Kitten Wars: Sister’s Babies are Here!

27 Jun 2016 Leave a comment

by Quietude's Junction in Kitten Wars Tags: , , , , ,

The wild kitty outside had kittens in my bush, just like her momma before her. Now I have 3 rambunctious 4 week old kitties running around my porch, tumbling over each other in their joy of life. It makes you appreciate life again watching something that little be that fearless and curious about everything. These babies are precious, adorable balls of fluff. Two are tail-less like their daddy. Only the dark calico female has a tail. She is, by far, the most fearless of the bunch. She tackles the others, leaps through the air pouncing on them all with her arms spread wide. While they play on my porch, my cats watch through the glass windowed door and try to play with them.

I plan on trying to tame those little ones to see if I can find them a new home. Momma kitty is my cat’s sister. She knows where Cleo is, but when I tamed Cleo, she refused to come near. Now she keeps watching me through my glass door to see what I plan on doing. She comes to the door to tell me that I need to feed them, training her kittens to do the same. She is slowly coming closer to me each day, but I’m not gonna hold my breath about taming her.

So life continues and the circle goes on, one kitten at a time.

Kitten Wars: Ninja Kitty and the Art of Being Picked Up

13 Oct 2014 Leave a comment

by Quietude's Junction in journal, Kitten Wars, reflections Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The cats have decided that they will take turns in claiming which human they will deign to show their affection. I’m guessing it is because I am generally quietly relaxing on the sofa, that I get Miss Sofa Shoulder Cat (Teeny) much more frequently than my son who is a constant motion machine. This frustrates him because he wants to pet Teeny and love all over her, but just won’t slow down enough to do so most days. So he picks her up, a lot, which she absolutely does not like and will loudly voice her opinion about on most days.

Teeny will actually tell him off for quite a while when he picks her up. She has this little purrupt meow that she uses quite extensively in multiple sounds and ranges to convey her extreme dislike of being picked up. But, my son is not one to be discouraged. Every day, he picks her up for 5-10 minutes at least 5 times a day during the week and more over the weekends. I’m guessing that he is wearing her down, slowly. She no longer trots off to parts unknown or to the area behind my shoulders on the couch when she sees him coming. She has even not chewed him out about it a few times. So this is progress. She knows he won’t drop her, at least.

Cleo on the other hand has taken to hunting anything that could possibly move in the house. And, quite frankly, even if it doesn’t move, and she can figure out a way to make it move, she does. This includes but is definitely not exclusive to single pieces of toilet paper, nerf darts, pieces of clothing, toy discs, and anything else that she believes can be hunted.

Recently, my son has been shooting off his nerf disc gun much to Cleo’s delight. He has not figured out that the reason he keeps losing his discs is because the cat hijacks them as soon as she finds them. He will go searching for them immediately after shooting them. Counting them up, he gets annoyed when he can’t find one. Then out of the corner of my eye, I spy Cleo. There is the little tuxedo ninja kitty with a disc in her mouth as she trots off to parts hidden from view to play with and stalk her prey once more.

After she has played with her new toy to her delight, she will come out of hiding and love all over my son. I’m sure that she is thanking him for her new toy, begging him to give her more.

The loss of one too young

04 Sep 2014 4 Comments

by Quietude's Junction in journal, reflections Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

This morning before work, I found out that I lost a student. As a teacher, I become very attached to the kids I teach, but this one was more special than most. He was one of my troubled babies, but never call him baby to his face. In his eyes he was a man, and probably had been a man in his house for several years despite only being a teenager. He came from a shattered home and was familiar with the judicial system from an early age. He had a smart mouth, quick wit, and despite all the nastiness that life had dealt him, a closely guarded soft heart. He didn’t let many people in to know that he was secretly a really nice kid living a very bad life. There was not a mean thought or bone in his body, but he had a bad reputation from the time he was about 10 years old. The trouble was from home not being stable.

As adults we think of home as a place of comfort, love, sharing, and safety. He had none of those. From the earliest years he was exposed to drugs, sex, alcohol, and all types of abuse verbal, physical, and mental. He didn’t have a single place to call home. Instead he was shipped between places to live with relatives whenever his welcome was worn thin at whichever school he was currently attending. He was called a “behavior case”, and I admit that he couldn’t keep still or control of his mouth when he wasn’t medicated, which was frequently. Every teacher could tell on the days that he had taken his meds. On those days he was a bright student with a curious mind. He offered opinions, information, and help willingly. He wanted to share, but all of the experiences with the dark days of no medicine got in the way. People didn’t trust him to be the “good” kid that he could be. After a while it became easier to just be the bad kid and to stop trying on the days when his medicine was not available.

He was a very creative kid. He had ideas that he wanted to do and could plan them out. He knew people better than anyone would have expected. When I did a project with all of my students, he created the best out of all of them. Unlike the other boys who created male oriented toys, this boy created toys that girls would love. When I asked him why he did what he did, he said simply, “Girls love hearts. I hope my toys go to little girls who will love them.” I just about cried that day.

As I said, I lost him. He died in a motorcycle accident. Rumors have already started as to why he was on a bike during school hours. Most say he was skipping school or suspended. Some kids who knew him well though, are saying that he was running away, that life had finally dealt him a hand that he couldn’t deal with anymore. No matter what was going through his head, I hope that he finds peace, love, and joy where he is now. No kid deserves the life he was dealt.