Returning Home From Christmas

We went up to Megan's parent's house for Christmas, which included leaving the kitties for a week. When we returned, they were ecstatic. They kept us up for most of the night and have been following us around. Finally, two hours before dinner, they passed out, The jerks.

Favorite Toys: Wana

One of my favorite things about cats is their playfulness.  From the times they are kittens to when they are old grumps, the cats love to play.  The older ones typically will just swipe their paws at you as you walk by while kittens run up your leg.  Wana and Miel love to play, whether it is just attacking each other, sliding around on the ground under the couch or attacking our feet under the covers.  When Wana was a kitten he was very intense about his play.

From Wana Palu And Miel

He likes whips a lot, but his true love are foam balls.  He loves to bat them around the apartment and sprint them.  Also add into the fact that our apartment is not level and so all toys wind up either in the closet or in the bathroom.  Sometimes he'll just sit outside of the closet and cry when a toy winds up in there.  Sigh.  This usually happens when we are watching a TV show or movie.

While Miel's favorite toy is the shiny soft glitter balls, Wana loves these foam balls. Here is a compilation of him playing around with them.

I also want to call out that the reason the camera fell at the end was because miel was sniffing it and rubbed against it.  After the camera fell she ran away.  Wana was confused.

Wana Sliding

So I made this a while ago, but realized I never posted it to the blog! Here is Wana sliding around on the floor in a box to Flogging Molly!

It has been a year since we adopted them!...

Actually, it has been a year and a month since we adopted Miel and Wana. However, Summer arrived late in Portland, bringing with it the heat! The cats are not pleased. The biggest reason is because it is now so dang hot and stuffy in our apartment. While the cats seem to have overcome their fear of the airconditioner, they now just flop around the apartment trying to stay cool on the hardwood floors.

Last May...

Last May, around the time that this was happening...

....these two were born!

Two weekends ago, we gave our kitties some extra loving before heading off to celebrate our anniversary. It's been a good year!

(Wedding photo by Jenny Wohrle. Check out her work - she is amazing!)

The Beginning

Look at those tiny kittens! Those whiskers! Those fuzzy paws!

What started as an ordinary trip out to IKEA back in July to pick up some furnishings for our (still) work-in-progress apartment turned into a kitten adoption story. After our successful IKEA trip, we headed across the parking lot to find some frozen yogurt. When I saw PetSmart, I suggested taking a detour to pick up a few kitty items, since we were anticipating adopting two kitties that summer. Harmless, right?

An hour later, we came out armed with cat supplies...and adoption contracts for Miel and Wana. Oops. Neither of us remembered that local cat adoption agencies come out to PetSmart on the weekends to attract weekend shoppers and would-be adopters. I knew I was done for when we walked in the door, and a foster mom from CAT Adoption Team was planted right in the entrance with her foster litter. Once David saw the look on my face, he knew what was coming. (In fact, the whole situation was very similar to this.)

Long story short, it ended up working out perfectly. We got to talk to the foster mom about their background, health, habits and even got to meet their momma cat and one of their siblings. (Who were both gray tabbies, interestingly enough. In all, they had four other brothers! Miel was the odd woman out.) They weren't ready for adoption yet, which gave us time to get everything set up for them in their new home. We snapped the above photo while getting to know them and signing the papers.

By the end of the month, Miel and Wana were home...

...and getting into everything. Literally.

(For any concerned readers, we never did get that frozen yogurt after IKEA. But when you live close to places like this, you get over it quickly.)

Bad Habits

Overall, we are very quick to squelch any bad habits that our cats might form. We have a very strict "no cats on the kitchen table" policy in our house, and initially we started out with a "no human food fed to cats" policy. However, after a few early-on, rogue table and counter-top explorations leading to the discovery of butter, cheese and other food scraps in the sink, the cats quickly discovered that human food is, well, food. This discovery is eventually what led to Miel's dinnertime naps on David's lap, since she's the main food scavenger. Every once in a while, though, Wana pops in on the dinnertime fun and gets very interested in the simplest of foods - like rice.

I'd like to add that we also have a strict "absolutely no cats anywhere near the kitchen table when guests are over for dinner" policy, in case any of our readers are potential dinner guests! We have a lot of policies for our cats.