A pair of fuzzy sisters

Back in August Michael and I inherited a kitten. She had been a stray who was adopted by Michael’s friend Ellen, but Ellen was killed in a car accident about a month later. Ellen’s husband did not want to keep the kitten; they already had three cats as it was, and this one reminded him so strongly of Ellen that it upset him to look at her. Michael and I had been in the market for a cat anyway, so we happily took it off his hands. Ellen had named her Smoke. We re-named her Aria.

When we first got her, Aria was tiny enough to squeeze under closed doors. Now she’s, I believe, around eight or nine months old and has graduated from “tiny” to “small.” Michael says she’ll always be small, because she has little paws and he says the size of the paws are a good indicator of the size of the cat. Carmen, our other cat, is huge — around fourteen pounds. Aria weighs five.

Anyway, those two get along great. They groom each other, sleep side by side, chase each other around the house, wrestle, and sometimes fight, just like sisters should. Michael and I really lucked out, I think. We have such sweet, friendly, cuddly cats, when so many cats are standoffish, and they get along so well, when often cats don’t get along with each other. Plus, both of them are absolutely beautiful. Carmen’s fur is so floofy and with beautiful coloring and Aria’s fur is so sleek and shiny and both have big bright eyes. In my totally unbiased opinion they are the most gorgeous cats on God’s green earth.

I took a bunch of pictures of them both with my phone just now and thought I’d share some of them here:

 

Back in town, if not back in business yet

I have been reunited with Orville. My car is still in the shop and in fact I’ve had no news of it since last Friday, and the “news” I got then was that they had made no progress. Mom drove me back to Michael’s.

This August has been a very hard month for me and mine. It’s not just my car accident. The accident is small stuff. And it’s not just my nephew either. (He’s in brain rehab now and doing as well as you might expect.) Other things have been going on that I don’t think I should talk about in public, and certainly not on this blog.

Now I’ve got to sort through the mountain of work that has accumulated in my absence. I hope to get something up tonight.

In the good news department, the new kitten, Aria, is getting on quite well with our other cat, Carmen. They’re playing with each other now, doing wrestling and fake-biting and chasing each other and stuff. Aria is a very active kitten who’s always up to something. At least the incredibly expensive three-story carpet-covered cat tower is finally getting some use. Carmen mostly ignored it, but Aria loves to climb all the way up to the top.

Feeling a bit better now

I think I’ve started to get used to the new meds because I’m almost back to normal. Dad and I are going on a day trip to Michigan tomorrow, then I have to be in Ohio to watch Mom’s cat for the weekend while she’s on a camping trip. (Not sure if she has internet access or not.) When that is all done, God willing, I shall resume updating and answering my emails and posting some important stuff on this blog. I miss it very much but I was in no condition to do it before.

In the meantime, here is our new kitten, Aria:

Black cats don’t photograph very well and it was hard to get a good one for her. But I think this turned out well enough. She’s a very rambunctious critter and likes to go streaking from one end of the house to the other for no reason at all, and play Trampoline on the bed while Mommy and Daddy are trying to sleep. Aria and our other cat, Carmen, are still warming up to each other. It’s got to the point now where they will play together a bit, but if either one realizes we humans are watching, they’ll start hissing at each other. Knock it off, you two, you’re not fooling anyone.

In other news

I visited my nephew in the hospital today, for the first time since the day of the accident. Frankly, I kind of wish I hadn’t, because what I saw was very concerning. He looked awful and he didn’t really acknowledge my presence. He was tossing restlessly on the bed, but didn’t move his left arm or leg at all, and his mother said he couldn’t see well on his left side — which may be why he didn’t acknowledge me, since I was sitting on his left side.

The important thing is he’s still alive. He’s incredibly lucky; he’s doing as well as a person can be in his situation. I keep telling myself that. But it was distressing to see him flat on his back and looking so terrible.

I didn’t stay long; a gaggle of his friends showed up and it got pretty crowded. Once he gets out of the hospital they’ll begin rehab.

And Michael and I are going to be getting a new kitten. We already have a much-loved cat, Carmen, but we had been in the process of maybe thinking of getting her a kitty companion for quite awhile. Remember Michael’s friend Ellen who died? Well, Ellen and her husband Ron had gotten a kitten shortly before her accident and now her husband doesn’t want it anymore. He can’t stand to look at it because it reminds him of Ellen. It’s just the kind of cat we were in the market for: it’s female, it’s black (I wanted a black cat because they’re less adoptable than other cats due to the superstition, and Michael wants one because his first-ever cat was black and he has a soft spot for black cats) and it qualifies as a rescue cat because it needs a new home. We’ll get supplies and kitten-proof the house and then collect the kitten in the coming week. Ron has agreed to pay for the last of its shots, and the neutering.

The kitten is ten weeks old. We have decided to call it Aria. Michael wanted a name associated with Ohio State University — Carmen is named after Carmen Ohio, the OSU song — and I suggested Violet, after Violet Meek, the former dean of Ohio State’s Lima campus. Michael didn’t like that name and suggested Brutus, after Brutus Buckeye, the mascot. I said Brutus was completely unacceptable for a female cat. We decided Aria would be a good name, though, because it goes well with Carmen. I mean, Carmen is a song, and an aria is a type of song, so…

When Aria arrives I’m sure I’ll post loads of adorable pictures of her.