Finding Their Paws

It's Kitty Day 4 - well, three and a half, really, since we didn't get home with them until late on Friday. Severus and Voldemort are settling in really well and they've finally found their purrs - really loud ones, too. Their miaows are very loud too, especially considering the tiny bundle of fur the noises of coming from! They're part Burmese so the breed is very vocal in any case - looks like Romeo, the talkative one of the household, will have some competition.It's hard to get photos of them, though. Being all black, we have the same problem we have taking pictures of Cassie-cat - most of the time they just look like black blobs! Took some with the flash on and that's even worse, they look like freaky alien skinny kits, the way the flash reflects off their fur!! This is Severus on Saturday morning sat in my hand:
..and Voldemort having an early morning cuddle from Emily.
And a very, very, very cross Juliet on one of her extremely rare upstairs visits.
Think I may have spoken too soon when I said the three big cats would settle down in a few day's time. Cassie-cat's not that fussed, so she's OK - but the other two, well. Neither of them will come upstairs unless physically taken upstairs now. Romeo runs straight back down again as soon as he sees a kit-bit. JuJu is surprisingly aggressive towards them - hissing, spitting, arching back, fluffing up tail, the full works. And of course then the babies hiss and spit back at her, which doesn't help. She's even attacked me, Jon and Emily when she thinks we're going to take her upstairs :-(( I've been quite upset about that today, but we WILL get there in the end, we'll have to. Since we live mostly upstairs (grandparents downstairs) it's distressing if the big cats decide not to come up here any more. We shall see.

Anyway. The kittens' personalities are starting to emerge. Voldemort is, not to put too fine a point on it, a nutcase. Very brave and bold but very nuzzly and affectionate too. Severus is quieter and lets Voldy be the boss, but Severus was the first to snuggle up and purr and he also nibbles your fingers a lot.

Have made an appointment with the vet for their first vaccinations next week. She didn't understand the names, lol. Mind you, when Jackie asked Emily what she was going to call the kittens, she wasn't too keen on Voldemort either. Reminds me of when I was pregnant with Emily. If she'd been a boy, we wanted to call her Damien - but so many people were horrified by that and the name's associations with The Omen. It's a bit daft, really - a name's what you make it, and in this household, thanks to hundreds if not thousands of hours of delightful play and make believe, Voldemort is a very much loved name (and character). He's not real, folks. It's not like naming your cat after a serial killer in the hope he'll turn out to be a mass murderer. *Shrugs* Anyway, we like it :-)) Good job Severus turned out to be "a goodie" in the end, otherwise I expect we'd have raised eyebrows about that one too.

We did attempt some education today, but got rather sidetracked since I had to go out and fetch Grandad's latest prescription from the doctors. Turns out they missed something off it, which couldn't possibly wait a few days until I have to go back again (oh yes, it could have done) so Jon had to go straight back out all the way back there to fetch the other item. By the time we'd dealt with all that and the laptop downstairs had had a hissy fit and so had the downstairs printer, I was in a foul mood and it was nearly three o clock. So bye bye education.

We *were* going to look at the life and work of Giotto, and Emily was going to do some egg tempera painting with ground up coloured chalk, but we got stuck on the printing off some of his paintings, I say, which were going to go in her notebook. I'm sure we'll get round to it one day when her education is allowed to be our top priority. Rolls eyes again, and shuts up.