Cute Kitty Pictures

I has them!

Allow me to introduce our new cute kitty, Saratoga. Sara for short.
As you can tell from the above picture, she has lots of white fur. So in addition to Scheherazade leaving her black cat hairs everywhere, we now have source of white hair so no matter what clothes we wear the cat hair will be evident.

In the above picture I was trying to photograph her but she was curious about the camera and came to check it out.
I gave her a little bit of milk. Don't tell the kids, as I discourage them from doing this. But they aren't here right now (Hallelujah!) and if I pick up the plate before they get home from school, no one will be the wiser.
Sara is a playful baby, and like Scheherazade likes to gnaw on electrical cords. And other things she shouldn't chew on. She's been busy this morning, but is now asleep on my shoulder. Awww!

I tried to sleep in a bit this morning, but had those disturbing dreams that I get when I'm not fully asleep nor fully awake. This morning I dreamed that we lived in a huge old house that needed lots of work and had way too much junk in it. Superman was trying to be helpful by putting away the half dozen or so old ironing boards by disassembling them. Not helpful! The kids were disobeying, I couldn't find anything, and was specifically looking for my deodorant. Then the in-laws showed up to help, and they hate being at my house. In the dream I was lying on a mattress in the family room, naked, covered by a sheet when they walked in. In reality I was lying on my bed, naked, covered by a sheet. Thankfully no one but the kitten was there. I was glad to wake up!

Here's a useful chart for those with cats. It tells me that I must stop Sara from playing with my pothos leaves. My pothos tells me I should water it, and get the damned kitten away from it already.

I discovered a way cool YouTube channel this morning. Check this out:

I love this piece of music (Beethoven's 7th symphony, 2nd movement). The animated score is fascinating to watch. At least I think so. Give it a chance. At least watch it from the 2 minute mark to the 3 minute mark. Each instrument has a different color in the animation. I find it fascinating. Double click on the graphic above to go to the YouTube channel to find lots more animated classical pieces. I'm enthralled.

I'm going to watch/listen to more pretty music and perhaps read the newspaper or something else, maybe something useful. Today the world is my oyster. Boo-ya

Scheherazade kitty update

Scheherazade is growing, as kittens are wont to do. She is an endless source of amusement. She likes to curl up on my breast/stomach while I'm on the computer, and that is so soothing! Her purr is very loud. She likes me to rub her neck. 

Samhain is our other cat. I may have mentioned him before. He's a solid black cat with short silky fur. We got him as a kitten a couple of years ago. He's just old enough to not exactly be a kitten, but still have some playful tendencies. He is far enough away from kittenhood, though, to be really annoyed by Scheherazade. And she's a mean little sister! She loves to pick at him. Sometimes she'll stick her nose in his face when he's trying to sleep, but she usually jumps on him in a full out attack. He gets her back, too. It was a bit frightening at first to watch them wrestle, as she is so small and I was afraid she'd get hurt. She starts it every time though, so I figure she deserves what she gets, and she hasn't been injured yet. She certainly does put up a fuss, though. Whenever he grabs her she hisses, growls, and bares her teeth at him. He doesn't say a thing. He's too busy fighting. 

Scheherazade makes some interesting noises. My favorite is the trill she sings when she is about to eat. It sounds like a combination meow and purr. Very cute.  This afternoon I locked her out of the bedroom so I could sleep undisturbed. When I let her back in she walked toward her food bowl but was not singing her food trill. She was meowing firmly, if that makes sense. Not loudly, exactly, but with emotion. She then turned to look at me over her shoulder and meowed directly at me. I got that message. Who knew cats could cuss?

Samhain has his spot at the foot of the bed on my side. I suspect he prefers my side because my feet aren't as big nor my legs as long as Superman's so Samhain has a little more room to sleep. He spends the mornings there when he can, and sometimes he'll sleep there at night. Scheherazade usually sleeps with us, also, though she moves around a lot. I sleep on my side, and she likes to climb on my ribs and curl up against my arm as it rests on my hip. Or she sleeps on my hip. Sometimes she's on Superman's chest. It usually works out pretty well until around 4 in the morning. That must be the catting hour or something. When she's the only one sleeping with us she'll climb on top of the headboard and knock things off the shelf onto our heads, or pounce on our fingers or our feet. If Samhain is in the room she attacks him. We woke up earlier this week to both of them having a royal wrestling match between us on the bed, and chasing each other under, then over, then back under the bed. He's bigger than she is, and if they aren't too fast or I'm not too asleep I can tell which one is jumping on my ribs. 

She helps me study.

She makes a beautiful bookend, but isn't very efficient at it.

Superman built a hutch for my desk. He also, as you can see from the picture above, sanded the old paint and varnish off the top of the desk. It actually looks nice under all that paint. 

She likes to climb on the shelf and look over the edge of the hutch.

I got many comments when we first named her about what sort of nickname she'd end up with. Well, she's been around for nearly four months and rarely is she called Scheherazade. Superman was the first one to come up with a good nickname for her. She's small and fuzzy and black, and when she hunkers down on the floor lying in wait to attack the Toes of Doom she looks like a smudge on the floor. So he calls her Smudge. Especially when it's dark she really does look like a spot of something smeared on the floor, though less so now that she's getting bigger. 

I frequently refer to her as the small cat, and Samhain as the big kitty. 

Twitch is our primary name-giver. He has a gift for it, actually. He named our (late) dog Ruby. He has named almost all the cats who have ever wandered into our lives. He is particularly fond of cats, and uses many pet names for our two. I've been surreptitiously making a list of the different things he calls Scheherazade. You know "Scheherazade" isn't one of them! I present to you The Names of the Cat:

kitty-boo

mao-mao

mew-mew

adorable

fuzzy

fuzzy-butt

ki' ki'

pookums

boo

floof-butt

goof

(and my favorites)

Smudgemous

ScheheraSmudge 

With the light of the camera's flash it is easy to see the black cat on the black seat of the black chair. 

My chair is between the desk and a rather dark corner of the room, and without a spotlight on the chair it's difficult to tell if there's an extra cat-cushion on it. The silly kitten doesn't voluntarily move, even when it becomes apparent that she is in danger of being squished. 

She's giving me "the look"

Even fuzzier out of focus. She likes to crawl into nooks like this shelf beside my desk. 

High is good. Her balance here is noteworthy.

Basket Kitty!!

She was not amused that my photography interrupted her nap.

And that's my kitten update. I will try to update more frequently so as not to have so much to cover in one post next time.