Tag Archives: kittens

Thoughts

Mitzi and Trixie at play

I don’t think there’s anything more adorable than kittens at play, so I couldn’t resist posting more photos of Mitzi and Trixie today. I found a whole series I took when they were playing one day. And as promised, there are more photos of Trixie in this post.

Since this is a series of photos, it’s probably best to view them via the slideshow which is embedded at the bottom of the post. I’ll post a select few as individual photos, but make sure to see them all in the slideshow, it’ll only take a minute.

After tumbling about for a bit, they both took a break and lay on the ground a few feet apart, staring at each other, before pouncing once more.

Kittens love these hit-and-run encounters. They’d pounce, tumble about for a bit, and dash away. Here Mitzi jumped away from Trixie after she ambushed her, then hid between the bushes while Trixie began to play by herself.

Of course, Mitzi couldn’t stay away for long, and she ambushed Trixie again.

When they had enough play, they went exploring together. Ah, kittens! 🙂

If I seem particularly effusive today, it’s because I’m glad Trixie is still with us. She almost died last night. She apparently ate something poisonous, and was in shock through mid-morning. She’s better now, but not completely out of the woods. You can read the details here.

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Thoughts

Mitzi and Trixie explore the yard

Part of the fun of having kittens is seeing them explore the yard when they finally get the nerve to venture out there. Everything is so brand new to them — every texture, scent, breeze, shape, color, insect, flower, tree, etc. They walk out, slowly, tentatively, sniffing everything, tasting the air, then they get more courage, and soon they’re prancing happily all over the place, tumbling in the grass, falling over things, bumping into plants and trees, pawing flowers, and looking absolutely adorable while doing it.

Here is a series of photos of Mitzi and Trixie exploring the yard on their own. I’ll probably post more photos today, of the two of them at play. They were somewhere between 2½ and 3 months old here.

Mitzi came pretty close to falling into this hole a few times, but her amazing sense of balance (she’s a cat after all) always kept her safe.

The next post will have more photos of Trixie, I promise. 🙂

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Thoughts

Two kittens on a stool

I did promise Sunday would be my cat day, right? I couldn’t keep that promise last week, as I was traveling, but I’m back this week with another post about our kittens.

Here are Mitzi and Trixie, resting on an inverted stool one evening, when they were about two months old. They loved that chair! Even though they had their own box, laid with soft padding, they preferred to sleep in the seat of this stool.

The sequence of photographs you see here is chronological, recorded as they moved about in the chair, reacting to our movements and the sound of the camera’s shutter. Think of it as a very simple moving picture.

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Thoughts

Meet Trixie and Mitzi

I’ve said for some time that we have two kittens and a tomcat (actually, it’s three kittens and a tomcat now), but I’ve never really introduced them to you. So here are Mitzi and Trixie, our first kittens, as they were the night we brought them home, in late June, 2009.

They might look tame and playful here, but they were pretty much feral. They were born to a half-domesticated cat that had made its home in the barn of an old stove-maker in our town. The poor man got his arms and chest scratched pretty badly by the kittens and their mom when he pulled them out of the barn for us.

We’d seen the mother before she’d given birth, and she was adorable, so we begged him to give us two of the kittens when they were ready to be weaned. He was more than glad to do so — he didn’t want a colony of stray cats in his yard.

Here they are the second day, when we put them outside, in the sunlight. They would hiss at us whenever we got near, so it took a bit for us to gain their trust.

Trixie is the one on the left, and Mitzi is the one on the right. Mitzi is the one that looks like her mother, and the resemblance is even more striking now that she’s grown up and is also pregnant. I’ll show you those photos in a later post…

Here’s Trixie again.

Doesn’t she look like she’s laughing in this photo?

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Thoughts

The little deaf tomcat

Updated 10/22/10: You can see better photos of Felix here.

In the summer of 2006, we visited family in Romania, and we met this wonderful white tomcat at my mother-in-law’s place in Tulcea, Romania. He was still a kitten, a growing boy, scruffy, dirty, and completely adorable. He was also deaf as a post, the poor thing.

Having been born pure white with blue eyes, that doomed him to a life of silence. He couldn’t hear a thing. Thankfully he’d feel the vibration of the ground as you approached him and turned around, but you couldn’t count on that, so you’d often have to touch him to get his attention and watch your step around him. The price for those eyes was heavy, sure, but get a load of those sparkling sapphires!

My wife and I fell in love with him immediately and thought seriously about adopting him, but there was an overseas trip to think about, and a visit to the US Embassy in Bucharest to arrange for his passage. Then he’d have had to live in an apartment, albeit a nice one, but still, he wouldn’t be outside, in nature. And we’d have had to hide him from the building administration, since pets were no longer allowed in our building. After a lot of consideration, we decided to leave him where he was, and hope for the best.

I still regret that decision. The next year, we found out he’d been run over by a car, right outside the yard. He climbed over the fence, and since he was deaf, didn’t hear it, and splat, his light was put out. At least it was quick, but it didn’t have to be that way. He’d still be alive today if we’d adopted him, condo rules and customs rules be damned. He’d be three years old now, a happy, content, white tomcat.

I also regret not taking better photos of him. The ones that I have are of barely adequate quality. The framing isn’t right, the lighting is poor, I’m not showing him from the best angles, etc. At least I have him on video in all his scruffy glory, playing with my camera strap and playing with a puppy whose photo you can see here.

You can watch the video below or on blip.tv and YouTube. You’ll notice the play between him and the pup gets pretty rough at times; don’t blame me for not stopping it. He could have run away, but he stood his ground and drove the puppy away in the end. That’s one brave little tomcat! Gosh, I miss the little white fluffball!

Although he couldn’t hear and respond to a name, I called him Felix, and this year, when we adopted a little black and white tomcat rejected by his mother, I named it Felix as well, to honor his memory.

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