plonq | May. 9th, 2005

It has been a little over 7 weeks since we rescued Belladonna from the animal shelter, and she's done a lot of settling in during that time. For one thing she's learned her name and responds to it now. Here are a few short feline anecdotes about our newest family member.

In a fairly recent, completely unexpected development she has suddenly started getting along with Jaws. I don't mean that they've reached a state of mutual detente and loathing like Jaws and Bit had, but they have begun playing together. For the most part it involves chasing each other the length of the house. From our perspective in the computer room this involves the sound of clawed feet frantically running along a carpeted floor, followed moments later by a white streak tearing past the computer room doorway, with a brown-coloured streak close behind. A moment later the process reverses, with a white blur pursuing a brown one in the opposite direction. They exchanged a five-second glare over breakfast this morning, but that's the closest I have seen them come to open hostility in over a week.

Belladonna has found herself a favourite perch; it's on my chest. She loves to curl up on my chest and purr, often giving me a vigorous massage with her [in need of a trim] claws. Unfortunately she likes to do this while I am using the computer, which makes things awkward for both of us. She manages this feat because I tend to slouch in my computer chair, and I have just enough of a paunch to serve as a comfy bed for a cat of her diminutive size. In those rare instances when I actually practise good posture, she curls up on my left shoulder instead. Yes, she's a small cat.

This cat is a relentless mooch. She's not one of those passive ones who sit and stare and lick their chops while you're eating, she takes an active approach to mooching by trying to steal morsels of your plate - especially when we eat dinner in front of the television. She's tricksy, that one, never taking the same approach twice. This time she's jumping up on the back of the chair and trying to creep unnoticed over your shoulder. When that's foiled, she circles around and tries to sneak onto your lap from the side. Foiled again! A few seconds pass, and suddenly there's a little paw reaching over the edge of the coffee table where she thinks your plate might be. Swat away that paw and a moment later a little head pops up from between your knees and... well, it goes on and on. I find it slightly annoying, but way more amusing. She just doesn't know how to give up. In fact...

She actually got away with something on Thursday. atara picked up fast food on the way home from work that day, since she works at the shelter those evenings and we don't have enough time for a proper dinner. Belladonna found the smell of hamburgers to be totally irresistible, and she went through her usual aerobics in an attempt to nab herself a tasty snack. She managed to catch us off guard by employing a new and bold tactic: she leapt onto the table, deftly snatched up a hamburger wrapper in her teeth, and bounced off the table again in one fluid motion. It was not that, but what happened next that kept us too stunned to move. I'm sure you've seen the cartoon image of the very smug-looking cat with a canary. Well, she couldn't have looked any more pleased with herself. With her tail erect and head high, she delicately pranced around the corner and out of the room with her prize held daintily aloft. After we finished laughing about it, atara chased after her to retrieve the wrapper. Belladonna had apparently unwrapped it by that point - under the close scrutiny of Jaws - and had discovered, to her apparently disappointment, that it was empty.

Belladonna loves pens. Actually she loves any small things that are sitting in their rightful place on a table, shelf or counter. Last night she jumped up on my computer desk, casually picked up my glasses and was just preparing to pack them off somewhere when I startled her enough to make her drop them on the floor. My glasses..!

atara changed their litter last night. She got rid of the last of the clumpable litter and replaced it with crystals. The vet has recommended this some time back, but we didn't want to confuse and traumatize our new cat before she'd had a chance to settle in. She has always had the clumpable litter, and cats don't always take well to having things like that change. I think that Belladonna approves of her new litter. I caught her playing in it this morning. Twice.