A tiny house guest...

We have Corey's kitten (Sadie) here for the week. Corey had to go out of town and she asked me if I would kitty-sit for her baby cat.  I had truly forgotten just how tiny and fragile a kitten can be. Our own Sweet Pea looks like a cat on steroids next to teeny-tiny Sadie. 

It has been a logistical nightmare trying to keep Sadie safe here, being that our Savannah thinks the kitten is some sort of toy that her 75-pound self can play with at will.  Savannah plays with Sweet Pea as if that cat is a strong little puppy, and Sweet Pea is smart enough to smack Savannah on her nose when she gets too rough. However, with Sadie being so small, she couldn't even reach Savannah's nose if she were standing on a kitten-sized ladder. So the key is to keep Savannah on a short leash when she is in the TV room with Sadie and Sweet Pea.

I've been keeping the two cats in the TV room, with the door closed. Savannah is missing her naps on the sofa in there, and Sweet Pea misses his window-perch in the kitchen and his favorite chair in the breakfast room.  This afternoon, I put Sadie in the TV room with the door closed, and brought Savannah and Sweet Pea into the kitchen and breakfast room. Savannah settled down on her blanket, but within minutes (after looking out the kitchen window to see if anything interesting was happening out on the porch) Sweet Pea was meowing by the TV room door, wanting to go back in there with Sadie.

Corey's allergies are still bothering her, and I've suggested a few solutions... the most important one has already been taken care of. The litter in Sadie's litter-box was horrible... it smelled like an overdose of air-freshener that had gone rancid... and that's just the odor of the clean litter, which was so strong that three-pound Sadie smelled just like the litter.  I dumped all of that out, washed Sadie's litter-box, and re-filled it with the light-weight Tidy Cat litter that I use for Sweet Pea. Now Sadie smells like a kitten, not a box of litter.

In all the years we've known Corey, she has come to our homes and played with the cats we've had... Mickey used to sit on her head and play with her hair, ShadowBaby untied the laces of Corey's sneakers, Rusty sat on her lap and looked at Corey upside-down, and AngelBoy smirked from a distance and Corey and I always thought that my blue-eyed cat was telling Corey that he was the number-one child of the household, not her.

Sadie is the first cat Corey has adopted, and she quickly became Sadie's one and only person... they play together, eat together, sleep together.... maybe just too much togetherness for Corey and her allergies. I am hoping that the change in the brand of litter, and not allowing Sadie to sleep on the same pillow, will somehow alleviate the allergy symptoms when she gets back from her out-of-town trip.

We really don't need a second cat now.... the relationship between Savannah and Sweet Pea is perfect... neither one wants to give up their status here and share the TV room, or be banned from the kitchen and breakfast room so Sadie won't be in solitary confinement behind a closed door.

Sadie will be here for the week... I am hoping that Corey misses this kitten so much that she drives up here as soon as she gets off the plane in Houston.... before I get too attached to this cute little blue-eyed kitten.