Gatos Ninos: The Kids Are Alright

This post is in response to my my father's inquiry, by way of a blog comment, as to how my kittens are doing. I'm not even going to try to convince anyone this is a normal way for families to communicate, but this is how we roll. I found out about my Aunt Louise's heart surgery through a Facebook post—from Aunt Louise herself.

Aunt Louise, who is doing quite well.

Anywhoo, they are well. Gatos ninos is the term we have assigned them, marking Husband's astonishing progress in his Spanish class. It's a conversational class, so they are often encouraged to share personal information as fodder for conversation: My daughter is nine. My in-laws are visiting. I like to eat. When I asked if he had told his class about his new kittens, he confessed that he did not know the Spanish word for kitten. Surely it's a diminutive form of cat, I offered, to which he replied after not enough some thought "Gatos ninos?" I was right, of course: It's gatito. But gatos ninos has grown on us.

The girl, Lily (although I have been calling her Lillian), although much smaller, is the dominant cat. She is first to the food bowl, finishing her food quickly so she can nudge him out of his bowl, and he lets her. She is quicker, more agile, more outgoing, and more vocal. And she is interested in anything I am doing in the kitchen. Mama's girl.


Loki is more shy, has almost no voice (his meow sounds like he is choking, and we almost never hear it), and draws back whenever someone makes a sudden move toward him. He is content to let her take the lead in almost everything. The adjustment to our home has not been as easy for him. After recovery from his initial reticence (hiding under a desk for two days), he's had what we think is an upper respiratory infection (he's on antibiotics) and has reverted to some of his early timid behavior. We're content to be patient with him and give him time to regain his comfort.

He is our boy, and we love him.

What's more, they love each other.


And this guy? Yes, we had another cat before we let these two invade our hearts and home.

At fifteen years old, I suppose we were naive thinking he would make a better adjustment. He hates them. In fact, I think he is terrified of them. Although he outweighs them significantly, in his mind I think he believes he is small and at danger in their presence. He hisses and runs. At least we're fairly confident he will not try to kill them. They, on the other hand, just want to get to know him. Their resilience is admirable: No matter how many times he rejects them, they are back for more, certain he will love them like we do. Which he probably never will.

I imagine The Who's lyrics running through his head:

Sometimes, I feel I gotta get away
Bells chime, I know I gotta get away
And I know if I don't, I'll go out of my mind
Better leave her behind with the kids, they're alright
The kids are alright

They are, we are, and he will be. Todo gatos.

There's sick, and then there's . . .

Yesterday I took our kittens to the vet. One of them has (we think) an upper respiratory infection. The other one went as a ride-along. They're rarely more than ten feet apart, so I figured they could be more comfortable and calm riding to the vet together.

The visit with the vet was fairly routine, but what we saw in the waiting room . . .

When I arrived, there was an elderly woman with a rolling walker (my MIL has one—we call it her Rollerator), and in the basket hanging beneath it she had a brown paper grocery bag with . . . her dead cat in it. The bag wasn't quite big enough, so the cat—on its back at a 45 degree angle, totally stiff, legs straight up in the air—was sticking out. Seems the woman lives in a nursing home and there is no yard in which to bury the cat, so she was bringing it to the vet to have it cremated.

The woman was at the counter being helped, so I turned to the other woman sitting in the waiting room and whispered "Is it . . . ?" and she mouthed back "DEAD," which was of course totally obvious. The woman with the dead cat sat back down, and the three of us sat there smiling at each other. Feeling that polite conversation was appropriate, I asked gently, "Was she old?" The minutes these words were out of my mouth, I realized this was a totally stupid thing to say because the woman herself was old and my question seemed to imply that if you were old then it might be reasonable that you were dead. Fuck. For the next few minutes I sat there in silence because I was worried that should I open my mouth I would burst into either tears or laughter.

But when the woman behind the front desk announced "That will be $175, Mrs. OldLadyWithDeadCat" I did ask her "Is that just for the cremation??" thinking there had perhaps been some medical costs preceding the death of the cat. No, that was the cost of just the cremation. It was all I could do not to offer her burial of the cat in our yard for $100. But then I remembered the clay composition of our soil and Husband jackhammering our yard in the rain to dig a whole deep enough to properly bury his beloved Zeus. Besides, she probably wanted the little urn of ashes.

Here is the picture I drew to illustrate this to my family.
RIP, dead cat in the bag.

The names!

Of course! How could I post about the kittens and not mention their names?? Well, possibly because we still call them "The Kittens" much of the time. This sort of works given that they're rarely more that two feet apart.

SO. We decided that Sophie and I would name the little girl. I voted for Lila, not telling anyone that I had in mind Lila Quartermaine from General Hospital. I was more of a Edge of Night watcher, but I was sucked into the Port Charles vortex during Laura and Scotty's wedding, which everyone in my dorm skipped classes to watch in the our main lounge. Was Lila Quartermaine the best or what? No matter how horrible everyone was around her, she was lovely, kind, and gracious. I loved it when the Quartermaines lost all their money (momentarily, thank goodness—poor people are not nearly as interesting on television), and Lila and her maid kept the family going by marketing their homemade relish: Piccalila. Brilliant.

Sophie thought the name was . . . ok. She preferred a modification, Lily, which I agreed to because I think it is also a lovely name and because I am such a reasonable person.

Husband, preferring mythological names (his late was cat named Zeus), selected the name Loki, the Norse god of fire, known for trickery and shape-shifting.

Not bad for a little cat who is fast as greased lightening, but I cannot remove from my mind Wagner's character Loge (the German version of Loki) in Das Rheingold. 

Loge gives advice to Wotan, the ruler of the god—usually very bad advice, at least for Wotan. Loge is the ultimate consultant. But Sophie, who was a supernumerary in the San Francisco Opera's production of Das Rheingold, correctly remembers Loge as one of the best characters, and Stefan Margita portrayed him with an absolutely amazing tenor voice that I will always remember. And while a little Wagnarian character running around my house is not what I had in mind (if it were I could have named the little girl Freia, goddess of youth and beauty), I've kept this also to myself because I am, as I have noted, a very reasonable person. 

My husband is having babies

So I know I said I was going to post about flowering dogwoods and good stuff like that, but half the pictures are on Husband's camera, which I have yet to pry out of his hands. Suffice it to say in the meantime though that Sophie did not go over a waterfall, although for a while she was in serious danger of doing so. And although the falls are named Small Falls, trust me, they are big enough. She suffered only a pair of soaked shorts and a stern (and loud) lecture from Husband about looking and thinking before she leaps.

So we will have to settle for a picture of . . . The Figs' new kittens!!!


No, they're not all ours, and in fact none of them are just yet. But we have been approved as an "ideal home and family" for one of these kittens by the breeder, thanks to my excellent letter in which I detailed our cat history and habits. Crazy that these kittens cost $700 (!!!!!) and you have to persuade them to sell you one. But I appreciate that these people are not running a cat factory and are truly interested in good placements for their kittens. Even crazier that we are thinking of getting TWO (you do the math).

And yes, I said breeder, which has been a difficult pill for me to swallow, having always been a rescue cat type of gal. But Husband has always wanted an Ocicat, a breed developed from a Siamese/Abyssinian mix, remarkable for their spots and big bat-like ears. And if you had seen him sobbing out in the driving rain while jackhammering a grave for his beloved Zeus last year, you would want him to have one too. He has printed off this picture and keeps taking it out to smile at it and exclaim "Look at them!!!" If he were this excited about Sophie, I do not remember it.

Stay tuned for news later in the summer about two new spotted Figs. I want to name one Ricky.