According to my app which counts all the things, it has been 1283 days since we adopted Lorenzo and Chinchilla, i.e. kidnapped them from their feral life in backyard Etobicoke and conveyed them to the lap of luxury. Here’s a pic of them from that day, snuggling on the bathroom rug.
The kids are a joy. Unlike our two previous cat pairs, they like each other. We’re very invested in this: this very morning Kelly shot video of them washing each others’ faces adorably. Buddha and Obiwan existed in a state of perpetual low-grade truce. Rumble bullied Minnow on a regular basis. These guys wash each others’ faces! Oh. Em. Whee!
And, as you may know, we spoil them heckin’ rotten. Sometimes Kelly and I refer to our lovely windows, which look out on our birch trees and the building courtyard, as CatTV. By this we mean she turns on CatTV every morning, before we leave for work, by setting out feed for sparrows. Generally speaking a good time is had by all.
Anyway. Today CatTV got tuned to the Holy Shit Orange Cat is Back Network.
The kids get excited and periodically stroppy about all sorts of the things on the fishbowl side of their universe. Squirrels. Our newest chipmunk friend. Raccoons. They have been known to fling themselves at the sparrows. They’ve even gotten into some through the glass growl-ups with orange cat before. No big, right? That’s entertainment.
Except today Orange Cat was hurling himself right back at them. All three cats ended up in the same square meter of space, with glass separating my babies from the interloper, and all three of them helicoptering each of their four limbs mightily. Which meant that Orange Cat bounced, and CinCin and Lozo got into a second’s worth of fur-flying hard-core yowling panic-driven battle. Three times, because Orange Cat bounces back.
Were they freaked out? Holy crap were they freaked.
Lozo peed. CinCin pooped. They both came away from the encounter 100% convinced that Orange Cat had got into the house, adopted the guise of their sibling, and was even now plotting the downfall of the regime. She growled. He yowled. Both of them with tails puffed out and an overall attitude of Kill, Kill, Kill.
Holy shit, Orange Cat, you broke my kids! I spent the afternoon trying to chill them the fuck out: keeping them separated, vaccuming (as a way of giving them a common enemy, which worked a little, for awhile) and eventually giving CinCin a huge-ass time-out in the bathroom.
So that was my day, complete with cleaning body fluids off the living room floor. It was better than their day, but not by much.
