Photo Extra: Turbo time!

The day we adopted our first cats, we got a Turbo ball for them. Whitey and Billy have never given up on it, for example Whitey found it when he was a year old catten.



Five years after we got the Turbo ball to entertain the two kittens which would be someday be Catzillas, a new generation uses it.



Updated: I thought this was the same unit that Whitey was playing with above; the ball got replaced when we moved and the original ball got lost. However, it appears the original unit (with a bit of paper stuck in the middle) is in the library. (We also have a green one downstairs.)

Five for Fighting

We have failed to update our loyal readers on Oscar. He's alive, here, reckless, and trying to take over the place. In particular, he has been left out most nights, with varying peace for us and the boys during the early morning hours. No more...

After a week of record hot weather, things have cooled off. This means that Billy has returned to his role of bedtime Kitten-in-Chief, snuggling up Katherine after she goes to bed. He's very good at it too, being reasonable about her moving and even me getting up in the middle of the night to use the little valet's room. He can acknowledge a gentle ear scritch and go back to sleep (the same would wind up Oscar like a top).

Yesterday morning, Oscar got bored at 4 AM and decided to visit the bed. After noisily poking around for a bit, he decided the most fun thing he could do was pounce on the sleeping Billy. Fun for him maybe, neither Billy nor I viewed this in a positive light. When distressed meowing started, I hissed at Oscar, but Billy took at the warning as directed at himself and bugged out. Oscar almost went to jail (the library with the door closed), but things immediately quieted down, so I left the parolee out.

This morning, Oscar again visited the bed and pounced on the Kitten-in-Chief. I immediately grabbed Oscar, and peeled him off. He didn't got the message, and so it was rinse and repeat twice more. After the third peel, Oscar was scooped up and sent to jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect kitty treats.

Meanwhile Billy had jumped down, but I scooped him up (far more gently than I did Oscar), set him on the bed, and told him what a good boy he was. I then nudged him towards Katherine, and he padded over and returned to his duties.

The entire adventure woke me up and stressed me enough that I didn't get back to sleep for almost three hours. This is not good.

Oscar gets jail at night until we can figure out how to enforce the rules at 3 AM.

Lemme show you how it's done, kid

I think Oscar wants to be like Billy when he grows up.

A little while ago, Billy led me to the Closet of Toys and particularly requested a long fuzzy monkey tail teaser. He ran up the cat tower after it once, but Oscar was lurking around the base of the tower and Billy seemed to lose interest. So I shooed Oscar out and played with Billy with the door closed for a little while.

But the fun part came after Billy was (apparently) done. I let Oscar chase the teaser while Billy was retrieving his traditional treats from the puzzle box. Only Oscar didn't seem quite sure what to do with it. So Billy stepped in and went another few rounds, this time with Oscar watching with big wide eyes from a safe and respectful distance.

I told Billy he was being a great role model for the kid and gave him extra kitty treats.

QOTD: Feline Slinky Department

"I wish [Oscar] had a mute button." - Katherine

To Go Boldy Where No Feline Has Gone Before

Oscar's quarantine is lifted, having been replaced by supervised releases.

That is, as much as humans can supervise a tiny cat (hey, we trained on Catzillas). Basically, the kid has the stealthy size and Brownian motion of a large kitten but the coordination and energy of an adult cat. He also has also a mini-turbo mode he saves for escaping grasping hands. Since we're not sure how much he can aggravate the Catzillas if truly left alone, this means we spend a lot of time and energy trailing him from floor to floor.

The kid is also quite fearless. If the Grey Mouser with his love of human affection and disdain for the Catzilla brothers seemed Emily reincarnated, Oscar is Emily's revenge for being stalked. Whitey still occasionally hangs out in front of Oscar's door, but he is shocked when Oscar actually comes prancing out and walks right up to Whitey, making Whitey deeply nervous and defensive. Billy is less perturbed, and is willing to sniff nose-to-nose with the new kid, but would prefer to be left to go about his business.

The new kid, meanwhile, isn't real good at boundaries.

Overall, Oscar spends a lot of time out of his suite acting like an mildly annoying groupie, trailing his uncles around the house and occasionally cornering them in a way that can cause a raised paw (which Oscar answers) or even a low hiss. Fortunately, there has been no contact -- the boys prefer to break off the engagement rather than give their nephew a somewhat deserved clocking. This morning, he came prancing up to Billy and basically pounced on him. (Keep in mind that Billy is twice his size.) A brief bout of shadow cat fu ensued. Billy wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or confused, and vacated the area with Oscar in hot pursuit.

As for catching Oscar to put him away, we may have a solution. Like the Catzillas as kittens, he's a sucker for a laser dot, including chasing it all the way from the living room to his suite.

Video Extra: Wake up call

Somewhere along the way in the past six weeks we've acquired not one but two gizmos capable of shooting video. Thus we can now publish our first moving pictures, featuring Whitey teetering more or less above Katherine.

Nothing gets valets moving like the thought of a flailing cat landing on you at 7:50 in the morning.

Winning Lottery Numbers

While Katherine carefully tracks the weight of the boys, we never seem to publish the numbers. However, in honor of Oscar's arrival, we 're here to announce:

Billy

12 lbs, 5 oz.

Whitey

12 lbs, 10 oz

Oscar

7 lbs, 10.5 oz.

We recently reduced rations of both Catzilla brothers to get their weight down, while for now the catten gets all he can eat.