OMGKitty!!!!

Guess who's one year old!

So yesterday (April 13th), was Katamari's first birthday! What a long way she's come...

I made her a kitty birthday "cake" out of catfood, kitty treats and little bit of tuna:

There were also presents!

Kitty's grown up.

So we think that Katamari has reached her full size. She looks like a grown-up cat, although she still might be on the small side by regular cat standards.

We've been asleep on the job...

Happy New Year, folks! Sorry for the lack of pictures for the past few weeks. Aside from Holiday preparations and travel (Katamari got to spend Christmas with Matt), I got hit with a lot of extra work I had to finish before New years. Also, we got a Nintendo Wii for christmas, so, basically, everything was conspiring to keep me from updating. We now return to our regularly scheduled program of cat pictures.

Little plumpers

So we can definitely tell that Katamari has grown, although she's still small. One of our friends came over and picked her up, saying "How is this cat even real!? Is this as big as she's going to get? Is she a midget?" For the past month, she's been eating like a tiny horse and getting a round little belly, tipping the scales at a whopping 4 lbs. On our last vet visit, the vet noted her belly and said that it was time to stop letting her eat as much as she wants and start feeding her the recommended adult food portions. Since this meant cutting her food back a bit, she's been looking at her food dish and then looking at me as if to say "where's the rest?"

The notorious D.O.G.

So, Katamari got to have her first encounter with a dog on Sunday and I think it's safe to say that she was not happy about it. Richard's parents were over with the family dog, Jack. Although Jack behaved in a perfectly gentlemanly manner, Katamari was still quite perturbed. She tried to stay up on high places to watch him, but would arch her back and puff up her fur whenever he got too close. I think if she'd had more time, she might have gotten used to him, but for the few hours he was here she never quite warmed up.

How Big is this cat going to get?

So a question I keep getting asked is: How big is she going to get? Naturally, everybody loves her tiny and some have even recommended that I "feed her coffee to stunt her growth!"

I know she's grown a little since we got her, although it's hard to say how much. When she first arrived, she seemed so tiny and delicate that I was constantly anxious about accidentally squishing her. I don't know if she got bigger and more sturdy looking, or if I just adjusted to having her underfoot, but I don't feel nearly as anxious about her now. Still, how big can we expect her to get?

My guess is that she's going to be small. Although Scottish Folds are supposed to be medium sized cats, the vet suggested that she was small for her age and a woman in the waiting room at the vet's office told me that she had a female Scottish Fold who "never got bigger than this..." she said, holding out her hands like she was holding a small football. I expected her to fill out as she grew, but she still seems very small.

Even as she grows, she's still kind of dainty and not as stocky as Scottish Folds often are. I can see that she probably won't ever be big. Still, it remains to be seen how small she'll turn out to be.How

It's a BABY!

So my kitten came in on schedule July 4th. As soon as I approached the baggage office at LaGuardia I could hear loud, insistent meowing. Even as I carried her out of the airport and into the taxi line, she kept meowing and moving around her carrier. Her spunk was unexpected after seeing the timid little chicago-bound kitten curled up quietly in her carrier yesterday. Katamari was not frightened at all...just worked up. She meowed in the taxi all the way home, darting her little head around to try to see what was going on.

As soon as I let her out of her carrier, the meowing stopped and she ran right into her litterbox, relieving me of all my fears that she might have box problems. She had a field day exploring the room, shortly discovering her food and water and scarfing them down. Richard made her chase the laser pointer for a little while and we tried to take pictures of her even though she was moving too fast to get many good ones.

I was surprised with how small she was. I guess I haven't seen a real, live kitten in awhile, because she seems so ridiculously tiny and delicate. I had to pet her little head with two fingers. And that head! It was like an apricot with two marbles stuck in it. I knew that Scottish Folds have big eyes, but in person they're almost surreal. She looked like a little cat alien.

Once I was no longer worried for her, I went to the kitchen to make some food. She came out meowing and curling around my feet, obviously dying of curiosity to see what I had up there on the counter. She managed to climb all the way up my pant leg to take a peek before I detatched her. I was glad that she was so outgoing and was adapting so quickly. Still, all the things I read about Scottish Folds not being a very vocal breed don't seem to apply to this one. She's a meower. She meows for attention and makes little "murrrr" sounds while she's playing. Now that she's used to the house, she's staked out her spots. Since she doesn't seem to like to be too far from me, she sleeps on my desk, lap or windowsill while I'm in my office, and on my bed, windowsill or nightstand if I'm in the bedroom. So far, I couldn't be happier with her.

Oh Noes! A Mixup!

So I arrive at LaGuardia at 11:30 last night and am anxiously running all over the baggage terminal. I was told that she was arriving on a United flight, but the United desk said it was American and the American Desk didn't know what I was talking about, so finally I had to call the central baggage office, who informed me it was Continental.

Upon finally arriving at the Continental baggage office, I see a cat carrier sitting on the desk. A quick glance and I see the name of the breeder on the paper taped to the top. I smile at the girl behind the desk and say "I believe this is my cat."

She takes my ID and takes the papers off of the carrier, looks at my ID, looks confused and then says "Is your name Nayder?"

Equally confused, I say "no!" Then pick up the carrier to look inside and say "This isn't my cat!" The thing is, though, I know exactly which cat it is. It's kitten #0208. That kitten's picture showed up on the breeder's website shortly after I had already put my deposit down on #0203, and, really, if I could have gotten two, I would have gotten that one, too. In the picture, it was ridiculously cute...it looked like a pokemon:

Although, looking at the real deal in front of me, all I can say is that the kitten is ten times cuter in person. It was curled into a timid little ball in the back of the carrier staring out with the biggest eyes I may have ever seen on a real cat. I took a picture, but the picture barely does it justice. I guess that cameras not only add ten pounds, but make cat eyes look less big:

It seems that kitten #0208 was heading to it's new owner in Illinois, and had accidentally ended up with my kitten's shipping tag. My kitten, meanwhile, didn't make it's connecting flight in Houston and was being kenneled there until it could take the next flight. Mostly I just felt bad for the kittens. As if leaving home wasn't bad enough, now they had to prolong the confusion period before they got to their new homes. Kitten #0208 looked distraught enough as it was.

So I left laguardia empty-handed and have to go back this afternoon to get my poor kitty. I only hope that my kitten, too, is ten times cuter in person.

The Blog About my Cat

Today I am getting a cat.

Some time ago, I decided that I wanted to get a Scottish Fold. After about a year of searching and researching, I found a kitten, plunked down my money and today she will arrive by plane from Arkansas.

I suppose I could have gotten a kitten more quickly, but I found myself being very particular. Aside from wanting a female shorthair with folded ears who had some sort of white/tabby or white/calico coloring, I wanted to see a picture of the kitten prior to committing and I wanted that picture to make me WANT THAT KITTEN SO BAD!!!

I waffled on a lot of cats over the course of the year. Since I haven't had a cat in over ten years and my boyfriend made it clear that there could only be one cat (and even then, it is accepted only begrudgingly), I felt this pressure to make sure that the cat I got was "the one." I had been looking at Scottish Fold breeder websites, rescue sites and I even went to the local animal shelter to see if maybe I would get my heart stolen away by one of the cats there. As much as I was urged in that direction, I was, admittedly, still holding out for a fold.

And so it is that tonight I am bringing home a 12 week old, female, shorthair, brown patched tabby and white Scottish Fold that I have planned to name Katamari.

This is the only picture I have seen of my cat up to this point. Still, the picture definitely provokes an OMGKITTEN!!1! response. I've spent the last month researching and purchasing cat products and now have a corner of my home office set up as "kitten space." Now I'm just waiting nervously.