Diane G. is a regular here, and she entered her lovely tabby, Winston, who seems to be a bit of a narcoleptic. Anyway, here’s what Diane has to say about him:
Five months after losing our last cat, two of us approached the third member of the household about our severe case of kitteh withdrawal. “We have enough pets,” he grumped. So my daughter and I outvoted him, and a few days later a certain kitty at the local pound caught our fancy. According to the tag on his cage he had been trapped, was perhaps about 2 years old, and “appeared to be socialized.” When I picked him up after the mandatory neutering, he was groggy, feverish, emaciated, and sporting a wicked case of pound flu. Here he is, shortly after we brought him home, with Mr. We-Have-Enough-Pets:
In those early days Winston was mainly cuddly and sneezy, but after a course of antibiotics and TLC his true impitude began to emerge. He has a great fondness for dragging soft items from the basement all the way up the stairs, through his kitty door, and into the main living quarters, something I figured out after wondering how on earth golf-club head covers kept appearing in the family room. The bounty has since included four fuzzy slippers, two stress balls, the odd piece of foam rubber, a hand towel, and countless stuffed animals; eventually we learned to play our part by taking armfuls of his treasures back downstairs for him to rediscover and haul up again.
Among his more amazing talents are Cute Sleeping (see above) and Cute Sitting, preferably in armchairs, always favoring the right arm, though he makes do if he finds the chair already occupied:
Somehow the 8lb 3oz waif we brought home managed to gain five pounds in four months. We’d had trouble coming up with a name for him at first; suddenly a raft of new ones suggested themselves (Goodyear? MetLife? Hindenburg?). He is now becoming acquainted with the ”Stimulo”cat dish.
Despite his current tubbiness, he’s turned into a healthy little dynamo, zipping up and down his cat tree and pouncing on bugs and the occasional bare foot. Oddly, though, he appears to have a sort of visual deficit; while he can spy a moth on the ceiling, he will also run into doors and walls and occasionally executes a spectacular long jump when he realizes he’s about to run headlong into a sleeping dog.
Naturally we are all besotted with him, as perhaps you can tell by this short little music-video my daughter, Liz, made.
Frustrated. How do we send pix?
Just google my name and the name of my Univesity, and you’ll get my work email address. Send stuff there.
Or just click on “Research Interests” at the above right.
You know, it’s amazing. The more uncomfortable-looking the position the cat twists into, the happier the cat. And Winston sure looks like he’s about as happy as they come!
But, I gotta ask: how did Liz manage to keep him sufficiently removed from the keyboard so as to permit typing? That’s something I’m still trying to figure out….
Cheers,
b&
I was just re-reading Baihu’s tale last night, and that shot of him wrapped around your arm always slays me. 😀
Liz calls Winston her muse, but I think she doesn’t get much done when he’s in her lap; he’s got an uncanny way of emulating Parkinson’s law in its spatial corollary…
When I’m trying to type he likes to play with my mouse. (Well, duh.)
The great thing is, that’s a daily occurrence….
Well, to be fair, even if her productivity goes down while he’s in her lap, if her total productivity goes up, it’s still a win. Heck, even if not, she’s still got a cat in her lap, so it’s still a win….
Cheers,
b&
He is a doll.
And, I laughed out loud at your story. He sounds like a joy to have around. L
Lovely. In Winston versus Stimulo I predict a win for the cat ~ e.g. he’ll tip it over or get a Humin to do the thumbs work. Any chance of a short video/photographs of him defeating the kibble dispenser ?
BTW nice to see a home with plenty of books to hand ~ inc. birdy books !
Amazingly enough, Winston shares my fondness for birds…
😉
Frankly, I always feel like a sadist when I feed him with the Stimulo. He hasn’t seemed too fazed, however, having about the same daintiness toward food as the average Labrador Retriever. The dish does slow him down. We have to assume he’s using his paws for the deeper ‘bowls’ as the food does disappear, but all we’ve seen so far is him smushing his lower jaw & tongue into the smaller bowls. Where there’s a will…
Will let you know if I get any good images. (What I’d really like to do is put a game cam in the stairwell to catch him lugging up some of his prizes!)
Could he be more adorable? (rhetorical) You don’t have enough pets if you don’t have a kitteh. Wonderful Mr Winston.
Diane- a while ago I promised video of Merlyn chasing squirrels around. If you’re still interested, click my gravatar for my e-mail.
Email sent!
I have two lovebirds . . . I’m good for now.
Awww…he’s such a cute kitty. Glad he’s got such a good home with you, Diane (and Liz and Mr. We-have-enough-pets).
That is a beautiful cat!
Oh my goodness. He is absolutely darling. Two years old?? He’s kept his kitten face! He looks like an absolute sweetheart. It warms my heart to see homeless critters given loving homes and enriching the lives of their humans in return. :’)
(Your situation sounds so much like my own growing up. My mom has always been the I-want-to-save-every-homeless-pet-in-the-world type, while my dad was Mr. We Have Enough Pets. Thankfully she likewise triumphed [eventually]. I even got grumbles [as an adult] when I acquired my most recent rescue, but he’s now my dad’s favourite as he has the same sort of eccentric-affectionate personality as your kitty. No one can resist a cat that wants to be your nap buddy.)
Oh, I identify right back at you! (Would you believe last year we even ended up with rescue chickens?) Funny how often Mr. WHEPs turn out to be secret softies.
Winners strikes us as very kittenish as well. When I took him in for a second, more thorough vet exam (I’d gotten concerned about his eyesight), a different vet took a look in his mouth and said that the pristine condition of his teeth suggested that he was probably closer to 1 than 2…
Ironically, we’d set out with the idea that we’d get an adult cat this time, a quieter, more placid addition to the zoo; and instead we ended up with a Taz. (What he really needs is a playmate, of course…)
rescue chickens?
Oh, yeah, in the truest sense. We live in the country, and twice last summer some poor excuse for a hominid dumped chickens at the creek about a half mile down the road from us. (We’ve gotten a few cats like that over the years, too.)
Aw, thanks everyone!
I really love this WEIT-ian series. Apologies to everyone whose kitteh threads I’ve missed in the past several weeks when I was offline; I am working my way through the backlog here but it’s slow going because despite my resolve to read just JAC’s posts, I inevitably get drawn into the comments as well. Y’all are just too entertaining.
I’m not going to miss any kitteh posts, though!
He’s adorable! A champion at cute sitting that’s for sure. What a charmer.
Cute sitting is an excellent talent for a cat to have, and this is a very talented cat. 🙂