Everything's a toy

Before I go and do the 4,000 things I have to do today, I thought I'd share this video with you. We discovered recently that Oscar tries to catch your breath when you gently blow in his face. Here, he also gets a little excited and catches Matt in the face. I don't know why, but this video tickled me more than anything has in a long time. Playing it again and again, I weep with laughter each time. It's the way he extends his arm to grab Matt's face, it's the way he unsolicitedly attempts to reach out for it a second time, it's the way he turns his little head beforehand in a plotting way, it's the way he looks like a right numpty grabbing at the air with his mouth open. Oh, I wish I could keep him.

Silly Celia

Despite her general grumpiness, little madame Celia is an ever so funny cat, so I thought I'd share some videos on my blog. For example, I've noticed that when I make kissing noises, she pushes her whiskers forward but remains otherwise largely unabashed. She does is every time and it certainly doesn't look as though it's because I'm stressing her out or she's displeased. Take a look:

And then less surprising is her habit of trying to get into the kitchen drawer in which her treats are kept. I know most cats do this but it's so amusing to see the focused determination on her face and her paw actions that resemble someone whose craft it is to scratch away at kitchen drawers. Here she is "in the zone":

Celia used to cause us no end of trouble with her persistence in jumping onto the kitchen surfaces. With that level of determination, if she was a human, she'd have already completed several PhDs and been lecturing at Harvard by now or discovering the cure for cancer or something. Anyway, we tried everything we humanely could to discourage her from jumping up: simply removing her repeatedly, telling her off, spraying her with water and other things that were probably flirting with the boundaries of animal abuse (of course I'm joking...) but she still wouldn't learn. She was even sneaky with it - she would jump up and then of course we'd shout at her to get down but she'd just look at us and unless we actually got up and made our way to her, she would just carry on going about her business up there (sniffing things, licking things, removing objects that no other cat would be interested in, all the while yowling triumphantly). Even when we mock stood up to take her off, she'd realise that we were just being lazy and almost laugh at our insolence with her golden saucer eyes.  

Anyhow, it got to the point where there really was no point adding stress to this poor cat's life when it was clearly to no avail, so we've now totally overlooked this little thing of hers and decided that if she jumps up onto a hot stove, it's her problem. Just kidding. But since we've allowed her free reign on the countertops, she has become such a jolly cat, as if everything she ever wished for was to sniff around on a 2x9 foot countertop and it's materialised. She's even started purring again (it was like discovering Atlantis) and she now lies there a lot of the time looking like a furry black princess. Ah, how we really hope she finds a lovely home. And, actually, that she'll stop nursing her kittens. For heaven's sake they're practically like teenagers and it's rather reminiscent of the "bitty" skit in Little Britain.

Mini Monkey

For some reason I've gotten into trying to capture the kittens' comical antics. Frustratingly, they never do their "thing" as well as usual when a camera is pointed at them, but I did manage to catch Mini-Cat doing her monkey impression. Had basic science not proved this impossible, I'd bet there was gibbon in her ancestry, or at the very least lemur. 

Check her out:

In other news, I forgot to announce officially that Rosey is back with us. And is a boy. The latter detail is proving troublesome because he looks such like a fluffy little girl. The fact that we can't physically bring ourselves to call her anything other than Rosey (because it's so fitting) doesn't help matters. We must keep an eye on this because everybody knows there's nothing worse than a cat with identity issues.  He's been doing great though. The vet checked him over and said that apart from his snotty nose, he couldn't even tell he'd had pneumonia. He confirmed Rosey's masculine status and even had a surprisingly good old feel of his, er, assets. Then he lifted him up to his face and cooed "Look at your little head, look at your gorgeous little head. Look how small it is." Matt said (later) that that kind of thing must be attractive in a man, loving animals and all that. Well, it was, but was then promptly spoilt by the two of them discussing British football for ten minutes. I had to literally interject with "So, Rosey's eating. Can I give him something that he'll eat more of?" Honestly, you think you can move to Canada and get away from such disgusting football nonsense.

Anyway, here's a video of my precious Roseykins: