Our Feline Overlords

Yesterday we took in two new cats. The older of our former two cats, Lilac, passed away a few weeks ago. It had been her time, really: she reached that point that all pets seem to reach if something else doesn't do them in, when she couldn't get around very well and she was skinny as a rail and her bowel control had reached the point where our first major project after her passing was to rent a Rug Doctor machine and steam-clean our carpets.

Anyhow, a few months back two healthy cats had been deposited upon my parents' doorstep. They'd been well-cared for, but there they were -- we suspect that someone took good care of them until, for one reason or another, they could no longer, and then they got taken to my parents, who are known in their small town for being cat-lovers. And now we've adopted these two lovable felines.

And while they're certainly friendly and good-natured, so far they've annoyed me quite a bit. Some cats are able to pick their way through shelves laden with fragile items because they know precisely how big they are and how much weight they can put on each paw wherever they are, and so on. Not so these two boys (named Lester and Julio -- we didn't pick the names). No, these guys seem to have absolutely no idea how big their own asses are, and this lack of self-awareness is coupled with a fascination with the general concept of "up".

So after about thirty-six hours or so, we're down one lamp and one glass picture frame, plus a number of other items that have been knocked or dislodged from their perches. One of them seems to feel the need to scratch in the litter box for approximately thirteen minutes after each bowel movement, and the other spends the night wandering around trilling. (Or it might be the same one. I don't know, really.)

But anyway, we have two new cats. I hope the third one comes out of hiding soon....

You can see my new feline overlords over at the Flickr photostream, by the way. Just click that Flickr badge thing that's in the sidebar, just beneath my self-photos.