I have been remiss about blogging here, and i apologize. It seems (e:zobar) has been amusing enough for both of us, however.

Mostly, it's just struck me that i ought to link to the zillion photos of the kitten I've taken lately.
I'd upload some "exclusives" here but I don't have the photos on this computer.

I didn't even explain the kitty's name in detail!

She is Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero, more commonly known as Chita Rivera. Named, of course, for the famous Broadway dancer, who despite being apparently straight herself, is an icon in the gay community. Chita-the-cat has a tentative appointment to get her photo taken with Artvoice's theater/celebrity duo, who are Like Way So Into the real Chita.


Anyway.

Chita Rivera is the world's best kitten. She has been medically diagnosed as The Cutest Kitten Ever on two separate occasions by the vet. She grew from 2.5 pounds to 3.75 pounds in 3 weeks. She also, incidentally, tested negative for feline lukemia.

She has a Fabulous purple sparkly collar now as well. She has learned not to scratch skin with her claws, and now only draws blood when frightened or distracted.
She is no longer quite totally Fearless, but more because it amuses her to be scared than anything else.
She knows her name, or at least the Chita part of it if it's said loudly. She also knows "treat" and "kitty!"
She knows to look guilty if I catch her climbing the screen.

I want to teach her more tricks, and things-- she's more receptive to that sort of thing than the average cat, probably because she's a solo animal and therefore is more keyed-in to human behavior than most. She also is just plain smart, though. She does many sophisticated things, and is an absolute angel at the vet's office.
(When he was listening to her heartbeat, she was playing with the tube of the stethoscope. When he was bunching up the scruff of her neck to give her a shot, she was purring. She didn't even really notice the needle.)

She's still got a few more months until we've got to take her to get eviscerated. On the one hand, I don't want to put her through going into heat. But on the other hand, I don't want to get her guts ripped out. I'm terribly conflicted. But she's such an awesome kitty, I'm sure she'll deal with whatever happens.

I keep meaning to write more about her but life, as ever, is crazy. Still and all, craziness is easier to cope with when there's someone warm, fuzzy, and purring on your head.

So, all that said, photos, as promised:



That's the beginning of the Flickr photostream. If you just click to the next-and-next ones, there are like 30 of them. There are some previous ones, too, if I didn't link to those here-- I am sorry, I just always forget to link to them from here.

She doesn't have a name yet, but I just abducted one of (e:leetee)'s neighbor's kittens. I stole the gray one from her post.
We carried her out to the car in a shoebox, which upset her deeply. I gave her my finger to gnaw on through one of the holes in the box, but it wasn't much comfort. So once we were in the car I let her out.

While (e:zobar) went into Wegmans to get a litterbox and some kitten chow, I let her roam around the car. She climbed up on my headrest, leapt around the back seat, climbed up into the rear windshield ledge and stalked the guy collecting shopping carts, and then abruptly remembered I was there and came flying back to chew on my nose.

We got her home and let her explore the house. After she ravenously devoured like, five kibbles of kitten chow, she ignored the food and wandered around.
Then I played with her with a cat toy for about half an hour. I finally wedged it between my mattress and box spring so the string part would hang down. It took her fifteen minutes to bust it apart and carry the feathery fur-mouse away to gnaw on it.

Now Z has gone to bed, and I am in my bed, and she is wandering around the house meowing. I called her and she came racing into the bedroom, took a flying leap, and made it up onto the bed, where she briefly gave me lovies, but then leapt off to explore the house again.

Oop, she's back. She's climbing on my head and shoulders and down my back, purring like a small electric motor, the function of which is to produce cute.

There are four more kittens. They are all this cute. See (e:leetee)'s post for more details.



Update: Aw jeez, she keeps running across the room and smacking into the mirror. I think she's looking for the other kittens. :( I don't have room for that many cats in this house!

I have all these awesome photos of Chita Rivera the Obscenely Cute Kitten on my camera and the cord for it is... somewhere in the house... and so I haven't posted anything here in ages because I keep being like no no, I'll get the photos off the camera and then I'll post.
No, I'll post now, and then I'll post again later when I get the photos, and you'll see by the length of time between how long it's been since I last posted, and understand how friggin' slow I am at this crap.

I will update that my BFF Ursula flew in from London on Tues. night and left yesterday morning, and so while she was here to be of assistance, I took Chita to the vet for her first appointment. We went in on Friday morning, and while Chita had been utterly fearless in the car three weeks ago when we got her, she yowled most of the way there this time. (We went to the new vet on Kenmore Ave, so it only took two minutes to get there...)
Inside, there were two waiting rooms, and one had a large agitated giant poodle in it making a racket, and the other had a quiet sweet-looking small yellow lab, so we went in with the yellow lab. Chita insisted on getting down to explore, including going right over to the poor dog, whose owner had her under pretty good control. Greta was her name, and she sniffed Chita eagerly but was well-behaved and did not try to get closer-- we had to pick Chita up because she was trying to jump over to be nose-to-nose with the dog, and it just didn't seem fair to the poor dog.
Once Greta went in for her check-up, we let Chita loose and she roamed around the whole place. She asked to be let out into the hallway. She ate a kitty treat. She played with the mousie we brought her from home. Then she discovered the high counter with the receptionist on the far side, and wanted badly to be allowed to go into the receptionist's space, but we didn't let her because we are awful people. (The receptionist cooed over how cute she was, of course.)

When we went into the exam room, that dang giant poodle was in the hallway flipping out. So Chita arrived for her examination with her tail puffed out. The vet tech was impressed-- she looked like a squirrel. But she soon settled down and insisted on exploring the exam room, and stuck her head straight into the container they had of dog biscuits.

She weighed 2 and a half pounds, and the vet tech in consultation with the vet decided she was precisely twelve weeks old. Which means my sister Fiona wins-- from the photos <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonlady7/733998650/">I posted on Flickr two weeks ago</a>, she estimated that Chita was 10 weeks old.

The vet tech said she was probably the cutest kitten ever, and left, to be replaced by the vet, a big soft-spoken bear of a man who picked Chita up and cradled her like an infant to listen to her heart and lungs for a good two or three minutes. At first Chita was content to lie there, paws in the air, but after a while she got bored and started playing with the tube of the stethoscope.

The vet pronounced her absolutely perfectly healthy except for a minor case of roundworms.

What gets me is that unlike many stray kittens, she was so obviously raised well. When we got her, she had obviously been well-socialized, and had never been malnourished or abused. She already was good with people and other cats, and even the worms and fleas were only mild-- I've seen so much worse, actually in every kitten we've ever had. So someone raised her lovingly to the perfect age for a kitten to be weaned and adopted, and then dumped her by the side of a road! It seems so backwards. Of course it's better than the usual, when they're left to die far too young to survive on their own, but still.

So she's perfect-- she even tests negative for feline Lukemia, which was an expensive test (it was like $30) but I just thought that it was best to be absolutely sure. You can give a cat a pretty good life for a while with various of those terminal cat diseases, if it's an indoor solo cat, but you have to know about it.

So we took our absolutely perfect kitten home, and didn't let Ursula put her into her suitcase and take her home. But I've promised to regularly post photos of her.
Starting now with the webcam ones already on the computer. ;)



Kisses!

a while ago


Taken just now over my shoulder.

The setting: The car, windows down, on a beautiful soft night after the rain has swept the day's muggy heat away. On the way home from a punishing roller derby practice of brutal scrimmaging and exhausting endurance drills, THE ROLLERGIRL is driving, one arm out the window, while THE BOYFRIEND sits in the passenger's seat cueing up music on the iPod.

RG: What a beautiful night.
BF: Mm.
RG: (coyly) Hey, you know, we don't have to go straight home.
BF: Hm?
RG: We could, you know, pull over on that dark street we used to visit... you know... enjoy the evening.
BF: Why?
RG: You know. Make out a little.
BF: No thanks. You smell kinda bad.



Honest-to-God true story from tonight.

(I just read "Rollergirl: Totally True Tales From the Track" because my mom heard about it on NPR and bought it for me. It's good, but my life is just so much more glamorous than that girl's. I need to be the one writing a tell-all memoir.)

Missing Image ;(

That's a real bruise on Sissy's ass. That's also her real hair.
OK, I uploaded that one twice and it won't show up, so if y'all want to see Sissy's bruised ass (which is bruised again) you'll have to come to the bout THIS SATURDAY NIGHT.



Just a couple teaser pictures for you. Lower photo by Ron Douglas

Photos I took of her the day before yesterday, when it was 90 degrees and the only decent thing to do was pass the hell out.

This morning:


She likes the boob shelf. Usually the boob shelf is a little... er, higher, but I was wearing one of those built-in-shelf-bra camisoles and the shelf bra wasn't really doing much for the boob shelf. But that's really where she climbs up to sit.
She was also helping me use my computer.




I took some pictures of her sitting on the keyboard with my big camera, but I haven't downloaded them yet.

She is a marvelous cat, content to amuse herself when we are elsewhere or busy, but endearingly eager for attention when we're willing to provide it. She wanders around the house talking to herself, and purrs almost constantly. She's a shameless food-stealer, and at first people-mealtimes were an ordeal, but then I realized that her Dingle Mouse cat toy was distracting enough that she'd happily play with it through an entire supper and not bother us once, as long as someone jiggled the mouse once in a while.

She also has learned to sleep when we do, which is really important in this household. She no longer insists on arising with the sun, but happily lies on your face/neck/arm/chest until you feel like getting out of bed. She doesn't even claw you.

I haven't gotten an appointment with a vet yet because I'm lazy. But I will-- I'm going to try the one on Kenmore Ave because they're close. Z's mom takes her geriatric cat to the Small Animal Hospital on S. Elmwood, but says the Kenmore Ave one is affiliated with them and so is probably worth a shot. Can't beat the commute, at least.

Not that the little girl won't ride in the car-- she doesn't mind cars at all. She doesn't mind much. I don't think anything fazes her.

She's had one trauma so far. She was playing around the kitchen chairs while (e:zobar) was chopping veggies for dinner. Our kitchen chairs are folding chairs, I admit-- we're sort of still not very sophisticated in our furniture. She had been jumping up and down off one of the chairs in her mad scramble to thoroughly persecute Dingle Mouse. Suddenly there was a mad scrabbling. I assumed she had missed her footing while trying to jump up onto one of the chairs. So I turned, and saw her trying to scramble up. She squeaked in distress, so I put my hand under her backside to give her a boost. She squeaked louder, turning it into a shriek, and I realized that one of her front paws was under the chair seat.
I quickly realized it was stuck, so I stopped lifting her and she stopped shrieking. She struggled to get away but I clamped my hand around her and held her while I felt with my other hand to see where she was stuck. One of her toes, claw extended, was wedged between two parts of the folding chair.
I worked it free and she immediately began to purr.
I looked her toe all over and it seemed OK, so I put her down and she ran nimbly away. I guess it didn't hurt that much.

I just thought it was so funny how fast she started purring. She was like, "Ok! All better! Let me go get that mouse!"

Ahh well. In closure, I have to link to this:


It's so true. I'm a babbling idiot.