Cats on the move...

Not even going to bother apologising or making excuses for not blogging about The Boys since April. It is what it is, as the young folk say. However, I will say that part of the reason (apart from insane busy-ness) is that iPhoto on my getting-rawther-old MacBookPro doesn't work any more and so I haven't been able to properly manage photos from my camera and iPhone. And what's a blog entry about kittehs with no photo of the kittehs? (And yes, I have reloaded iLife and iPhoto crashes every time on launching and I just don't have time to put the lappy in for service.)

The idea for this blog would be that I would document getting to know my new cats, Cooper and Louis. I do kind of wish I had kept up with that, but I guess it's been a bit easier to tweet about them and add photos and so on to Facebook, rather than find time to write detailed blog posts. But I don't want to abandon the blog altogether, so here's a little update on my lovely boy cats.

I've called this post Cats on the Move because in just under two weeks we will be moving from the flat in Ashfield to a house in South Windsor. I guess it's what they call a tree change. Here's the house:

Ain't it pretty? It was built in the 1870s. There's a large yard—my sister Alison says the boy are the most spoiled cats in Sydney because I have bought them a house. And it's kind of true.

I've been in my flat in Ashfield for 11 years—the longest I've lived anywhere. It's been a great place to live in many ways. The rooms are very generous in size, Ashfield is a great central and affordable location (or it was!) and I've been very happy here. I am, at heart, an inner west chick.

When I moved in my lovely old cat Bridie was in relatively quiet middle age (about 9 years old). She enjoyed going out into the garden at the front of the block but wasn't a wanderer and being a fairly cautious girl (who never EVER went near the road) stayed very close to home. As she got older, she stopped going out much past the verandah and then eventually was completely content to be an indoors elderly lady cat.

My desire to buy a house pre-dated losing Bridie and adopting the boys—I'd always have preferred a house but couldn't afford one in the city. (Truth is I've never really got over the disappointment of losing my brief marital home in Marrickville, a lovely Federation/WWI period semi*, but I've always loved old houses and was determined that one day I would be able to have such a home again.)

I started half-heartedly looking at houses in suburbs like Auburn a few years ago—we lived in (a big Federation house) in Auburn when I was a kid, and it's a more affordable part of Sydney than the inner west—but anything in my price range needed more work than I wanted to do. Then I started work in Blacktown on the Western Sydney Young People's Literature Project and started looking in the lower Blue Mountains, as well as back around Auburn. Then last year, I went to a Girls Own listserve dinner at a period home in South Windsor and turned my eye in that direction.

Then I stopped looking altogether, distracted by work and Bridie's last few months and overseas travel.

And then I got Foxtel. And my body corporate started threatening me with legal action over the satellite dish. (Yes, really.) And then came The Boys.

[Time for a kitteh pic!]

Louis! How rude!

Having lived with an always shy and timid cat like Bridie as long as I had, I completely forgotten what it was like to have two very energetic young cats—or maybe I never really experienced it as much as I might have, because when Bridie was a pup, she was certainly energetic and had a lovely cat friend from next door, Timmy, who she loved to play with, but they were outside cats from the start (not at night, of course) and played outside, leaving my china and glassware largely unscathed. (Indeed, there was a patch of dirt under a camphor laurel tree we called the "boxing ring" because they played roughhouse there and destroyed whatever grass may have been struggling to life in the shade.)

I utterly misunderestimated what it would be like to have two young boy cats cooped (excuse pun) up in a flat, no matter how generous-sized the rooms. I've posted before about the broken vase and the play fights and the kitteh escapes and Cooper's first supervised outdoor visits (in harness) with Little Louis crying his little heart out from the windowsill inside. (Not to mention both cats UNSUPERVISED escapes!) And I do think many cats are happiest when they can be outside, although I also think they very much need to be kept inside at night.

Over the months, I gradually let them out more and more into the garden and grounds of the flat, but rarely letting them out when I am not at home. At least, rarely on purpose. Because it's a busy street, and its hard to be sure how much road sense they have. (Cooper, I think is OK, Louis—hard to know. I've seen him stroll out onto the road at least once, although I think to be fair, because I was parked in the car and he knew I was there.)

But they LOVE being outside and Louis, it turns out, is a total Houdini. He has paws like a chimpanzee (if chimps have paws rather than hands) and has been able to work out not only how to slide the windows open but how to jig open the catches and, latterly, how to move the dowl rods placed strategically (if not entirely effectively) to keep the windows from sliding open.

I'll come back to Louis's escapology shortly. Suffice for now to say that the more he got used to being outside the more he has been desperate to be outside—and Cooper, who has from the first clearly been used to be outside (and is utterly trustworthy even on this busy street) has been very happy to follow his smaller adopted brother into the Big Out. (He's not, as it turns out, actually as smart as Louis about opening the windows, and when Liddle Louis was liddler, and only opened them enough for himself to get out, Cooper would remain stuck inside.)

So anyway, this quite reasonable desire to be able to be outside in the elements and run around like the energetic young things they are, combined with their increasingly (as Louis has got bigger) aggressive play fights** (poor Cooper is often now the one mewing "Uncle"—or more correctly, quite seriously growling and hissing "rack off upstart!") made me start to seriously think it was time to have a house. (That, and my desire to be able to watch whatever the hell I wanted to on the TV without asking Matron, aka the body corp, for permission.) And more to the point, a garden on a street where they would be safe.

And so I set up a bunch of Domain alerts, found an agent to sell my flat, and started in earnest in the real estate market.

I can't tell you how many weekends this year have been given over to Open Houses—kissing frogs, and toads, and feeling cheerful and feeling despondent and wondering where would I eventually live. My friend and neighbour Ros sold her flat in our block and bought her dream semi in Croydon and I still didn't know where I'd be going. Eventually I decided that where I would live (Sydney suburbs? Blue Mountains? The Hawkesbury?) would depend on falling in love with a house.

And then the email with sale notice for The House you have already seen appeared in my inbox and I more or less (to cut a stupidly long post short) bought it the day I saw it—only I hadn't sold.

And then will cut this entirely short and say, yes, I did (eventually, after 3 weeks that felt like an eternity) sell this lovely flat in Ashfield where I have indeed been very settled and happy (although apparently I missed the Great Inner West Real Estate Bubble by about 3 weeks!)—this flat that has been my home for longer than anywhere I have ever lived in all my 46 years—and who knew (or who remembered) how STRESSFUL buying and selling real estate is (especially when you do it in that order).

So now, in 1 week, me and the boys are leaving the delights and conveniences of the inner west (and believe me, what with Gleebooks moving in and all the rest, I am SHOCKINGLY going to miss the inner west. The boys, not so much) for the 900 square metres and 3 bedrooms plus studio of Our New Home.

And yet, a few days ago, I thought it was just going to be me and Cooper. Which brings me back to Louis the Escapologist! Sometime after 3.30 am and 5.30pm last Tuesday (10 August) Louis, who is actually not so Liddle any more, disappeared. Escaped and disappeared—while I was at the hospital with my father, who has had a bad run with his health this year.

Escaped, opened the last vulnerable window in the flat (he'd been worrying away at it for weeks) and could not be found anywhere. For more than a day and a half.

Yes, Cooper followed out the window too, but he was waiting for me when I got home. Louis—Utterly Vanished. I thought he was dead or catnapped or worse. (Is there worse?) He was gone for about 40 hours. Who knows where he was. All these months and I had tried so hard to keep my boys safe, and just 2 weeks before we move into our lovely house and garden, the Liddle One vanishes.

It's safe to say I was pretty upset—compounded by worrying about my dad and losing sleep. Oh, but what a champion Cooper turned out to be! I actually think he sekritly (or not so sekritly) liked being (temporarily) an Only Cat, and was full of cuddles and love—in between me heading out every hour or so to look for Lou. I think our animals know when we're upset—Cooper certainly came into his own while I was fretting over Missing Lou.

[AMENDED TO ADD: Gosh I'm a twit—I forgot the most important bit. Louis did, of course, come home, the following afternoon. My kind neighbour Suzanne, who lives down the back of our block with Mr Whiskers and Diddle, found him waiting for me when she got home from school (she's an English teacher, just as I was). She slung him in her car to stop him running away again and called me—I was already on my way home from work with a stack of "Help Me Find Louis" posters, which ended up in the recycling!]

So that's a very long-winded trawl through my real estate shenanigans of the past few months. But what you REALLY want to know is, how have my boys turned out over the past 8 months we've been getting to know each other?

Well, let me start with Louis. Louis is very uncomplicated. He's possibly the happiest cat I've ever known. He's sunshine in a fur coat. He's sweet and funny and VERY smart. Everyone knows Louis. Well, everyone knows Cooper, too, from their outside forays, but when Louis went missing last week and I was an over-tired weeping mess looking for him, all my neighbours said things along the lines of, "Oh don't worry about Louis, he's a very really clever cat, he'll come home!" or "Oh, don't worry, he's so friendly, someone's probably taken him in" (did I mention it was a very cold and wet night?). I think they were right on both counts.

Louis doesn't understand getting into trouble. He's so confident, so sure of himself, that on the odd occasion when I have had reason to really get furious with him (like the night of the Allen and Unwin 20th Anniversary party, when he REFUSED to come home and I got back at midnight to find him stalking a possum that was about twice his size and weight and would have disemboweled him in a single sharp-clawed stroke) he gets so confused and hidey that it upsets me even more.

(I don't beat him or anything of course, although he does sometimes get a firm grip on the scruff while being given a serious talking to—although funny story about the guys who sold my flat. The evening they came over to discuss being my agent, Louis started scratching his claws on the sofa and as they were sitting right near him, I said "Belt him for me, would you?" and they looked so SHOCKED and then both simultaneously kind of went "cootchy-ooh!" at him that I immediately knew I'd let them sell the flat for me.)

He squeaks when I pick him up. He has the worst case of stinky-cat-breath. He has extremely sharp claws and teeth. He likes to come in for a cuddle, try and open the bedroom window AND wake me up like Simon's cat just about every morning. (At night, when he wants a lap, he tenderly places his paw on my leg. Melt.)

Being swooped at by angry noisy miners is his favourite thing in the world, after climbing trees outrageously too tall for him (usually in pursuit of noisy miners). He loves to play fight with Cooper (as afore-mentioned), loves to chase toy mice and balls and especially this toy brought for him by my friend Laura all the way from Canada.



He loves people. He is the one who will from time to time initiate a cuddle and a lick with Cooper, never the other way around. The first time I took them to the vet, and put Cooper in the cage to come home (he HATED the vet), Louis jumped in to be with him.

Cooper does not "do" the vet.

When I had the first open house to sell the flat, I put the boys in overnight at the wonderful Sydney Vet Hospital in Stanmore, Cooper totally freaked out (I think he thought he'd been abandoned again) while for Louis, it was a great big adventure. New people! New cats! New things to climb! Wheee! And when they were coming home (to date they have been able to share a cage but I think that's over now, Louis is just getting too big) he licked Cooper's head to comfort him.

He's a total sweetheart. He's also the nortiest cat on the planet. What's not to love?

Little Louis. Little love.

And what's not to love about Cooper? Mr Cooper-Grumpy Pants, I call him sometimes, because he really can be, but as was evidenced the night Louis went missing, I think he really desperately wants to be loved, he's just not as trusting or anywhere near as confident as Louis. But while he's usually resitant to being picked up (he firmly places his lovely pristine white paws on my chin and pushes away) he loves a lap and to curl up on the couch with you when you're watching TV (or weeping over a missing kitteh). When Louis is around, he will take a back seat, no matter how I encourage him. Wherever he came from (and you might remember he apparently came from a House of Many Cats) because he continues to defer a little to Louis, although he's much better at asserting himself (even as I try to feed him first and do all those things to encourage a more Top Cat status).

He will still shy away when I go to give him a good old head scratch and it worries me that he is still not as comfortable with me as I'd have hoped by now. But he's also extremely loud-purry and chatty and certainly lets me know when he wants to be fed. Which is usually as soon as the sun comes up. Both of them are fussy-ish about food, liking the gravy on various Whiskas varieties but the meat, not so much. Louis loves proper Science Diet biscuits, which Coop only eats under sufferance—and frequently then throws up, partly I think because being such a handsome long-haired boy he suffers furballs that Louis just doesn't.

I sometimes watch the boys in the garden out the front of my flat, and it seems to me that Cooper sometimes actually copies Louis. Louis was climbing far too high up the gum trees in the front yard from his first days out there—Cooper from time to time flings himself about half way up as Louis gets and I want to CHEER him. He's not physically confident. (Know the feeling!) He baulks at jumping back up and into the flat through the security bars on the windows, and yet he's entirely capable of doing so. He's more cautious about jumping the fence into the building next door (the one with all the lavender bushes both the boys love hanging out in) and yet again he can leap the 5 foot section of the fence as easily as anything when he wants to. And he can RUN, so fast—it's a joy to watch.

He's my handsome checkerboard cat. He has the fluffiest tail and whiskers to die for:


Also, check out these paws! He's FASTIDIOUS about his grooming.



He is much photographed because he is so very, very handsome.

I call this the Blue Steel

I really love Cooper. I worry about him, and he frustrates me because he swings madly between aloof mistrust and sweet-natured affection. He's a big bundle of a boy, lovely to cuddle, but not always willing. (Let us never speak of the weeing in the bed incident of, lo, last night...) (And yet, as I said, he loves a lap.) The first time I picked him up at the RSPCA, He stretched his arms around my neck and I melted. I thought bringing Louis home with him would be lovely for both of them, and in many ways it is, but when Louis disappeared last week it was also pretty clear that maybe Cooper was relieved to be away from that House of Too Many Cats and would have preferred the opportunity to be an Only Cat, a Top Cat, for a change.

What I am hoping for is that when we move to our new house, and the boys have this HUGE yard to play in, and will be allowed to stay outside ALL DAY while I am at work, that each of my lovely boys will utterly come into his own, and Cooper especially will stop being the backseat boy and will find his own place(s) in the sun.

We will keep you posted.

_____________________
* This link takes you to the other half of the semi I used to own with my ex, which sold recently. It's been much renovated and extended but it gives you an idea of what or house was like and what it could have been like in time.

**I honestly don't know how much this is to do with them being boy cats—they are both desexed—and how much it is to do with personality.

Oh, Liddle Louis!

I haz guilted myself into making a long overdue lolcat for Louis-Lou. And you know you can vote for it...

Well, this is appalling...

I had such fabulous intentions of keeping this blog up regularly, and look at how badly neglected it is! The first couple of months of 2010 all my free time was spent finishing writing the online version of my Writing Children's Books class, and I was on a totally immoveable deadline, and everything else had to take a back seat.

Of course, I also have had two kittehs to raise, and what an interesting few months it's been! The boys are well, apart from some nasty tummy business, and happy, although Cooper has turned into Mr Grumpy Pants a bit, but I loves them to bits and promise I will come and write a proper update soon.

In the meantime, here are some photos to enjoy of the growing boys, and may I also recommend you read this delightful blog post about cats in books from the terrific YA fantasy author Katherine Langrish.

I should also add that Cooper is now a lolcat and he and my desk were featured on the fabulous Tara Moss's blog series about writers' desks. Louis is about 4 times the size he was when I first brought him home, but he's still a liddle iddle thing, sunny-natured, squeaky and affectionate. I tweet and facebook about them a lot, and I do promise I'll blog more too. They deserve it!

Here are my boys!

Super-Cooper

Can it really be 3 weeks since I blogged? So sorry—I've been incredibly busy, even though I've also been on leave (and back at work part-time). I've been working on the online version of my writing children's books course (serious deadlines going on there!) and doing a fair amount of cat-wrangling when I've not been working. I also had my niece Emily visit me for a weekend in the middle: we did some serious vintage clothing shopping and went to see Mamma Mia—plus Emily discovered the delights of sleeping with two rawther norty cats, who in turn discovered the delights of the sofa bed... (I think they thought it was a fabulous new, I don't know, trampoline or something, conjured up especially for them with New Playmate thrown in as a bonus.) So, busy, and not blogging.

But here I am with the promised post about Cooper.



Dear Cooper. Look at him here, snuggled up to my Sylvac bunny bookends. What a gentle, bookish, dignified creature he looks.

This was taken after he made his first escape from the flat, but before he broke my favourite vase.

This is what he looks like when he's worn out from doing thirty-five rounds of the (not that big) flat and wrestled with Louis for a 20 minutes or so, until Louis cries like a tiny baby and I have to break it up. Which usually happens at about 11 o'clock at night.

In other words, Cooper can be as much of a handful, and as wild-in-his-way, as the kitten. But he's also a sweet, lovely, slightly reserved, but also friendly and cuddly (when he's wanting cuddles) boy and I have to admit having a big old crush on him. In fact, and it's going to sound silly to say, but I kind of admire him. Plus, he's a dead-set spunk.

And he's watching me as I type this*. Say hello Cooper.



He was actually sitting up watching my hands move as I typed, but I didn't get to the camera quickly enough. Still, you get the picture—he's interested, and not just in the laptop (although, as you'll see, he's quite the techno-geek), but in TV (an episode of Angel particularly caught his attention) and everything that goes on outside the flat. Which is mostly because that's where he wants to be—outside. But moe of that later.

As I said, it's fair to say that Cooper is pretty computer savvy. He's got quite a dedicated following (via my regular updates about his and Louis's exploits) on Facebook and Twitter and has had a number of requests from fans to set up his own Facebook page, which may or may not have been what he was up to here:



And he's also, as I mentioned, a rather bookish lad. He likes to rub his face against the picture books on the lower shelves of one of the bookcases in the living room, and he likes to sit with the books to. In fact, as you'll see, he's rather gifted at picking places to sit that set him off at his best. Cats have such a marvellous aesthetic, especially when it comes to them!



But enough of this showing off my handsome, clever cat. Here's some news about Super-Cooper, that cat so fabulous ABBA named a song for him years before he was even born...

I've told the story of how I came to chose Cooper and Louis in the first post to this blog. When I was filling out the paperwork at the RSPCA, I asked the woman serving me if they had any records about Cooper, where he'd come from and so on. She was able to tell me that he is 3 years old, born on 12 December 2006, and that he'd been brought by an inspector into the RSPCA with other cats, whch, she said, probably meant that he'd been in a "hoarder's house"—someone with just too many cats. That wasn't to say, she said, that he hadn't been looked after, and he clearly had. He was healthy and cheerful and friendly and obviously well-socialised to people and other cats. And as I quickly discovered, he knew his name and was (is) very responsive to it. So wherever he was, whoever he was with, obviously looked after him really well. (I feel kind of sad for them. He's such a great cat.)

So big Cooper and tiny Louis cuddled together, a little freaked out (Cooper especially), in Bridie's old carry-cage and that's how I brought them home. And they settled in almost immediately. Louis, being a kitten with a wild, confident streak, owned the flat immediately. Cooper was a little more cautious, but while he took things carefully in checking out this new place, he didn't hide or skulk, he didn't ever hiss or back off from me, and I have to say they both settled in remarkably quickly.

And it's been really fascinating watching Cooper in particular settle in. Not that Louis hasn't been interesting, but he's a kitten with a rule-the-world attitude, and having known very little but the cage at the RSPCA (he was fostered, but must have been very young) the flat is now more or less the only home he's known. Not so for Cooper. I guess the fact that he came (most likely, as far as anyone knows) from a house of many cats, accounts for how good he is with other cats, but what's also interesting is that, despite the fact that he's the older cat, he has until recently always backed down from Louis, especially when it came to food. I don't think Louis's necessarily a particularly dominant cat, it's just that he doesn't really know any better, and so bowls up to Cooper any old time he wants to play, and equally will muscle his way into Cooper's bowl when he's eating. And Cooper would simply back off and let the kitten eat.

I've tried to make a point of feeding Cooper first, just as I've tried to "favour" Cooper with being a bit more attentive to him, because the kitten, being a kitten of a particular rambunctious nature, will always demand more attention first. And Cooper is the eldest (although my dad maintains "that cat's not three!"—he thinks he's much younger than that, but I can only go on what the RSPCA told me), and I don't want hm to feel neglected. Plus when he cuddles you, you don't come away with scratches and bites! But if Cooper has been on my lap, and Louis decides to jump up, Cooper simply gets down before I have a chance to sort them out.

So the fact that he does, or did (he's much more assertive these last few days I'm pleased to say) back down to the kitten suggested to me that, wherever he was, and whoever he was with, however many cats he lived with, he wasn't top cat.

He has been happy from the start to give Louis a bit of a bop when Louis got too wild, but that's about as assertive as he got. But as time has gone on, he's really started to come out of his shell. Now when he and Louis play, I sometimes have to break them up—Louis is so much smaller than Cooper, and Cooper really pins him down and gives him a good play-thrashing. And he's not so prepared to back off when Louis shoves his little face into Cooper's food. In fact, they have once or twice eaten from the same bowl at the same time, which is pretty funny to watch but also an indication that Cooper as found his feet and knows that this is his place too. And tonight for the first time I had Louis on my lap and Cooper happily on the red ottoman next to my knees—the closest I've come to having them both on my lap at the same time. (Of course, there's not a lot of room for them both, but you get the idea.)

The other thing that quickly became evident was that Cooper has been used to going outside. I can tell from the way he sits on the windowsill, looking at the Big Out, and he on=bviously knew from the start what the door out to the balcony was all about.

And then on the second or third night he was with me, he got out.

I have sliding windows in my flat, and I don't have screens on all the windows, so I closed the windows to just a small couple of inches, and yet somehow he managed to get out. I guess he shoved the window open wide enough, probably with his head rather than his paw. It was late—after 11—and I didn't realise he was gone until I was getting ready for bed. Well, of course, I had a bit of a panic, and I called out for him, and bless his little white cotton socks, he called back from outside the bedroom window, and he sounded quite freaked out and panicky, if a cat can sound freaked out and panicky. So then I freaked out and panicked and without thinking to close the window—because I thought he might try to get back in and I didn't want to close t0 on him, but then halfway out the door (which I was rtying to get out without a.) letting the kitten out or b.) squishing the kitten, who tries to get out nearly every time I go in or out of the flat—so then I freaked out that the kitten would also get out the window while I was trying to rescue Cooper. Ack! And then I got outside and called for Cooper, who was still replying, still sounding freaked out, but also a bit jumpy and then I realised I couldn't see him, black cat, in the dark, until he moved and I could see his whiter-than-white legs...

And so I was able to pick him up and bring him back inside, and he did fight me, because I think he really did want to be outside, but I really do think once he got out he either realised he had no idea where he was, or how to get back. And the fact that he called for me instead of just taking off means that he knew that this, now, was home.

And so the next day I went out and got them both collars and name tags. Even Louis, with the skinniest neck in kittendom. And just as well, because he made his own escape the weekend my niece came to stay!

And I also bought Cooper a harness and leash, and I have to say that, as with the collar he took to wearing it without complaint. I only put it on him when we go for little test runs in the garden, and he's been really fine about it. Plus the red harness looks fabulous on him.



I have some other pics of him in the garden which you can see on my Flickr account here or on Facebook here.

And while we were out, poor little Louis sat on the window, and oh, how he cried!



Cooper has since been out, under supervision, without the harness, and while he hasn't gone near the road, he has wandered a long way down the side of the building, exploring. Having said that, he did more or less back when I called him, with a quick detour up onto the fence between my block and the flats next door. Fortunately he didn't go over, and he let me pick him up and bring him back inside.

He really is a fantastic cat. He's soft and gentle—he retracts his claws when he jumps up on my lap—and he's also finding his gumption a bit too. He and Louis are great mates, although not cuddle-buddies as yet (the only time I've seen them grooming each other was after they had the Revolution flea and worm stuff applied to the back of their necks! Also, the other day I thought Louis was licking Cooper's ears while he was sleeping, but in fact he was biting him, trying to wake him up for a play).

I have lots more photos; he's such a photogenic cat, but that's enough blogging and photo-boasting tonight. More on Cooper, and little Louis, soon. These two make me very happy.

Cheers.


** And what was Louis doing as I typed this? Chewing his own foot.

Louis Louie, or, how the kitten got his name

So, how did I settle on Louis for a name for the kitten, and how do you pronounce it anyway? Louis with the "ess" sounded, or Louie?



First things first. When I got my cat Bridie, I went through a few names in my head: Hiedi, because she hid from me for the first few days (she was a VERY timid creature in her early years, and while she warmed up to me and my then partner fairly quickly, it took her about a decade to really be comfortable with visitors outside regular family members). Glad I didn't—Heidi's a terrible name for anyone but Swiss children with plaits and brothel madams.

I also toyed with Holly, as she was more or less a Christmas cat (she came into my life at the start of the Christmas school holidays in 1989) but that didn't seem right either. (I have good friends who have a cat called Holly, who is now an elderly lady—they got her not long after I got Bridie.)

So I turned to A Book of Literary Days, which someone had given me as a gift, and looked up Bridie's birthday. According to the fellow who was giving her and her litter mates away, she was born on the Monday of the October long weekend, which that year was October 28, which was Evelyn Waugh's birthday and Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited and so—Bridie! (She did occasionally also get called Brideshead by my dad and my sister Alison, although the ex and I used to call her Bridget McGillicuddy for short. Don't ask me why—lost in the mists of time!)

So as I did with Bridie, I turned to my Book of Days for the Literary Year to name the new kitten. According to the paperwork the RSPCA had, he was born on October 1, which makes him 11 weeks old. I kinda doubt this, actually: he looks closer in size to 6 weeks to me, but what do I know? So with only the word of the good folk at the RSPCA to go on, October 1 it is and so the kitten was born on the same day as a US writer and editor named Louis Untermeyer.

Louis, I thought, although actually I thought "Louie". That's not a bad name for a rather wild young kitten. Louie (spelled Louis). I tried it out, it felt fine in my mouth and it seemed to suit him, but I wasn't entirely sure, partly because I didn't know anything about Louis Untermeyer, and I wanted to be sure he was someone I would want my kitten named for.

So I read about Untermeyer on Wikipedia and discovered that he married several times and edited collections of literature for children. Well, I liked the sound of the latter, if not so much the former, so I turned to my trusty friends on the child_lit listserve, because I knew that someone there (or several someones) would know more about him. And indeed they did. Turns out some of the poetry collections edited by Untermeyer for children had been deeply important to and influential on some of my colleagues on child_lit, and they encouraged to name the kitten for him.

(Also turns out Untermeyer appeared on What's My Line and was blacklisted by the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, both of which immediately endeared him to me!)

And as it happens, I had another reason for liking the name Louis. Meet Me In St Louis is one of my favourite movies, especially at Christmas, and I always love the conversation between Tootie (Margaret O'Brien) and Mr Neely the ice man (Chill Wills) about the correct pronunciation of "Louis":

TOOTIE: Is Robin a girl horse or a boy horse?

MR NEELY: Girl.

TOOTIE: How old is she?

MR NEELY 4.

TOOTIE: She's awful big for 4. I'm 5. Is she strong?

MR NEELY: Strongest ice horse in St. Louie.

TOOTIE: Excuse me, Mr. Neely, but it's pronounced St. Louis.

MR NEELY: Is it, now? I've got a cousin spells it the same way, and we call him Louie.

TOOTIE: He's not a city, though, is he.

MR NEELY: No.

TOOTIE: Is he a saint?

MR NEELY: No.

TOOTIE: Then there's no comparison.

And so in the spirit of the kitten, like Mr Neely's cousin, being neither a saint nor a city, I decided he shall be Louis, spelled the way Mr Untermeyer spelled it, but pronounced Louie.

I had toyed with a couple of other possibilities: Ollie kept popping into my head, and then someone suggested Charlie, in keeping with the Dickensian theme of this blog, but by then Louis (Louie) had taken hold and then, lo! on Wednesday Louis knew his name.

And so Louis he is. And he has the name tag to prove it.


(No nametag pic yet, sorry!)

As for Cooper, well, that's his name. It was the name he came into the RSPCA with, and while for a day and a half I kept wanting to call him Jasper (I have NO idea why!), he clearly knows he's Cooper and is extremely responsive to his name and so Cooper he is. I felt kind of weird about changing his name anyway, and I think this photo expresses his opinion on the prospect perfectly!


Next post, what I know about Cooper—apart from the fact that he is a total sweetheart and a some-time escapologist!

Welcome to A Tale of Two Kitties—and welcome to the kittehs!

Hello! I imagine if you are reading this first post, you probably already know who I am and have come here via Facebook, Twitter or my other long-standing children's literature blog, Misrule. And so you will know that this is a new blog dedicated to the two new cats in my life, Cooper and Louis.



This is the first photo of the cats. I adopted them from the RSPCA at Yagoona, Sydney, Australia, on Sunday December 27 2009. I lost my beloved old cat, Bridie, back in June, after 19 and a half years together (you can see her name is on the carry cage the new babies are in in this photo). I always said, after Bridie, I would adopt an adult cat and a kitten together: an adult cat, because they don't get adopted as often as kittens, and a kitten because kittens are fun, and there's something lovely about raising a cat from kittenhood.

But when, where and how? Definitely from a pound of some sort: I would never buy from a pet shop, and I prefer your common or garden (or alley!) moggie over your breed any day (although there are some gorgeous breeds of both cats and dogs)—and anyway, it's the common or garden (or alley!) mog that usually needs rescuing.

I was pretty heart-broken when Bridie died, and I still get upset quite easily about losing her, but it was beginning to feel like time to have a cat (or two!) in my life again. I started looking at pet rescue sites a few weeks ago, and had a couple of near-misses on adoptions. The timing was tricky: when Bridie arrived in my life, I was a teacher and it was the beginning of the Christmas school holidays (height of kitten season!) and I had six weeks to settle her in. I don't get big chunks of leave like that any more, but I do have a bit of time over Christmas/New Year, and I figured if I didn't do it now, it might not be until next kitten season (late spring/early summer 2010) that I was really able to.

And having a cat to be responsible for is, I think, good for a person who lives alone. Having a cat to care for makes you get up in the morning on those days you'd really rather not. It makes you have to keep the flat tidier—lots of regular sweeping when you have an indoors cat shedding fur (and Bridie shed handfuls of fur every day, all year 'round) and digging around in the litter tray. And it gives you someone—apart from your Twitter pals and shouting at the pollies on the telly—to talk to.

But how to choose a new cat? I am a firm believer (although I know it sounds all oogelly-boogelly) that cats more or less choose you, but living in a flat, it wasn't all that likely I'd have a stray turn up on my doorstep. And the other thing was, I guess I had a bit of performance anxiety, in the sense that Bridie was such a great cat—or at least, a great cat-match for for me, and a cat I knew so intimately and was so attached to, that I was a bit apprehensive about starting all over with a new one (or two).

And part of THAT anxiety was to do with the fact that a.) Bridie had the best road sense of any cat ever, in that she simply never went anywhere near traffic. (This was because of where she spent her first few years, in a bedsit in a house at the end of a cul-de-sac in Gladesville, where there was no traffic, and so when she encountered it at her grandparents' house on a pretty busy road, she just stayed well away.)

and b.) because for most of the ten years Bridie lived in this flat with me (also on a busy street with lots of inner west hoons speeding up and down), she simply didn't go outside any more. Too old to climb in and out of the flat's windows into the small garden area I front. I was worried about bringing a new cat in and running the risk of them getting out and getting run over. And what if the cat wasn't as attached as Bridie was, or didn't like cuddles, etc? What then? (Truly, Bridie was a kind of eccentric cat, but I loved her so fiercely, even imagining another cat has been just weird and difficult.)

And you know what? She'd be totally outraged that her home was now host to not one, but two new cats! I was thinking that last night, watching little Louis, the tabby kitten, jumping in and out of the bath Bridie used to (when she could climb in and out) insist on me turning the taps on for her to drink. But Bridie's wonderful, long life is over, and now I have two new little lives to care for.

And so, with all those contingencies in place (time off work, kitten season, knowing a cat would be good for me and knowing I will really always want to live with cats), I took myself off to the RSPCA, more or less as a cold call, on Sunday, two days after Christmas.

And I burst into tears as soon as I walked into the cattery area. All those cats needing home, losing Bridie—all came to a head. Kind of embarrassing! But actually, animal people get that and it was the RSPCA after all.

I'd already looked online to see what cats were available for adoption, so I had some names and faces in my head, but the thing is, you don't know till you've met them. And I went in with no determination about age, colour, gender—just that I wanted two, for company for each other when I am at work. Beyond that—no clue. I walked around the adult cat section for a good while, looking at them, talking to a few through their cages, some of them talking to me first. But I needed to talk to someone who knew them and there weren't any staff about. So then I went and checked out the kitten house, and there weren't all that many kittens there—they had had dozens that week, but apparently, so I was later told, adopted out 40 on Christmas Eve! Golly, I hope they weren't impulse adoptions.

I had a cursory look at the kittens waiting for homes but didn't really pay much attention: my focus was on the older cats, some of them as old as 8 needing new homes. So I went back up and eventually (to cut it short) was able to talk to a lovely young staffer called Eva who took me right into the adult cattery and allowed me to spend as much time as I liked talking to and picking up and holding the adult cats, finding out which ones like to be held and cuddled and which merely "tolerate" it. (I wanted a cuddler, and bless them, the staff and volunteers fill out regular forms on the cats' temperaments and behaviours so you could tell which ones got along with other cats, which ones didn't like to be held. (It put me in mind of those "This toilet was last cleaned" registers in loos in shopping malls and cinemas!)

And I just couldn't decide. I'd have taken every one of them home, or, well, you know what I mean—I wished every one of them would find homes, and so I was relieved to be told that they would be kept at the RSPCA until they DID find homes. The pressure of worrying they'd be put down without my rescue was all a bit much! So I relaxed then, stopped worrying so much about 8 year old Sandy, who was a lovely cat, but perhaps not quite the right girl for me? (Perhaps too like Bridie?) But on what basis could I choose between any of them beyond having decided long ago that I wouldn't ever have a cat with a pink nose or white ears because I couldn't stand having them get skin cancer. So that cut out the lovely Rascal and Pierre and Omo...

I dithered. I cuddled. I asked (mostly unanswerable) questions. Eva and the volunteer were lovely and most accommodating with their time, but they couldn't make the decision for me. There was one cat attracted my eye—a lovely looking black and white cat, Cooper, who they told me was 3 years old, although he looked much younger, who was a very social cat who was allowed free range from his cage as he got on with other cats (although it was noted on his "Cleaner's Log" that he had hissed at someone called Boof a day or two earlier... I now suspect this must have been Boof's fault!). I liked young Cooper very much but actually thought to myself, he may actually be too energetic for me! This is a fresh, energetic young cat (although technically an adult) who might require more attentions and stimulation than I can give him, being a single working gal.

So, no decision taken. So Eva suggested I go back to the Kittery (where the kittens were) and see of one of them took my fancy, and if one did, bring him or her back to the adult cats to see if it got along with any of them. I was at a loss, so it seemed like as good a plan as any, although by now I really wasn't thinking "kitten" at all.

As I said earlier, there just weren't many kittens left. Maybe 8 or so, and two of them were already being cuddled by their almost-new people. So I wasn't all that hopeful—and then I walked up to (all unknowing) a cage with the only kitten left on one side of the long kittery house—and this charming, wicked, lively, wild little lad launched himself at me from the other side of the bars and absolutely BLEATED his insistence that he was the kitten for me and I instantly melted. (OK, doesn't take much!) I don't know how I missed him earlier, but as I said, I wasn't really looking. So, one quick cuddle later, and Eva, unnamed kitten and I were heading back to the adult cattery to see who would become unnamed kittens' new big sibling.

(Going back to my long-term plan of an adult cat + kitten adoption, I kind of always assumed it might be a mother-kitten combo, but these seem harder to come by than you might expect, at least from the rescue shelters. Dunno why! Anyway, back to the saga...)

This has become far longer than I planned, so here's the short version. Cooper, the 3 year old black and white, was the cat with the best reputation as far as getting along with other cats went (Boof notwithstanding), so he was the one we really focused on trialling with Unnamed Kitten. And while I wouldn't say that Cooper embraced UK with open paws, he certainly did not hiss, swipe, growl or otherwise suggest aggressive tendencies towards UK. And Cooper also just LOVED a cuddle—one of those cats that actively hugs you when you hold him. And so then, perversely, I started thinking maybe I should just take Cooper and leave the kitten, as the very daunting task of raising a highly energetic and rather wild-as-in-crazy-energetic-rather-than-feral kitten suddenly began to dawn on me. (After all, it had been 20 years since I had hand-raised a kitten...)

But then every time I would look at the kitten, he made me laugh. And Cooper was clearly a sweetie who would not do the UK any lasting damage and was also, in his own right, simply adorable. And there was another couple in the cattery by then, adopting one of the quieter pink-nosed cats, and hubby was nudging me towards committing to Unnamed Kitten AND Cooper and, well, reader, I adopted them.

It's been just two days and already so many little stories, which I promise I will tell, but for now, here is Cooper and his no longer Unnamed Kitten brother, Louis. The naming of Louis will be the subject of the next blog post.

Oh, but before the photo and the next blog post, what about the naming of this blog? It was suggested by my Twitter pal Stephen Murray, most likely because a day or two before adopting the Boys, I was tweeting about a personal Reading Challenge I had set myself for 2010, one of which was to finish reading a complete Dickens novel, such as A Tale of Two Cities. And so A Tale of Two Kitties seems entirely apropos of a number of things. And now here is the promised Kitty Pic:



In the meantime, please bookmark this link to the kittehs on my Flickr site: plan to keep it updated. Cheers for now!