Stephanie Says.. Take a walk inside my head

We have five cats now, as many of you know.  Each has his or her own personality.  By turns, they are shy, brave, bullying, affectionate and talkative.  They don’t often get together as a group unless they are almost out of food.  But each one has purred, meowed, pounced or snuggled their way into our hearts and we can’t imagine life without them.

Annabelle is getting older.  She used to jump up on anything with ease, but now she eyes the counter and takes a few practice jumps before she leaps.  She is still my cat, though she doesn’t watch TV with me quite as often as she used to.  She seems to prefer sitting on the laundry hamper in the hallway, but she will sleep beside me when it is time to go to bed.

  

Allie lives almost exclusively under the dining room table now.  Sometimes she will switch her choice of chairs to sit on, but if you are looking for her, that’s where she’ll be.  If I am very quiet, she will come sit beside me when a movie is on, but should one of the other cats come around, Allie generally runs away.  Still, she remains a sweet girl and will rub against our hands if we pet her head.

 

Paddy is still the most vocal of our cats.  Kenny says she must be part Siamese the way she sometimes warbles.  Paddy is Kenny’s cat, literally shadowing him as he moves from room to room.  She tends to be greedy sometimes, taking food that isn’t in her bowl, but she gets along with the other cats, so I guess they don’t mind.  Paddy is our most graceful cat.  She can move from table to couch to bookshelf without knocking anything over.  But if you make her mad, Paddy will growl at you.  It’s so funny that we laugh at her and she is good natured enough to sweeten up not long after her fits begin.

 

Jonah is our grey cat.  He is the living room cat.  If a doll is in his way, he pushes it aside until he is comfortable in his chair.  Jonah also likes laying on boxes.  Sometimes he will lie with his front paws hanging over the box.  It doesn’t look comfortable, but he doesn’t seem to mind.  Jonah is the cat who sits between us on the couch.  When he feels as if he is not getting enough attention, he will head butt our hands until we pet him.  He can also stand up on his hind legs to beg for people food, which he usually is not allowed to have.

 

For such a big cat, Seth sure is shy.  He spends most of his time upstairs.  Seth likes to get on the bed and make a nest in which to nap.  He lays his head on my shoulder at night while I am reading and seems to read along with me.  Sometimes, when he is comfortable enough with himself to come downstairs, Seth will sit on the back of the couch and look out the window.  Paddy is smaller, much smaller, than he, but she likes to bully poor Seth.  He puts up with it until he has to swat her own the nose with a warning roar.  Seth is pretty quiet and well behaved, but he doesn’t like being in his cage.  He howled the whole time we took him to the vet and was very relieved to be home.

  

Seth (the orange cat) is a big boy. He’s taken to lounging around on my nightstand.  Lounging around is fine, however, it does displace my clock and phone.  So, in an effort to be helpful, I moved the clock and phone onto my bed (nothing like sleeping thisclose to neon red numbers all night).

Now Seth is sleeping on the corner of my bed.  The corner of my bed where I moved my clock and phone.  Silly cat!

We have five cats at our house, which makes life very interesting.  I’m constantly jumping at the flying furballs landing on my desk, bed or lap.

As you can imagine, each cat has his or her unique personality.  Paddy is our Diva.  She’s like a toddler in that what she wants she thinks is hers whether someone else has it or not.  She remains Kenny’s cat and often tucks him in at night by walking her front paws around his blanket

Annabelle is my cat.  She likes to sit between my wrists and the keyboard when I am typing.  She also likes to rub her face against the spine of whatever book I am reading.

Jonah is our TV cat.  He likes to sit on the couch when we’re watching our shows.  He also likes to stand on his hind legs while Kenny’s making a sandwich, though he turned up his nose when we finally gave him some cheese.

Seth is my bedtime buddy.  He will literally lay his head on my shoulder as I’m perusing my latest novel.  He also likes to sprawl on the bathroom floor during the day, causing me to apologize to him at least once in any given twenty four hour period.

As for Allie….well, she’s gone crazy.  She has established our dining room table as her own personal castle and refuses to eat unless we bring food directly to her from the basement.  She sleeps on the dining room chairs though, if I am really quiet at night, she will cuddle on the couch and watch TV with me.  Still, she remains our lovable little “mew-mew” and will consent to a pat on the head every now and then.

Enjoy the latest pictures of our mixed up gang.  The dog is Ben and Jennifer’s Trigger.  She came over to visit one night but our cats scattered and wouldn’t reappear until the door closed behind her.  I think Trigger was disappointed.  She wanted to play.

 

 

 

Dear Dogs and Cats:

The dishes with the paw prints are yours and contain your food. The other dishes are mine and contain my food.

Please note, placing a paw print in the middle of my plate and food does not stake a claim for it becoming your food and dish, nor do I find that aesthetically pleasing in the slightest.

The stairway was not designed by NASCAR and is not a racetrack. Beating me to the bottom is not the object. Tripping me doesn’t help because I fall faster than you can run.