KITTENS!!!!
Thursday evening found me and aralon taking the long drive during commute hours up to Everett to meet a little kitten, Cheetah, and her littermates that Maxwell had found on Petfinder (with the help of ocicat). After getting turned around a couple of times, we finally arrived rather later than planned. Getting down to the fostermom's house was an adventure of its own, as aralon had sprained his ankle earlier that week, so he was trying to keep weight off the injury.
We finally arrived and me Julie who urged us to meet another pair of slightly older kittens before we went back to meet Cheetah. Always willing to socialize with ever more kittens, we took a little time to meet and hang out with the very shy "Dixie" and her bold sister "Chick". Dixie was a maine coon cross who has lovely markings, very soft long fur, and a purr a mile long...once you get her going. The challenge is that she and her sister were born in a state park, and are quite semi-feral. So catching her is...a painful process as she flits about, acting terrified and hissing. Then, you start scritching, and the purr arrives very thoroughly. I'm thinking well, this is nice and all, but I'd really like to meet Cheetah, so I put Dixie down, and she evaporates in terror.
We go back and meet Cheetah and her siblings. Cheetah is lovely, and purry, as are her siblings. But she is young enough that she didn't really seem to have much of a personality. I tried to interact and see if she was the one for us, and we were right for her, but there just wasn't really enough there to interact with. Well. That wasn't how I thought it would work for me. Hmmm. All the while, I keep feeling this pull from the front room, wanting to go back and be with Dixie some more. Interesting.
We return to the front room, having pretty much decided that while Cheetah and her siblings were nice and all, they weren't who we were looking for.
So, to bring you up to date dear readers, you need to know that I thought I was looking for a nice easy going kitten. Someone who was easily personable with everyone. A kitten with a happy, bouncy, mellow. So much so, that I had given ocicat a hard time when he brought Maxwell home, as Max was also a semi-feral, though very well adjusted. I really and truly believed that I did not want a challenge.
I told Julie that we didn't think that Cheetah was who we were looking for, but would very much like to interact with Dixie some more.
It took over an hour of cuddlings and scritches, all the while with her purr going strong, for this shy girl to finally relax her ears from their flattened position. I watched myself over the hours, slowly melt over this shy, beautiful, responsive little girl. She fled from us more than once, when I thought she'd relaxed, but instead she leapt out of my lap and did the quick slink flee upstairs to her foster mom's bedroom. Nevertheless, I found myself incredibly charmed.
Part way through the evening, Julie the foster mom, realizing that we were becoming ever more susceptible to Dixie's charms, urged us to consider taking her sister as a companion for her. Seeing how shy this lovely bit of fluff was, I could very much understand her urging, but I cringed at the idea. I mean, 3 kittens! That is a bit much. Still, I dutifully went over and interacted with "Chick" to discover a happy, bouncy, squirmy, playful girl. Hard to get her to sit still, but very, very playful. And with the most instant purr ever. Lovely markings too. She doesn't have the shy girls long fur, but is a nice mostly dark tabby. Dark on top, with little grey racing stripes, and typical tabby underbelly.
Realizing that I was rapidly losing my heart to these two, I gave ocicat a call, as I'd promised to share the excitement with him, if it looked like I was going to be bringing home a kitten that night. And now, I had to explain that it looked like I'd be taking home, not one kitten, but two. Still sharing a celebratory dinner, ocicat was not yet available, so I left two very excited, but worried messages, explaining my dilemma and likely foolishness. While waiting for his return call, I kept asking myself "Are you the right one for our family?" and asking her "Are we the right ones for you?".
She is very responsive to scritches, and once you get her going, she is an absolute love sponge. Floppy and malleable, you can scritch her anywhere and she loves it. She is so very easily startled though and hides and acts all feral, until you press her scritch button. So, I was definitely worried...and definitely smitten.
ocicat finishes with dinner and calls and I explain what it looks like I've gotten my heart and the ranch into. He laughs at me and suggests that I am a hypocrite. I agree, but counter that it might not be hypocritical if I didn't know that I wanted a challenge. He laughs some more, and after hearing everything, agrees that bringing them both home makes some sense and that I'm crazy. True on all counts.
You must know that the monikers the kittens were bearing from their foster mom are cute, but not real cat names. So, aralon and I were already thinking of what would work. For the interim, we decided to call them Shy Girl and Bold Girl, to tide them over until they let us know what names would be best. Before we'd even left Julie's, Aralon suggested that Bold Girl, impressive acrobat that she has demonstrated herself to be, might find a good name with a Cirque du Soleil theme. I agreed, and almost immediately realized that Shy Girl might bear the name Dralion very well. Wait...the Cirque themed name was supposed to go to Bold Girl. Heh! Well, sometimes you have to go with your gut. Over the weekend, the name stuck very fast and the shy one is definitely Dralion. Ask us later for pronunciation tips.
A cautious introduction was made between Bold Girl and Maxwell. Maxwell lived up to his formal appearance and was an absolute gentleman. He was very eager, but would back away politely every time Bold Girl said "too close, need space". I stayed up way too late that evening, playing will all three of them and enticing them to all play with the rope toy simultaneously. Shared play was the ticket to getting them to bond as kittens together. I went to bed still a little worried about the bonding, but pleased that they'd been playing side by side, and thinking that it shouldn't take long. Indeed, I was right, by morning, I caught them all sleeping together, though the moment they caught sight of me they immediately split up. *grin*
Friday night, Ocicat declared that there was no way we could go forward with our house movie plans, because...KITTENS! He hadn't been around the previous evening, and so could not bear to wait to become acquainted. I'm sure everyone can understand that. The evening was spent happily playing and watching the three increasingly playing with each other and Dralion coming (a little) out of her shell to play too. By the end of the evening, Bold Girl had thoroughly demonstrated that she would proudly carry the name Ariel, named after the sprite in Shakespeare. Though I still wonder if the name shouldn't be spelled Aerial. :)
Saturday morning, "pounce o'clock" started very early. The kittens were bouncing all over the upstairs, pouncing and chasing each other, and playing up and down the cat tree. Squeeeeeeee! Adorable! There is still, occasionally, a bit of reserve between Max and the two girls, but not much, and I don't think it will last. They are definitely littermates together now and look to become even more so.
This is a sleeping Dralion:
Here is Ariel, ready for anything:
Maxwell and his new sisters have learning that they play very well together:
And at the end of the day, they cuddle well too:
