On Monday afternoon I came from Costco with this box and tossed it down on the floor, figuring I'd let the cats play with it a bit before I took it out to the recycling bin. It's now Thursday and I haven't had the heart to take it out yet because Franklin has developed such an attachment to it.

If Daisy dares go in, he kicks her out. He gets in, scratches at the corners, chews a bit on it, then settles in. It's quite a perfect fit - made for him, really. How can I be so cruel as to take it away?

The way both of them are moping around the house today, staring out the window at the gray skies and the falling rain, I suspect a new disease has overtaken the household: Kitty Seasonal Affective Disorder.

I've been playing around with the video function on my new camera... if only I could get my editing software to work as well.

At any rate, here's some video of the kids exploring the balcony. Unedited, but it's a chance to see them in action. Daisy especially seems to enjoy time outside on the balcony. She scares the bejesus out of me by hopping up on the railing (three stories up) and fearlessly wandering around. But she seems to know quite well that she's dangerously high because when I grab onto her to pull her down, she immediately takes a death grip on the railing!

It's been a while since I had to sentence either cat to any time in kitty jail (aka the powder room just off the kitchen) but tonight there was no way I could get the pork loin in the oven without a little feline-free time. One or the other of them would take advantage of the fact that my hands were covered with a garlic rub and olive oil (thus making me reluctant to pick them up and hoist them off the counters like I normally do) to come sniffing around the pan (pre-oiled) and the pork. I finally rinsed my hands off, grabbed 'em both and shut the door for the three minutes I needed to finish the prep.

It's been a while since they've both been this mischievous at dinner time - oh, they'll whine a bit and hope for a treat, but usually they'll lose interest. Early on, though, Franklin was a handful at dinnertime and often had to spend time in jail because he considered all food in the house his, if only he could get to it.

Daisy's a problem if I eat on the couch - for some reason she considers that an invitation to stick her nose into whatever I'm eating; she likes to get up on the dinner table, too, but if I put her down once or twice she generally gets the message and stays away from the food.

Since it's such a spectacular spring day here in Seattle, I found the harness that Franklin wore for his trip home from California. After being shocked at how tiny he once was, I extended it out to its maximum size and slipped it over his head to see if it would fit. It did fit him comfortably, so I left it on him to see how he'd react. He wriggled around a bit but seemed not to mind it too much, so I got out the leash and let him play with the leash a bit, then attached it to the harness and carried him outside.

Set him down and let him explore a bit. He seemed most interested in sniffing at (but, fortunately, not eating) all the plants in the garden. The many new and interesting noises (including a couple of dogs), sights (plants! concrete! dirt!), and smells (plants! more plants!) seemed to set all his senses on overdrive. We didn't stay out too long, as I could tell that the outside world was a bit overstimulating, but I think we'll get out and about from time to time.

Came back in and put the harness back to a smaller size and slipped it over Daisy's head, but given how agitated it made her and how angry she was at me, I took it right back off and decided we'd try again another day. Maybe she needs to warm up to the idea of being an outdoor explorer. For now, she wants nothing to do with the harness, and she's not the best at staying calm being carried around in the house, so we definitely won't try that outside, either.

Trying to capture the difference in size between Franklin and Daisy has been difficult at best. This shot taken a few days ago comes close, but still, Daisy only looks to be about 1/2 Franklin's size, when in reality, she's about 1/3 his size. His growth rate (finally!) seems to be slowing a bit; for the last few months he was putting on about two pounds a month; now it's down to about a pound a month.

And he's not at all a chunky cat; quite the contrary - he just seems to get taller and sleeker overall every time I turn around.

I like this photo taken the same day - it reminds me that even at 13 lbs, he's still a kitten and my little boy.







And then there's Daisy, who is a very grown-up little lady in a kitten-size package. To engage her in play is more of a challenge but when she does find something she likes (shoelaces are a favorite), don't take it away or you'll feel her wrath. But mostly she's content to watch at the window and I love to see that little face when I look up from the garage.

I don't have kids, but I find myself wondering if catproofing isn't actually harder than babyproofing. Let's not fool ourselves here. There's nothing in catproofing that's about the cat.

Babyproofing is first and foremost about the health and safety of the baby. Of secondary importance is protecting your stuff from damage. Catproofing on the other hand, has little to do with protecting the cat from itself. It's almost all about the stuff. Certainly some of it is about keeping the cat safe (both of the cats, for example, seem to think that the liquid dishwasher soap looks delicious, and want to taste it every time I dispense it into the dishwasher. I have to be very careful to close the door quickly before they get their faces up into it!), but mostly it's about preventing destruction.

Nearly every day, I discover a failure in my ability to anticipate the creativity of my cats, and a failure to consider what they might find interesting. This morning I set out my usual set of vitamins and supplements and went about fixing breakfast, only to find Franklin sniffing at them. I thought he'd even managed to get one in his mouth, but fortunately he'd only licked at the multi-vitamin before I pushed his head away from them. Of all of them, the only one I probably wouldn't have worried much about is the fish oil ... the rest likely would have warranted at least a call to the vet to see how much concern I needed.

Not long after, I found him pushing something around on the floor. Further investigation revealed that he had pried loose the hand-hold from one of my living room windows that slides open. Actually, he's pried loose both of them; I just have yet to crawl under the couches to find the other one yet.

Without Franklin to discover this for me, I wasn't even aware that these could be pried loose, let alone that one would want to.

What have your cats discovered for you?

One of my favorite blogs is the blog formerly known as What Jeff Killed. The authors recently renamed it Jeff the Giant Orange Cat, as Jeff, formerly an outdoor cat, has been adopted by his former neighbors and has softened in his retirement. Apparently Jeff still makes a kill now and again.

I came home from a trip recently, arriving late at night, wanting little more than to say hi to the furballs and crawl into bed as it was well past my bedtime. However, I'd inadvertently allowed a large fly into the house. I hadn't even noticed it but I soon noticed strange behavior in the cats. Franklin jumped up on the kitchen counter and started climbing the walls above the counter. Daisy's eyes were darting all over, and she too was climbing as high as she could, tracking something with an intensity I'd never quite seen.

Finally, I, too, had seen The Fly. So here we were, all three of us, at this wee hour of the morning, chasing a single fly around the house. The two of them were utterly and completely convinced of their ability to kill it, despite the fly's ability to remain stubbornly out of their reach by tracking from light fixture to light fixture across the ceiling. Every so often he'd tempt them by creeping down the wall a bit to just within reach of a leaping cat.

I could see that there was really only one of us capable of killing the fly, and if I wanted a good night's rest without destruction of the house, it was going to have to be me. Armed with a rolled up magazine, I finally did manage to swat him into submission.

It was a truly wonderful thing, though, to see the hunting instinct in these two. Oh sure, they'd gone after their toy mice and foil balls and dangly toys, but to see them track this buzzing live creature, and truly believe that, given enough time, they would destroy it, was inspiring to me. If I'd had a bit more patience and a bit more willingness to risk destruction of property, it might have been fun to let them try.

How am I supposed to get any work done? In this "working from home" time period, the furballs make me feel guilty when I go into the office and shut the door. Daisy, for the most part, seems to accept a closed door, but sometimes she'll sit outside it and meow at the top of her tiny little lungs.

Franklin, for his part, finds closed doors unacceptable. He has not figured out how to address the door itself, but he will attempt to attack its boundaries. Paws are slipped underneath it. If that doesn't do anything, the carpet surrounding it will be attacked with an intensity of purpose, as if somehow by pulling out each fiber he will eventually tunnel beneath said closed door.

So instead of highly productive work behind the closed door, I find myself doing moderately productive work on the couch, with a tiny cat on my arm, and a large cat on my legs. Occasionally, large cat will try to take up residence on my arm as well, but both parties will usually realize that is not a sustainable situation for 12+ pounds of kitty.

Home late last night after six days away, equal to the longest trip I've taken so far. My normal cat sitter is incredibly busy launching a new business, so I enlisted a friend who lives nearby, who was able to stop by with his laptop and spend time with the kittens for a few hours a day.

I thought I detected a bit of a grudge from Franklin when I first came in. He didn't do his usual dramatic flop on the floor, demanding belly rubs and love. He seemed a bit out of sorts and not sure quite what to do with me. But still, there he was clawing at the window of the front door, excited as ever to see me (or is it just someone) coming in.

But after his usual frenzied exploration of the bedroom, he settled in happily at my feet for a night of happy sleep between my legs. With Daisy purring up by my shoulders, all was right in the house again.