Somebody

... has been hitting the 'nip a leetle too hard.


(Not really, actually. Meow Meow doesn't seem to respond to catnip, but she'll follow Hobbes wherever Dieter puts him. Apparently no coffee table is too low for her hunting sensibilities.)

People games

They're so much slower than kitty games.


But they're cozier too. (Indeed, that would be all three of us stretched out on the couch with the coffee table pulled up for a very lazy game of Scrabble.)

Meet Hobbes

... Meow Meow's new favorite toy.


A friend who recently visited brought a sewing project with her and left some fabric scraps behind. While cleaning up over the weekend, Dieter attracted Meow Meow's attention with this particularly tigerish piece --


-- and suddenly, the true huntress in Meow Meow appeared.



That is, until somebody lost the toy behind the couch.



Yep, we totally moved the couch to get it back for her.

Oh, sure

Now you're all cooperative, Meow Meow. I knew you had it in you!

The uncooperative model

And now, the outtakes from an attempt to get a head shot of Meow Meow. The portrait was meant to go with her foster profile in our sidebar, but as you can see, she had other plans.


Leslie: "Oops, you blinked. Let's try that again."


Meow Meow: "See my ear floofs?"

L: "Yes, but I need your whole face --"

M: "Says you."


M: "Ope, missed me!"


M: "Missed me again! Whee, this is a fun game! Oh no --"

L: "Gotcha!"


L: "Well, geez, Meow Meow, you could at least smile for me ..."

I shot most of the above sequence blind, holding the camera in my lap. Getting my face behind the camera so close to the ground only served as an invitation for Meow Meow to wander out of frame -- to tap my face with her paw, which she tried to do repeatedly. "Give me some love!" she seemed to say.

I think that was supposed to be my line.

Windows of opportunity

Meow Meow quickly located the best sunning spots in the house a day or two after we brought her home as a foster. Lately, we've been keeping her favorite windows open (with screens in place) to let fresh air in. We can hear the birds outside at all hours of the day -- which got me thinking about the eaves and how it might not be too hard to hang a bird feeder or two beneath them.

All in the name of kitty entertainment.

Now that we've got a mascot

... we need to rethink how we're going to make fostering work.

We're pretty confident that Meow Meow will take well to visitors, given her generally mellow temper around other kitties at the shelter -- when I let her roam the floor of one of the kitty holding areas, she walked right up to the cages and put her nose between the bars. No hissing or posturing, just interest. That was one of the reasons we thought she might be a good fit for us, as we didn't want to have to stop fostering. (And of course, her boundless affection kind of melted me.)

But the logistics of keeping fosters isolated for the requisite quarantine period are a little complicated in our house, so we're working out the details. We also have human company visiting for the first half of August (so the spare bathroom would be occupied). Ultimately, this means we hope to have a new guest by the end of August.

Until then, we'll be posting regularly on Meow Meow's adventures, lavishing her with head scratches and belly rubs, and just delighting in having her as a new addition to our family. We figure she deserves a month with us as the sole object of our attention, too.

Now if I could just get her to look at the camera ...

On endurance

Okay. Meow Meow's story as promised.

Really, it's a tale of two kitties -- Meow Meow's sister, Mimi (not our Mimi), was admitted with her into the shelter at the end of January. Both of them were very sick, and shortly after their arrival, Mimi passed away.

It's not clear what their immediate care situation was before they were brought in, but it seems that they had had a loving home for some time and then ended up losing that. By the time Meow Meow reached the shelter, she had painful mouth ulcers preventing her from eating, and not long afterward, she developed an upper respiratory infection. Weight began to drop from her already petite frame.

With these challenges to her health and the loss of her sister, it was questionable whether Meow Meow would rally. But with lots of TLC from the folks at the SHS, she did -- by the time I picked her up at the end of June, her tongue had healed and her feeding tube, which she had for two months, had been removed.

After hearing Meow Meow's history, I wasn't sure how trusting she would be when I went to introduce myself to her two weeks ago, but she immediately rubbed her head all over my hand as I reached into her cage. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised -- her caregivers at the shelter later told me how calm she's been throughout the various procedures and treatments she's had to endure, and how affectionate she's remained since.

She's just a lovebug. And without question, a resilient one.


Many thanks to everyone at the SHS for taking such good care of our new permanent resident!

In which Leslie confesses

There really was a foster here when I last posted. She went by the name of Meow Meow and came with an incredible story, which I was all set to write about here.

So we did the usual thing, letting her settle into the kitty suite for a day, then giving her access to the upper hall. That's been the point at which I've started trying to photograph all our other fosters as they get comfortable enough to start exploring, playing, asking for affection.

She was having none of it.

I should clarify: she loved checking out the window ledges and pouncing on the Spider. And she loved up on us as if we'd been hers all her life. But the camera -- she didn't quite get it. Or maybe she did, knowing its purpose. I stretched out on the floor, tried different angles, attempted stealth photography. She just wouldn't let me get far enough away to shoot.

Here's a picture of the look she gave me as I sidled up next to her on my tummy, just before she scooted directly toward my face to press her dainty little paw to my nose. A head-bump, a decisive purr.


We adopted her yesterday.


Fear not; there will be more forthcoming on Meow Meow's story, now that the news is out! But we do need to go get kitty supplies of her very own so as not to use what the SHS has given us for fostering purposes ...