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A few weeks ago, our neighbors' cat had four kittens. (The neighbors in question are our friends Tiff and Beau; Tiff and Cliff have been friends for rather a long time. They've both changed personas, but their original SCA personas were brother and sister.)
Cliff is violently allergic to cats; he can't be in Tiff and Beau's apartment (they have three adult cats plus the kittens, and an assortment of ferrets, I'm not sure how many) for more than 10-15 minutes without his eyes starting to water and without beginning to have trouble breathing. He has a dog (Labrador/Staffordshire Bull Terrier cross, looks like a smallish yellow Labrador) named CC, who is usually pretty sweet but can be a pain in the neck sometimes.
I am mildly allergic to dogs; I just get a bit of nasal congestion and runny eyes. I also just plain like cats better than dogs; I'd rather deal with a litter box than have to walk a dog in all weathers. I'm not a dog hater, before anyone jumps my case. I just find cats easier to take care of than dogs, and with the mild allergy, I'm better off with cats for pets than dogs.
I have been staying at my parents' house rather a lot of late, for a number of reasons. For one thing, my kid stays with my parents for financial reasons, so if I stay at the house, I can hang out with her. For another, Cliff's roommate keeps very peculiar hours, and I was having a very hard time sleeping because of him moving around and making noise while I was trying to sleep. For yet another, the apartment is messy and quite dirty, and that causes some anxiety for me; I'm a bit of a clean freak. I'm not necessarily a neat freak; I have a fair tolerance for clutter. But it can't be dirty. The floors have to be cleaned, the house needs to smell clean (i.e. no garbage smell, no strong animal smell if pets are kept indoors, no funk from nasty sweaty laundry), and so forth. That apartment is not in the greatest part of town, and I think that prior tenants probably didn't take such wonderful care of it. The toilet is permanently stained (and not from rusty water), and there is dog hair everywhere. Yuk.
But Cliff has booted the roomie out effective May 1; he's tired of the screwy hours because it interferes with his sleep too, and he NEEDS his sleep. (He's a paramedic, and his schedule is 24 hours on duty, 48 hours off.) There are also some other issues that have caused Cliff to decide to boot the roomie out, but I'm not getting into all that here.
When the roommate leaves, Cliff is going to take over his bedroom, which has its own air conditioner and a door that actually closes properly (unlike Cliff's current bedroom). He's also going to give the house a good thorough cleaning (and cleansing with a burning sage bundle, but that's all him. I'm not quite that mystical). (Cleaning house will be easier once the roomie and his furniture are gone; there's WAY too much stuff in that apartment as it stands now.)
This weekend, Cliff told me that once all that is taken care of, I can adopt one of the kittens.
The one I want was born last; it's a dark orange tabby (though not quite a red tabby), and I just like it. It's too young yet to be able to tell whether it's male or female, so it's being called "Late" for now because it was born last and about half an hour after the rest of the litter. (I attended the kitten birth, and we had thought that Mama Cat was only going to have three kittens, because she seemed to be done. We got up to get the pics off my digicam and onto the computer, and when we came back, there was the kitten I want.)
( Here is the kitten, just after birth, with its dad helping to clean it )
I'm kind of torn about it though; it's really sweet of Cliff to let me have the kitten in the apartment, because of his allergies. (He has said that as long as the cat stays out of the bedroom, he should be okay. I asked if we could make the bedroom an animal-free zone in general, since I'm allergic to dogs and CC hasn't ever been allowed in that room anyway, because the roomie is also allergic to dogs, on about the same level as my allergy. Cliff said that was fine.)
The downside of adopting the kitten is money, over which I admittedly worry, probably too much. CC needs to go to the vet; his inoculations are out of date. But we haven't budgeted the money to take CC to the vet and he wants to add another animal? A baby animal that will need a fair few vet visits right out of the gate? (Kittens nearly always have intestinal parasites, plus there are a lot of inoculations in the first year, and spaying/neutering is usually best done in the first year, too. After the first year, the vet visit is an annual thing unless there's a problem.) A baby animal who needs food and food bowls and a litter box and litter and a grooming brush and maybe some toys? (Of course, we'll spend far less on cat food than dog food, just because CC is a large dog and therefore eats a fairish amount.)
I expressed this to Cliff, and he says I worry too much. I told him that I didn't want to bring the kitten into the house until we'd gotten CC to the vet. Oh, and flea-free. This is Florida, and CC, being a large-breed dog, goes outdoors to eliminate his wastes, so he's going to pick up some fleas from time to time. He's pretty bad off with them right now, though; in some places he's chewed/scratched himself raw. Cliff agreed with me, though, that we should get CC to the vet and de-flea'd before bringing the kitten into the house. It will be much easier to keep the kitten flea-free if the dog is flea-free.
Plus, there's all my medical expenses, seeing the doctor, and paying for my medications, and seeing the counselor. (The counselor isn't that expensive, thank goodness, but the doctor will be, and the meds probably will be as well. Right now I'm still on the prescription from MHCJ, which can be refilled free at a certain pharmacy, but I have one more refill and that's the end of that.)
I just worry that adding the kitten will strain the finances too much, even though I would LOVE to have a kitten of my own again.
I love cats; I frequently joke about winding up as a crazy old cat lady with long silver hair.
And I've had--well--hell, I don't know--an attachment to this particular kitten since it was born. I just like it; I couldn't say exactly why. I'm not a particular fan of ginger tabbies; I don't really care one way or the other about a cat's coloring. (I think black cats are beautiful, but that might be because I used to have a LOVELY green-eyed black cat named Cyrano. Sadly, I had to leave him in Charleston when I moved here, and he got lost when my ex-boyfriend moved house.) I just like this kitten. Everyone else is on about its littermate, who was pure white at birth but is beginning to develop these lovely light-cinnamon point markings.
I want the kitten. I'm just not sure that adopting it is a good idea right now. A cat is usually at least 15 years of responsibility; my parents' cats are 17 and 15, and only just beginning to show their ages in the last few years.
I've even thought about names. I thought of Milo, if it transpires to be male. (From the movie "The Adventures of Milo and Otis"; Milo is an orange tabby.) Jen suggested Ron if it's male and Ginny if it's female, since it's kind of dark orange, like the Weasley hair. (Harry Potter reference, if anyone doesn't know.)
I sort of want a more literary name than those, though. The cats I had when Reid and I were dating were named Cyrano and Christian (from the Edmond Rostand play "Cyrano de Bergerac", which I read in 12th grade and ADORED). I actually did that because the younger of my parents' cats, the 15-year-old, is named Roxanne. We didn't actually name Roxie after the "Cyrano" character; I hadn't read "Cyrano" yet, although I think I'd seen the 1950 movie version. My mother and I just liked the name and thought it fit the cat. (My stepdad had been shipped to Germany by the US Army Reserve when we got Roxie, but he knew we were getting her; in fact, it was his idea. He thought Catarina [the older cat] needed same-species company.) But when I wound up with a male cat, the name Cyrano just fit. (I'd have named him Jade if he'd been female, but I thought Jade wasn't a good name for a tomcat.) And no, he didn't have a long muzzle.
Cyrano happened to me; I didn't really mean to get a cat at that point. He came to me from a neighbor who was in the Air Force and consequently traveled a lot. (The USAF likes to ship its people from pillar to post quite regularly.) If she was going for a long trip, she'd take her two cats to her mother's house, but if she was only going to be gone for a few days or a week or so, I would go over and take care of them, clean the litter box, feed them, play with them, pet them, etc. And when she was home, we used to hang out and chat sometimes.
Cyrano was found wandering by a neighbor of a friend of my neighbor. The original finder couldn't keep him for reasons unknown, so she gave him to my neighbor's friend, who couldn't keep him because she was allergic to cats. So he came to my neighbor, who would have been happy to keep him, except that her female cat hated his guts and turned hostile to everybody while he was there. And I went over to hang out with my neighbor, and the little guy curled up on me and fell asleep. I knew I'd been adopted.
Anyway, in the case of the orange kitten, no suitably literary name is presenting itself as yet though. Of course, I'm trying to name a cat I don't have yet, and who is sufficiently young that I'm not sure whether it's male or female.
I want the kitten. I really do. I just wonder if it's practical to take on the expense of another pet.
It's SOOOO cute.
And I do love cats. A lot. The entire Family Felidae, in fact. I think the big cats are cool, too.
Cliff is violently allergic to cats; he can't be in Tiff and Beau's apartment (they have three adult cats plus the kittens, and an assortment of ferrets, I'm not sure how many) for more than 10-15 minutes without his eyes starting to water and without beginning to have trouble breathing. He has a dog (Labrador/Staffordshire Bull Terrier cross, looks like a smallish yellow Labrador) named CC, who is usually pretty sweet but can be a pain in the neck sometimes.
I am mildly allergic to dogs; I just get a bit of nasal congestion and runny eyes. I also just plain like cats better than dogs; I'd rather deal with a litter box than have to walk a dog in all weathers. I'm not a dog hater, before anyone jumps my case. I just find cats easier to take care of than dogs, and with the mild allergy, I'm better off with cats for pets than dogs.
I have been staying at my parents' house rather a lot of late, for a number of reasons. For one thing, my kid stays with my parents for financial reasons, so if I stay at the house, I can hang out with her. For another, Cliff's roommate keeps very peculiar hours, and I was having a very hard time sleeping because of him moving around and making noise while I was trying to sleep. For yet another, the apartment is messy and quite dirty, and that causes some anxiety for me; I'm a bit of a clean freak. I'm not necessarily a neat freak; I have a fair tolerance for clutter. But it can't be dirty. The floors have to be cleaned, the house needs to smell clean (i.e. no garbage smell, no strong animal smell if pets are kept indoors, no funk from nasty sweaty laundry), and so forth. That apartment is not in the greatest part of town, and I think that prior tenants probably didn't take such wonderful care of it. The toilet is permanently stained (and not from rusty water), and there is dog hair everywhere. Yuk.
But Cliff has booted the roomie out effective May 1; he's tired of the screwy hours because it interferes with his sleep too, and he NEEDS his sleep. (He's a paramedic, and his schedule is 24 hours on duty, 48 hours off.) There are also some other issues that have caused Cliff to decide to boot the roomie out, but I'm not getting into all that here.
When the roommate leaves, Cliff is going to take over his bedroom, which has its own air conditioner and a door that actually closes properly (unlike Cliff's current bedroom). He's also going to give the house a good thorough cleaning (and cleansing with a burning sage bundle, but that's all him. I'm not quite that mystical). (Cleaning house will be easier once the roomie and his furniture are gone; there's WAY too much stuff in that apartment as it stands now.)
This weekend, Cliff told me that once all that is taken care of, I can adopt one of the kittens.
The one I want was born last; it's a dark orange tabby (though not quite a red tabby), and I just like it. It's too young yet to be able to tell whether it's male or female, so it's being called "Late" for now because it was born last and about half an hour after the rest of the litter. (I attended the kitten birth, and we had thought that Mama Cat was only going to have three kittens, because she seemed to be done. We got up to get the pics off my digicam and onto the computer, and when we came back, there was the kitten I want.)
( Here is the kitten, just after birth, with its dad helping to clean it )
I'm kind of torn about it though; it's really sweet of Cliff to let me have the kitten in the apartment, because of his allergies. (He has said that as long as the cat stays out of the bedroom, he should be okay. I asked if we could make the bedroom an animal-free zone in general, since I'm allergic to dogs and CC hasn't ever been allowed in that room anyway, because the roomie is also allergic to dogs, on about the same level as my allergy. Cliff said that was fine.)
The downside of adopting the kitten is money, over which I admittedly worry, probably too much. CC needs to go to the vet; his inoculations are out of date. But we haven't budgeted the money to take CC to the vet and he wants to add another animal? A baby animal that will need a fair few vet visits right out of the gate? (Kittens nearly always have intestinal parasites, plus there are a lot of inoculations in the first year, and spaying/neutering is usually best done in the first year, too. After the first year, the vet visit is an annual thing unless there's a problem.) A baby animal who needs food and food bowls and a litter box and litter and a grooming brush and maybe some toys? (Of course, we'll spend far less on cat food than dog food, just because CC is a large dog and therefore eats a fairish amount.)
I expressed this to Cliff, and he says I worry too much. I told him that I didn't want to bring the kitten into the house until we'd gotten CC to the vet. Oh, and flea-free. This is Florida, and CC, being a large-breed dog, goes outdoors to eliminate his wastes, so he's going to pick up some fleas from time to time. He's pretty bad off with them right now, though; in some places he's chewed/scratched himself raw. Cliff agreed with me, though, that we should get CC to the vet and de-flea'd before bringing the kitten into the house. It will be much easier to keep the kitten flea-free if the dog is flea-free.
Plus, there's all my medical expenses, seeing the doctor, and paying for my medications, and seeing the counselor. (The counselor isn't that expensive, thank goodness, but the doctor will be, and the meds probably will be as well. Right now I'm still on the prescription from MHCJ, which can be refilled free at a certain pharmacy, but I have one more refill and that's the end of that.)
I just worry that adding the kitten will strain the finances too much, even though I would LOVE to have a kitten of my own again.
I love cats; I frequently joke about winding up as a crazy old cat lady with long silver hair.
And I've had--well--hell, I don't know--an attachment to this particular kitten since it was born. I just like it; I couldn't say exactly why. I'm not a particular fan of ginger tabbies; I don't really care one way or the other about a cat's coloring. (I think black cats are beautiful, but that might be because I used to have a LOVELY green-eyed black cat named Cyrano. Sadly, I had to leave him in Charleston when I moved here, and he got lost when my ex-boyfriend moved house.) I just like this kitten. Everyone else is on about its littermate, who was pure white at birth but is beginning to develop these lovely light-cinnamon point markings.
I want the kitten. I'm just not sure that adopting it is a good idea right now. A cat is usually at least 15 years of responsibility; my parents' cats are 17 and 15, and only just beginning to show their ages in the last few years.
I've even thought about names. I thought of Milo, if it transpires to be male. (From the movie "The Adventures of Milo and Otis"; Milo is an orange tabby.) Jen suggested Ron if it's male and Ginny if it's female, since it's kind of dark orange, like the Weasley hair. (Harry Potter reference, if anyone doesn't know.)
I sort of want a more literary name than those, though. The cats I had when Reid and I were dating were named Cyrano and Christian (from the Edmond Rostand play "Cyrano de Bergerac", which I read in 12th grade and ADORED). I actually did that because the younger of my parents' cats, the 15-year-old, is named Roxanne. We didn't actually name Roxie after the "Cyrano" character; I hadn't read "Cyrano" yet, although I think I'd seen the 1950 movie version. My mother and I just liked the name and thought it fit the cat. (My stepdad had been shipped to Germany by the US Army Reserve when we got Roxie, but he knew we were getting her; in fact, it was his idea. He thought Catarina [the older cat] needed same-species company.) But when I wound up with a male cat, the name Cyrano just fit. (I'd have named him Jade if he'd been female, but I thought Jade wasn't a good name for a tomcat.) And no, he didn't have a long muzzle.
Cyrano happened to me; I didn't really mean to get a cat at that point. He came to me from a neighbor who was in the Air Force and consequently traveled a lot. (The USAF likes to ship its people from pillar to post quite regularly.) If she was going for a long trip, she'd take her two cats to her mother's house, but if she was only going to be gone for a few days or a week or so, I would go over and take care of them, clean the litter box, feed them, play with them, pet them, etc. And when she was home, we used to hang out and chat sometimes.
Cyrano was found wandering by a neighbor of a friend of my neighbor. The original finder couldn't keep him for reasons unknown, so she gave him to my neighbor's friend, who couldn't keep him because she was allergic to cats. So he came to my neighbor, who would have been happy to keep him, except that her female cat hated his guts and turned hostile to everybody while he was there. And I went over to hang out with my neighbor, and the little guy curled up on me and fell asleep. I knew I'd been adopted.
Anyway, in the case of the orange kitten, no suitably literary name is presenting itself as yet though. Of course, I'm trying to name a cat I don't have yet, and who is sufficiently young that I'm not sure whether it's male or female.
I want the kitten. I really do. I just wonder if it's practical to take on the expense of another pet.
It's SOOOO cute.
And I do love cats. A lot. The entire Family Felidae, in fact. I think the big cats are cool, too.
