully mobile again.

Anyway: here’s a picture of a kitten-with-a-bandage. I removed the cone-collar for the photoshoot, as it’s too undignified, but the bandage isn’t so bad at all:

Andromache, on the other hand, goes from strength to strength. She managed to switch off my laptop last week, which I thought very clever: an initial lunge for the keyboard hit the power button, leading to the “Do you want your computer to shut down?” dialogue box to appear, and a second lunge managed to connect with “enter” at exactly the right moment. And here she is, at long last, up a tree…

There’s no Thursday Kitten Blogging today, and there may not be any for a while, I’m afraid. Enkidu - mighty Enkidu, magnificent Enkidu - hurt his front-right paw at the weekend, we’re not sure how. He’s been hobbling around since then, and an x-ray today confirmed that he’s fractured a bone in his foot, and will have to have one of his legs heavily bandaged up for the next month or more, and we have to arrange his life so he won’t be jumping around much, or attempting to climb things, or generally doing cattish and kittenish things. He’s not a happy cat right now, and the next four or five weeks won’t be much fun for him, or for us, as we try to make his life as uneventful as possible, which means in practice that much of the time he’ll be in solitary confinement in our attic. So there’ll be no photographs for a bit, not until a modicum of joy returns to his life, and the spring to his step.

Someone reminded me it was National Poetry Day 2005 today. A couple of years ago, on NPD 2003, I posted a link to a cat-poem by Gavin Ewart, and I’ll post the full text here now. The cat in the poem is coming to the end of his long life; Enkidu’s still very much at the start of his. But it’s a poem that always moves me, and tonight to tears.

A 14-YEAR OLD CONVALESCENT CAT IN THE WINTER

By Gavin Ewart

I want him to have another living summer,
to lie in the sun and enjoy the douceur de vivre -
because the sun, like golden rum in a rummer,
is what makes an idle cat un tout petit peu ivre -
I want him to lie stretched out, contented,
revelling in the heat, his fur all dry and warm,
an Old Age Pensioner, retired, resented
by no one, and happinesses in a beelike swarm

to settle on him - postponed for another season
that last fated hateful journey to the vet
from which there is no return (and age the reason),
which must soon come - as I cannot forget.

It’s Labour Party Conference week, so here’s Andromache earlier this evening, ignoring last week’s Tribune in order to concentrate on dealing with a small green toy mouse…

Breaking with TKB tradition, here’s a picture of Enkidu from the back catalogue. This picture was taken two weeks ago, but captures his Determined Expression pretty well:

A bit out of focus, I know, but probably the closest I’ll get to an action-shot:

I like living with kittens. Like many of the finest things, they make life more serious and more frivolous at the same time, which is a tremendous double-action. Anyway: here’s Andromache, taking an interest in books:

And here’s Enkidu, lord of all he surveys, thinking about whether to learn a major European language:

I’m still hoping to get a good Andromache-up-a-tree photo, but it’s raining outside, and I don’t want to get wet.

This week’s drama (and source of anxiety) has been the kittens’ first forays into the outside world. I wanted to get a picture of Andromache up a tree, as she’s quite the tree-climber, but when I was in the garden with the camera, they were just messing around on the lawn.

(I also wanted to get a picture of the Sinclair C5 that somebody parked on the roof of a car around the corner, but it had disappeared by the time I showed up to take the pic.)

Here’s Andromache, then, in the open air:

And Enkidu is on the prowl:

Only ten minutes into the final Test match at the Oval, and Geoffrey Boycott has already told us that this is a really good pitch to bat on about four times too often. If he carries on like this, it’ll be grim.

I’m pleased to report that Andromache trotted in from the garden at exactly 10.30am, and sat on my lap to watch the first over being bowled by McGrath — though after two balls she wandered off again to do something else. I don’t think she has the patience yet to enjoy Test cricket.

Andromache polices a small brown bag (and note the menacing shoe-lace in the top left corner)…

… while Enkidu hides under the sofa…

A rain delay after lunch on the first day of the fourth Test means I have time for a bumper edition of TKB. Here we see the kittens despairing of the Australian bowlers’ problems with no-balls:

Enkidu has found himself an advantageous perch at the top of the stairs:

A fearsome mouse…

And finally: Andromache pauses on her way down the stairs:

More to come…

On the sofa earlier this evening.

(Adam Kotsko’s also doing some Thursday Cat Blogging, but without pics.)

Enkidu on the left, Andromache on the right.

(Thanks to everybody for their suggestions for names in the various comments below: she stopped being the Cat With No Name on Tuesday evening.)

The kittens are settling in, settling down, and getting quite a bit bigger already. We’re trying to sort out minor problems to do with fleas and diet and whatnot, and everything’s going smoothly right now. And I seem to be projecting an awful lot of ideas about gender onto these kittens.

Here, for example, is Enkidu, the boy-kitten, settling down to watch the start of the Test Match earlier this morning:

His sister (who is keeping up her aura of mystery by remaining nameless, at least for the present), by contrast, is not interested, even as Marcus Trescothick races to his fifty:

(Warne’s just got Strauss for 48: 112-1.)

At long last. Key dates:

23 January 1973: born
5 February 1994: pair-bond
19 March 2001: marry
15 October 2004: start of open-ended cohabitation experiment
27 July 2005: acquisition of kittens

Here they are.

This is the boy-kitten exploring the waste-paper basket for the first time.

This is the girl-kitten figuring out how the Venetian blind works.

I was woken up just before six this morning by the noise of small furry animals hurtling around the house very fast. They seem to have made themselves quite comfortable already, and are now hiding under a large sheet, curled up next to one another on the landing.

Names to follow. And, no doubt, more photos.