Rainy Tuesday......

Off and on rain today, mostly cloudy, extremely humid. We usually get high humidity here when it rains, and being that there are so many storms around, the humidity is just staying right where it is..... making for one bad-hair day after another. My hair looks great when I wash and dry it in the morning, and it stays looking just fine until I go either outside or out on the screen-porch. Then the humidity takes over and my hair does what it pleases. Oh well, this too shall pass.

Mickey Kitty continues to do well..... he spends each day doing what all kittens do: he eats, sleeps, plays, eats, sleeps, plays. He's been using his litter box since the first day, so that hasn't been a problem. I've been putting very little litter in his box, though.... it seems that the more I put in there, the deeper he digs. The deeper he digs, the more litter goes flying out of the box. But the porch floor is made of wood slats (like a deck) so it's easy to sweep up... just use the broom to sweep it all between the wood slats.

Rusty is still ignoring Mickey Kitty for the most part... and Mickey Kitty must know that Rusty is too old to play. We had a thunderstorm this afternoon and the kitten ran to Rusty and tried to hide underneath him. One wrong move by Rusty, and that kitten would've been as flat as a pancake, but Rusty was very nice and he didn't move a muscle.

AngelBoy is keeping Mickey Kitty at a distance.... AngelBoy is famous for giving dirty looks, and he's been doing that to the little kitten since the first day. I've had to be very careful with AngelBoy.... he's my most sensitive cat and he picks up right away when he's being pushed to the side or slighted in any way. So far, so good, except that he doesn't want to play with the kitten or let Mickey Kitty get too close. AngelBoy keeps bringing me a toy to play with, and I've had to make time for him so he won't get his pretty little whiskers out of joint.

ShadowBaby has surprised me. He has hissed at Mickey Kitty and absolutely refuses to play with him. I thought ShadowBaby would be the best with the kitten being that he's so friendly with everyone and anyone. He's being cautious with the kitten, and trying to keep the kitten in his place, which in ShadowBaby's mind is at the very bottom of the cat-totem-pole around here. ShadowBaby has also reverted back to some of his own kitten-ways. He will curl up in my arms at night and lick my fingers, which he did when he was a tiny kitten himself. I think ShadowBaby enjoyed his "baby cat" status around here, and he doesn't like it that another kitten has taken his place. This too shall pass, hopefully.

Gracie is being very gentle with Mickey Kitty. When she's outside and sees a stray adult cat, she will start to chase it, but come back quickly when we call her. Somehow, Gracie knows that the cats in her house are her cats and she treats them very well. Mickey Kitty walks right up to Gracie and put his little tiny kitty-nose right up to Gracie's face. Not a drop of fear in this little kitten.

This morning, Mickey Kitty decided to see how far he could climb, so he scaled up the screens of the back screen-porch. He's so light and his claws are so tiny that he was able to scamper up the screen as quickly as a squirrel goes up a tree. I was in the breakfast room and just happened to see him start out at the bottom, and he got nearly to the top before I got out there. He also fell to the floor before I could grab him, and he lay there stunned for a minute or two. I think the fall scared him enough to not try that again. One more reason for getting this little kitten declawed as soon as the vet says it's possible. I swear, Mickey Kitty looked like a spider as he made his way up that screen.

I'm still taking care of ML's two cats and her aquarium.... I go across the street twice a day, sometimes three times. Her cats are lonely with no one home, and they are bored out of their little cat-minds. ML has dark screens on her windows, to keep the hot sun out, plus she has both curtains and drapes on her windows. Her cats have no window of their own to look out of, which makes for unhappy, depressed cats. Take away a window from a house-cat and you've taken away their world. So there I am, playing with her cats and talking to them, plus feeding her fish twice a day. I keep trying to explain to ML's cats that they can watch the fish swimming around during the day, but they're not grasping the concept. As for the fish, I guess they don't care who is in the house as long as they get fed twice a day and the lights in their little fish-world are turned on in the morning and turned off at night.