Life With Cats or How Soon We Forget

We have had a cat in our house for our entire married life, almost 29 years.  There have been a few months off between the last two, and the last one left us about a month and a half ago.  You'd think we would be used to cats and their behavior, right?

Well, right now we are learning that cats all have different personalities, and that cats under stress have even more quirks.  We are fostering our friends' cats while they deal with tornado damage and finding a temporary place to live, etc.  These are cats I have met before, they are sweethearts.  They also miss their own people and tell us so.  Yes, we are good cat servants, and they like us a lot, but we are not THEIR people.

As you may know, if you know me in "real life", or have read previous blog posts, our own cat, Madame Skye, died last month.  We had been owned by that cat for almost 10 years.  Before that, we had been owned by various cats, most notably Tazzer, who lived to be 17 years old.  We are NOT inexperienced in the ways of cats.

This did not prepare us for suddenly finding ourselves responsible for TWO cats, though we have had multiple cats in the past.  These two are fully as spoiled as any we have been owned by.  Lulu, who is regal and dignified despite her name, is fairly quiet, and pretty well behaved.  She is 16 years old, and has the presence and dignity befitting her age.  She has relaxed to the point where she will get on the bed with us at night, and even sleep on me if I lie still long enough.  She has taken over my wing back chair in the living room, just as Skye used to. 

This is Lulu snoozing in the wing back chair. 

Mr.  Peabody is a burly cat. He is BIG.  He has the deepest chest I have ever seen on a cat, and shoulders like a linebacker.  He is overweight, but a lot of his bulk is muscle.  He is very elegant, with his all black coat and his white feet, white bib, and white whiskers.  Quite a smashingly well turned out gent, he is.  He is also talkative and very opinionated, which is why they named him Mr. Peabody. 

This is the only picture I've gotten of Mr. Peabody so far. He is enjoying the view out my office window.  That is a rather large window, by the way.  I am surprised that Mr. Peabody was able to fit on the sill. 
Mr. Peabody woke us up at 3 the other morning simply to tell us he really, really wanted HIS staff to come back.  Ralph and Julie had come by earlier that evening, and he had watched them leave through the front door. I guess he thought they'd been gone long enough.  He started crying and crying and when we went to see what all the noise was about, we found him in the front hall, staring at the door, as if to tell us to open it so he could find his people.  We finally convinced him to settle down and let the rest of us sleep. 
Mr. Peabody could moonlight as a backhoe.  He excavates the litter box, he doesn't just dig.  He sometimes removes almost half the litter onto the laundry room floor simply because he can.  Lulu gets a bit upset with the mess, and will come find me and "tell" on him.  She meows insistently and when I follow her, she leads me to the mess in question. 
Both of these cats are really appreciative of catnip.  They get really enthusiastic about it.  I have a few of Skye's toys still, and so I got them out to help these two amuse themselves.   Then I bought fresh catnip and filled the little zipper pouch in the "plat mat".  Oh, boy.  They both roll on it and pounce on it and rub their faces in it, and then they lie around kinda glassy eyed acting like they can feel the rotation of the Earth. 
It has been great fun to watch them get used to being here, and relaxing.  They are good house guests, and considering all the stress they have been under (they were in the closet with Ralph, Julie, and the dog, Melvin when the tornado hit their house), they have been surprisingly relaxed around here.
They even came out and made friends with our friends Mike and Nancy when they came over Monday evening. 
We all got a full night's sleep last night, I hope we do tonight as well.  Mr. Peabody seems to have decided that the staff will return when they will, and for the meanwhile, he'll make do with us. Lulu has decided that we are just FINE as staff, and seems perfectly happy here.  She sometimes looks at Mr. Peabody as if to tell him to behave, and not ruin a good thing.  (If we couldn't keep them, they'd have to go to Ralph and Julie's son's house with them and Melvin, and the son's dog Cloven.  Cloven is very large, and thinks cats enjoy rough-housing.  The cats are not fans of his.)
Honestly, we are happy to do this for our friends, and we are enjoying the heck out of having the cats around.  It is nice to have somebody here when we get home again, somebody to demand I get up in the morning.  No more being lazy for me!  (Which is a good thing, I get more done when I get up when I'm supposed to...)

Life continues to find it's "new normal" for everyone here in Moore.  It is going to take a long time before we are back to normal, but we are working our way toward it every day.  For the folks like Ralph and Julie who have to sift through years and years of memories and belongings trying to decide what's salvageable, and who have to find a temporary place to live, and deal with insurance companies and what they decide about replacing the house and the lost household goods, the return to normalcy takes even longer.  I cannot even imagine how difficult it is to deal with such a loss.  The disruption would be devastating to me.   I need order and I need my own space, where I can be alone and write.  It would be hard to do without it even for a little while. 

I hope having our place to retreat to when they need to, and to have their cats cared for by someone who loves them, helps Ralph and Julie be better able to deal with their disruptions and losses.  They have keys, and I have told them to feel free to come over for a kitty fix whenever they need one.  I think the kitties would really like that, too.
Better go get stuff ready for tomorrow and get ready for bed before Lulu comes looking for me.  She has started taking over Skye's duties of telling us that it's TIME TO GO TO BED, Silly humans!