Nooo! The cute, it is too much!

Late last night, joreth arrived in town to visit my cat Liam.

Now, she might have thought she was in town for Frolicon this weekend, and I might have thought she was in town for Frolicon this weekend, but fortunately Liam was able to set us straight on that.

Liam is a benevolent overlord protector, and magnanimously consented to allow me to curl up with her when we went to bed, though he made it clear (in his unmistakeable feline way) that he had dibs.

The cat spent much of the night hugging joreth‘s hand. This morning, as I opened my eyes, I was whacked over the head with a stunning (stunning, I say!) amount of cute, cute that can drop a charging rhino in its tracks:

I’m not quite sure what the LD50 of cute is, but I’m thinking I’d best call a hazmat team to decontaminate the bedroom, because this has got to be a dangerous level of cute. You, Gentle Readers, might want to consider getting a squad to deal with your computers now as well.

Conversations With My Cat

Him: “OMG OMG so hungry food bowl is empty feed me!”
Me: (Stumbling sleepily to the kitchen) “Okay, okay.”
Him: “Faster! Faster! So very hungry!”
Me: “Wait, what? You have food!”
Him: “Do not! Starving! Starving over here!”
Me: “Your food dish is half full!”
Him: “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re referring to. Now feed me at once! Hungry!”
Me: “What is this? What do you call this, then? Because to me it looks like your dish is half full of food.”
Him: “Is not! I’m starving here! Starving, I say! Feed me, you heartless bastard!”
Me: “Okay, okay! All right, already!” (Gets out bag of cat food)
Him: “Oh boy oh boy that’s food! You’re going to feed me! Faster, insolent human! Faster!”
Me: “All right! Calm down! Here you go!”
Him: “Om nom nom nom. This is good food! It’s a good thing you fed me. I was about to starve! And it would have been on your head!”
Me: “You know, I just played a trick on you.”
Him: “What’s that you say? What are these words you are speaking to me, interrupting my breakfast?”
Me: “I just put three little bits of food in your bowl, to make you think I was filling it up.”
Him: “Have you gone mad? Clearly this is not so. Look! My bowl is half full of food!”
Me: “Exactly my point. It was half full all along! I simply pretended to fill it, and now you’re eating!”
Him: “Are you on medication? Because if you are, I don’t think it’s working. Plainly, as anyone can see, there is now food in my bowl. Now leave me, human, so that I may eat in peace!”

Update on the Franklin

Still sick.

That’s the bad news. The good news is I’m not horking up internal organs any more, and I can breathe without feeling like I’ve got bits of broken glass where they shouldn’t be. Even felt good enough yesterday to leave the apartment to go shopping and do laundry, both of which needed to be done in the worst possible way.

On the down side, it’s hard to walk from the door to the mailbox without wheezing, and all the various medications are making me feel almost as crappy as the damn bacteria. Plus I still sound like a frog being strangled at the bottom of a deep well when I try to talk. Thank God for Netflix, that’s all I can say.

Liam the kittycat has been absolutely delighted to have me home for the past three weeks, at least. Poor little guy is going to think I’ve abandoned him once I start working again. He follows me around the apartment and curls up on my lap when I crash on the couch. He’s in the habit of sitting on the edge of the tub when i shower and watching me with this expression:

Doctor’s appointment again the day after tomorrow. Probably more chest X-rays and stuff. If they don’t like what they see, the next step may be to go into the hospital for IV antibiotics. Ugh.

Coping with the Cold

It’s been obnoxiously, brutally cold1 here the past few days.

David and I shut off the heater when we leave for work, to save money on the gas bill. Liam the kittycat stays home all day and gets into trouble, usually of the “knocking stuff off of shelves and rummaging around on the counter looking for shiny balls of aluminum foil to play with” variety.

I think even he’s been feeling a bit chilly lately, though. When I got home from work yesterday and logged on to WoW, Liam went to sleep next to me under the covers, with his nose buried beneath a pillow:

Poor li’l guy.


1 “Obnoxiously cold” meaning “in the 30s and 40s.” Yeah, I’m a Florida boy. Shut up.

It’s CATURDAY!

I woke up this morning with the kitty Liam nestled next to me. The instant I was awake, so was he, making even more of a pest of himself than his usual pesty self. He promptly started crawling all over me, licking me, biting me, and generally just being cute as hell.

So, being the indulgent man I am, I not only didn’t kick him off the bed, I picked up my cell phone and started snapping pics like crazy.

Clicky here and prepare to go ‘Awww…’

Waking up

Every night, when I go to bed, the kitty Liam usully follows me and falls asleep on the pillow next to me. It’s really heart-meltingly cute, and would be even cuter if he didn’t have the habit of waking up at three o’clock in the morning and tearing around the apartment, or fighting with one of the stray cats around here through the sliding glass door onto the patio. (At least I assume that’s what they’re doing. Maybe they want to be friends, I don’t know. Regardless, they bat at each other through the glass; it’s about as noisy as a handful of marbles tossed into a blender.)

After the requisite “wake Franklin up in the middle of the night,” Liam comes back to bed and curls up on the pillow again until morning comes.

Morning brings with it sharp teeth. The cat, you see, usually wakes up before I do, and morning is his “pet me” time. He lets me know it’s “pet me” time by biting my nose until I’m awake, then biting my nose until I pet him.

Come to think of it, we have kind of a dysfunctional relationship, he and I. He badgers me into giving him attention, and I provide it.

I open my eyes each morning and see, blurry and out of focus, cat teeth right in front of my face. I can’t help but think this is the last sight of many a small prey animal throughout history, and that if I were small enough for him to eat, he would no doubt make me into an hors d’oeuvres in a heartbeat.

I keep my cell pone next to my bed, so this morning, when Liam woke me with his customary “Pet me! Pet me, hyooman, or I shall rip the nose from your face and devour it before your very eyes!” routine, I snapped some phone camera pics so you, too, can see what I go through every morning.

Notice how he grabs my face with his paws. This is so he can prevent me from moving my nose away.

His teeth and claws are very sharp. Weird, it is, that we as a species enjoy sharing our homes with small predators.