Cats!

It would be pretty boring being stuck in the house all day without these silly fuzz people to keep me company.

This is Ratty (The Rat, Rat) named for Ratty in The Wind in the Willows, and also because she often happens to look exactly like an extremely large rat. She’s a Russian Blue with golden eyes and in different lights can look gray, silver, blue and purple. Really Ratty is a very beautiful and fancy rat-like cat.

This is Ginny (The Soot, The Bizzlefly, Mole, The Spoogledoogle). Ginny is a carefully bred mix of local alley cat and alien. Ginny is also the sweetest little loving thing and she’s never bitten or scratched or been mean for even a moment, but she is extremely silly. Ratty generally maintains her cat dignity. Ginny we are pretty sure doesn’t have any cat dignity.

Ginny does have a trick, it’s called I’m a Little Teapot. We call it that because she sticks out each leg in turn and then folds her tail over her back, as though she were saying “here is my handle, here is my spout”.

I’m a Little Teapot, mid yawn. Cat? Alien?

Ginny likes to stay very close to home, and spends most of her day on the cat tree imitating a Russian fur hat.

Ratty, on the other hand, loves to take us for a walk. She responds to “wanna go for a walk, Rat?” almost like a dog. Unfortunately it’s gotten to the point that if we want to walk down to the beach, which involves crossing a fairly busy street, we need to either take Ratty for a walk first so that she’ll come home and relax and we can go back out, or resort to sneaky measures. One of these is a strategy called Dish and Dash, in which we get all ready to go down to the beach, put the cat food down, and then slip quickly out the door and away. It works most of the time.

We recently got them a new cat tree because their old one was looking gross. (Seriously, deeply gross.)

Now they lounge in style like glamor cats in their new cat mansion under their jungle bower.

They have a favorite game, it’s called One for You and One for You. They play it very well by lining up and patiently waiting for treats in turn. One for You and One for You is usually a reward when we call them to come in at night.