Tulip Kitty

Posting for our friend Janet. If you recognize this cat, please help us locate her owner. Thank you!

Here’s a video of the Tulip and Moo showing off their ball-playing skills. This is one of their favorite pass times.

I came home to find Mini Tiger in the pooper. I guess the competition for the litterbox is pretty stiff these days. At least he’s potty trained.

Since I know someone will ask: Tulip likes to play with Mini Tiger by flinging him up in the air and trying to catch him. She was doing this in the bathroom when I left the house. I guess she flung him in there and didn’t bother to rescue him. Better the clean litterbox than the toilet I suppose.

Hello, all.  I finally have a break in my schedule to write a decent update on the kitties.  There are so many things to talk about that I don’t know where to begin.

• I guess I should start off by saying that I’ve spent a LOT of time working with Tulip over the past few months.  Tu is a funny character.  There’s a big, soft heart in there.  It’s just surrounded by napalm and razor wire.  In other words, she has a lot of trust issues.  I’ve been working on this mostly by handling her.  At least twice a day I scoop her up and sling her over my neck/shoulder, something we’ve come to call “tigey scarf”.  At first she’d squirm and resist.  I’d talk to her, pet her, and try to comfort her.  If she struggled too much I’d put her down.  I wanted her to see that she had some control.  Now she appears to look forward to it.  Sometimes she comes to my feet and waits for me to pick her up.  Sometimes I’ll lean back in my office chair and sling her across my neck.  She now sits there and purs, sometimes up to 5 or 10 minutes before she asks to get down.  It’s wonderful.
• I think because of the tigey scarf game, she has come a long way.  If I sit on the couch and watch the morning news while I drink my coffee, she’ll often join me.  She invites herself up onto my lap and kneads at the blanket like Moo does.
• Speaking of Moo, Tulip spends a lot of time observing her behavior and imitating it.  She sees that Moo gets a lot of attention when she comes up on the couch while we’re there.  If Tu wants attention, she comes up now too.
• Moo has a habit of carrying her toys around in her mouth and howling at the top of her lungs to let us know she’s “caught” something.  Tu has just started carrying her Mini Tiger around and doing the same thing.  I’m hoping to catch this on video at some point because it’s seriously cute.
• Tu has a kitty bed on top of my desk.  There’s a chair to the left of the bed.  She hops up onto the chair and up again into the kitty bed.  I mostly leave her alone when she gets in there, but I talk to her a lot.  Sometimes I stick my face right in hers.  She usually smells me then licks my face.  If she falls asleep in there, I pull the bed closer to me and rest my hand on her or pet her head.  She’s now used to that.  If she doesn’t feel like being petted, she gives me some warning first by making the pouty face instead of just biting me.
• On Christmas eve, Eve’s parents came over and spent the night at our house.  This was the first sleep-over for the kitties.  Moo is always up in everybody’s business, and this evening was no different.  However, Tu was also joining in the fun.  She walked around the house sniffing everyone.  I think everyone got to pet her at some point.  While Eve and Mom and Dad were working at my desk in the office, Tulip was right up there in the pile of paperwork helping out.  I couldn’t believe it.  She hung around with us most of the day.  When she felt like some alone time, she went to the bedroom and hopped up on the bed for a nap.
• The slowest behavior to change is her interaction with Moo.  Tulip loves to play, and loves to chase.  Of course, Moo is her favorite toy.  Moo is less enthusiastic about this idea, but will humor her on occasion.  Sometimes they’ll scamper back and forth after each other.  They play well together with toys.  I’ll take turns rolling rattle balls down the hallway for them.  They dart out from their hiding places and chase the balls together.  Too cute.
• Moo and Tu are still working on relaxation time together.  Moo is always the first one to hit the pile of blankets on the couch in the evenings.  Tulip often comes over and expresses interest in snuggle time too.  But she shys away when she discovers that Moo is there.  I’ll usually pick Tulip up, plop her down right next to Moo, then hold onto her and pet her until she settles down.  Most of the time she’ll go to sleep there right next to Moo.  Moo usually tries to ignore her, although you can see that she isn’t happy about Tulip being there.  Moo distrusts Tu because Tu punks her all the time.  Tu is afraid of getting close to Moo because she gets scolded for punking her all the time.  I’m hoping that eventually they’ll both realize that playing nice is OK.

They’re an adventure to say the least.  But we really love them both.  I’m so grateful to have them, and really thrilled that they’re willing to open their hearts to us.

In addition to the loot that Janet sent them, the Moos and Tus each received some new toys from Santa.  Tulip was happy to discover that Santa came instead of Krampus.

Here’s Tu and Grandma playing with some new Christmas toys.

Moo was quite a bit less impressed with the Roomba we got. “Mama, I think Krampus left this for Tulip.”

Wishing you all a safe and Merry Christmas!

The girls received a package of Christmas gifts from Auntie Janet. Thank you so much, Janet!  Here they are enjoying some catnip and their new toys:

As it turns out I recently won an HD Flip camera, so there will likely be lots of videos in the future. I have a fair amount of video already from this play session. I’m planning on splitting it up into snippets of the funny/cute stuff so it doesn’t get too boring. More to come!

Moo Moo hiding under the chair. Or so she thinks.

Tigers. Serious business.

Moo has a small taste of Thanksgiving turkey.  Spoiled girl!

I found this scene on Sunday morning.  Moo is curled up under the blankets and resting her head on a fleece camping pillow.  In the background is Eve who has been forced out of her side of the bed by the Moo Head.

I wonder what Moo’s sleep number is?

Actually, Tu, I think she called it a Moo’s pad.