Daisy of Love & the Boy Who Lives Under the Bed

Jen and Mike bought a mansion and since movers and deliverers and realtors and buyers and sellers were all going to be swirling in and out of multiple homes this week, Mack and I opened Camp Kitty back up for business.

And this time, we had TWO guests.

Milo is older and more fraidy cat this time than he was on his last visit, but to be fair, it's only day 5 and he usually doesn't come full out until day 6. Also, every time he comes out, I sneeze and he freaks and there are setbacks. Also, every time he comes out, Daisy whoops on him and I laugh at him and there are more setbacks. So, this is the most we've seen of Mr. Handsome.
Daisy of Love, on the other hand, is like a kitty shadow. She is everywhere. She's on the potty with you, in the sink while you brush your teeth, on the edge of the tub while you bathe, on the counter while you make tacos.
She helps me with work, helps me wash dishes, helps me sweep. And most of all, she's helped me find things like candles and toy cars that had rolled under furniture and been forgotten.
Like all cats, she seems to have a special bond with Mack and appreciates his donkey-like carrying abilities. Normally she jumps onto his shoulder while he's at his computer studying, but once she leapt from the counter in the kitchen while he was at the stove. She tries to get me when I walk past the couch and I have the claw marks that prove I am no good for shoulder riding.
Like Milo, she seems to have a special thing for Mack's stinky gym bag. Maybe it's the aroma of cat pee judo gi that makes her feel at home???
Unlike Milo, she has had no problem whatsoever settling in and snuggling up to us. She spends chunks of the day on my computer chair with me, forcing me to sit hanging off the front of it so she can lay down on the back of it. Yes, I know who's boss.
At about 9 o'clock she and Milo get wet food, and then Daisy chases Milo into the bedroom and pounces all over him. There's snarling, followed by thumping noises, and all my good intentions to learn acid-base balance goes right out the window. It's like my own little Animal Planet performance, right at the foot of the bed.

Here they are doing another thing they do called Get the Tail of the Cat on the Seat and Bite the Legs of the Chair... Also Take Breaks to Clean Yourself.These are two of the funniest little cats I have ever met. So Jen, no, we will not be meeting you or Mike or your mom as planned because I am not going to be able to give these things back to you. Sorry. Go enjoy your appliance corral.

I think it's a boy.

Not wanting to give my lizard friend any gender predispositions since I don't really know what gender s/he is, I put some androgynous photographs of Brooke Shields and David Bowie up in his cage when he moved in. S/he has pretty much ignored them until tonight, when I gave what I now know to be a HIM a bath and cleaned out HIS tank.

He'd been a little gloomy seeming today, so to perk him up I fed him. Romaine lettuce and cantaloupe... by hand. He enjoyed those snacks much more than the giant crunchies of gross he'd been dodging in his tank for the last week. Then I figured I'd clean out his tank to get it ready to move to its new home with Robin & Joe, a couple of Mack's pals. Robin is desperately in love with some guinea pigs she has, and when she saw my Facebook post about getting Creep from Betsy, she immediately said how bad she wanted a lizard. I offered her Creep because, well, I never meant to have him for life and if someone is that excited about getting him, he'll probably be better off with them. To clean his tank, I had to put him somewhere, and what better holding room than the bathtub with some toasty water in it. Betsy used to let him swim every now and then and he seems to love it. In my experience, I think he uses the bath to drink the water he needs for survival.

Anyway, I get his house all clean and set up again. I get him out of the tub and warm him back up with the heating pad. And then I put him back in his tank and go on about my business.

Well, he didn't just pep up. He got downright frisky.

I kept hearing him trying to climb the wall, so I went into the living room to see what the hell was so exciting, and I found him like this.
That right, all up in Brooke's face, trying to make out with her. He was standing upright on two legs trying to look in her eyes, and when I said his name, he whipped his head around at me as if to say, "Cock block much?"

So I creep...

Betsy up and left Lexington, moving to Louisville in an attempt to make me and Leiah madly jealous. Also because she wanted to and transferred to a better college.

She's lived around the corner from me since the spring, and in that time I've made many late night jaunts over to her house to turn off the lights on her lizard cage or bring her pet some crickets. I've watched him grow from this little thing that fit into your hand into this giant monster descended from dinosaurs that isn't too scary since he has no teeth. He has the most complex eyes, like when they look at you they know your past and your future and can sense all the things you need to apologize for.
Since Mack and I had spent the past couple weeks enjoying life with a hamster in L.A., I told my dad we'd take Creep for a little while. Mack especially liked watching him eat crickets, and having a third party in the house takes the pressure of the two humans having to entertain each other all the time. Some people have babies for that reason, but Mack and I aren't insane.

So my dad brought him over... and his tank... and his Giant Box of Accessories... and thank god Leiah was here when he did. She handled the lizard and watched him play in the tub while I cleaned his tank (this thing poops freakishly big turds). Then she warmed him with the heating pad and put him in his new home. He's cool, but I just wasn't ready to touch him.

I dumped in some crickets, watched him run around like a crazy man catching them with his tongue, and promptly began falling for this strange little guy.
With Mack gone for the holidays, Creep's been my companion. He's given me something to take care of and feed and observe. He's been entertaining and silly. And he even let me hold him and show him off to Mack while we were video chatting.

(Creep LOVES to video chat! He kept cocking his head like he was listening and looking at the person, using technology to supplement his all-knowingness. I guess a computer screen may have been like giving acid to a baby for a lizard tho...)

I think we've found a permanent home for him -- not ours -- and I've gotta say, I'm gonna be sad to see him go. He's started to recognize my voice and look at me like, "Hey. You again." I squeak his name out in the morning and I swear he knows I'm talking to him. I'm going to miss watching him hunt his crickets and crunch his kibble and the way he lays on his rock and basks in his UV light like a proud lion.

I am not going to miss his big turds.

Adventures of Milo, the Curious Kitten Cat who's Lazy & Sweet

Jen & Mike went to Hawaii and since Jen's other cat, Sophie, turned into a terrorist after moving in with her mom, Milo couldn't stay there. Rather than have Jen pay a kennel $20 a day, I told her to bring Milo over here and promised her we wouldn't lose him like we lost my mom and dad's cats that one time.

The first day Milo paced from room to room, probably looking for his mom. His favorite spot was under the sofa in the study, but every now and then he'd come out of hiding, tell us like it is, and then retreat.

I guess under the sofa just stopped being interesting to him because on the second day, he decided to spend some time with us in the living room. Well, maybe not with us, but at least in the same room with us. He crawled his manly kitten body up on my knitting basket and has spent a couple of hours every day since laying there.
It is very cute when he's up there, especially because his body is a little too big for the basket lid so sometimes he has to dip his head into one of the side compartments (which, since my knitting basket is actually a picnic basket, is usually where the wine goes).
On Day 3, Milo was starting to warm up to us. We felt like we had a good sense of his personality at this point, so I asked Mack what type of job he thought Milo would do if he worked. I was thinking something like interior design, but Mack felt he was better suited for massage therapy.

He found a new spot on a shelf in the coffee table and was content to lounge around in there while keeping an eye on us. Sometimes he would even let us rest a toe on him but only if we were very still and he was very tired.
After those first few days, Milo became a bonafide member of the family. The sweetest, funniest, softest, most wonderful member of the family. And while I know that his mom is going to swoop down and rip us apart in just a few days, I'm coping by looking for pet-friendly plane tickets to Mexico with Milo.
This is how life is with Milo now.

He comes in and walks on us at around 10 a.m. instead of coming in and meowing at us at 6 a.m. like he did those first couple of days. At around 10:30 I wake up and give him food, water, his pill, and lots of pets. Our early morning affection session has become one of my favorite parts of the day. The little big kitten is such a lover, and he likes to be held like a baby and nuzzle noses and just be a lump of special. Then while I get dressed, he talks to me, telling me about all the things he thinks live in the fireplace and explaining that he's been staring at that spot on the wall because it's where the creepies come in.
We go about our day, and while I'm in my office, he'll come in and sit on the back of my chair. Then he'll lay under Mack's computer chair and wrestle with his feet. Then we'll give him some fish and watch him go fish crazy. I think he prefers tuna to cod... at least I prefer tuna fish crazy to cod fish crazy.

At night, when we curl up on the sofa to watch Daisy of Love or Burn Notice, he settles in next to us, sometimes taking up most of the couch and sometimes making a nest out of our bodies.
Last night while he was sitting on top of some pillows, he took a gentle bite of my hand and slept with it in his mouth for probably 15 minutes. When it fell out, he re-bit it and did the same thing all over again. And then I took a look at his little finger and thought, "Damn, how did I get there?"