Playtime

Mouche finishes her hybernation period of only eating, sleeping, pooping, eating, sleeping and pooping. She has been with us for almost a month now and has started to enjoy playing.

When I gave her Geisha's toys 3 weeks ago, she was not the slightest interested. Now you threw her a little ball, and she would go after it. A few days ago I was just wiggling my toe and she snapped at it. I also wagged my finger in front of her face and one of her front feet snapped at it back. It was really like playing the hom pim pah game.

So yes, it is fun to see her interact with us. But one morning I went to my laundry room and saw such a mess on the floor with my nursery pots going upside down and the potting soil all over the place. It seemed that Mouche found it also interesting to climb to the windowsill and drop the pots down!

Urgh....

Mouche's first video

Mouche and Vincent

Vincent thought Mouche was afraid of him. But the fact is Mouche is afraid of anybody who is new or any sudden movement. She is such a delicate little kitty who jumps at everything and hides under the sofa or bookcase or table when she sees someone new or senses aggressive movement.

But after one week, she gets comfortable with Vincent. She sleeps on his lap and more often than not, she approaches him as he eats. She doesn't even bother to get near me as we eat because I tend not to give pets food when I eat. I think it is a bad education. Pets can have the food AFTER we finish eating or before. Normally I feed her before we eat in the hope that she won't beg for food when we finally eat. But of course, being a cat, no matter how full her stomach is, she will always meow under our table. Before Vincent arrived here, in her first week in our house, Mouche tried to climb the table where the food was. I slapped her feet lightly and she never did it again when we eat.

I guess one thing that I like about Mouche is that she listens. She knows when we teach her that something is bad, and she never repeats it again.

However when there is a bad police (me), there should be a good police (Vincent). So he's spoiling Mouche as he always spoils all cats. It's fine with me. He is only here in the evenings and during weekends anyway. Not enough spoiled moments to make Mouche a spoiled cat. :)

Cute when asleep

What? Did I say that Mouche looked mean and not cute? Apparently it is only when she has her eyes open. Look at the photos of her below when she's asleep or just awake. She is as cute as the other kittens!

By the way, she has claimed the pillow hers since the first week she was brought here. You can try to remove her from that pillow and sit on it. The second you leave the pillow, she'll be claiming it back!

Twice fatter

I think Mouche is twice fatter (read: more healthy) now compared to the first time she arrived in the house. I try to give her nutritious food since the experience with our former cat, Geisha, showed that if a kitten was spoiled from the early period of their life with only fish, it would be very picky later on. Not to mention that it would result to even worse smell and shape of poop and the lack of energy because of the lack of carbohydrate. So whenever possible, I would differ the menu for Mouche every day. If I cook rice, then she gets to eat little rice with her kitten fish food. If I cook pasta, she gets little pasta (without the sauce). But most of the time I feed her with oats. We have a lot of oatmeals that we don't eat that much except when I make cookies. Oats are very healthy so it should be good for Mouche.

I think she is a happy kitten, though she is still very shy with unknown people (even with known ones). Too bad she is not very photogenic in front of the camera. She looks so mean more often than she looks cute. :P

Mouche

Mouche, 2 months old (maybe)

So... it's been decided. The kitty is named Mouche, which means "fly" (the animal, not the verb) in French. Of course I thought it was weird. Why would you call your pet another animal's name? It's like calling a dog "Elephant." But I didn' resist, because even before the kitty was officially named such, I'd already called her "Mush, Mush." It has no meaning in Indonesian or English, I just thought it was cute. And Mouche is pronounced the same.

Before Vincent got to the name, though, he was observing the kitty whether she had the "thing" that distinguishes a male mammal or a female. He decided that he couldn't find the male's reproduction weapon, so it's gotta be a female. Only a few days after that, he found out that a calico, the term for tricolor cat, has always been a female. Chances are little to none that it would be a male. And even if there is, it's almost certain that a male calico is infertile or inable to reproduce. With Mouche having white, black and creme colours, if we had known this before, we wouldn't have had to spend time guessing what her gender had been. :P

And not surprisingly at all, Indonesians made up a cute story (more like superstition) on the supposedly scientific explanation on why tricolour cats are nearly always female. It is said that male kittens that have three colours will never survive because the father cat always eats them; while he lets the female kittens alive. When I asked why it was so, the answer was: "Maybe the father cat doesn't want competition at the mating season."

I guess the superstition was a quicker way to say that tricolour cats are always female. Imagine if you have to explain it scientifically to an Indonesian that it is genetical, the difference between male carrying xy chromosomes and female xx and how the fur colour is highly affected by those chromosomes. It already seems very long and tiring just to imagine it.

Comfort Zone: Armpit

The kitty relaxes more and more each day. She is not afraid to ask for food, though not as demanding as Geisha, but she surely has the potential to be so (doh!).

(Notice how I address the kitten as "she". Until we figure out that it is not a male, it will be a she for now)

She also enjoys snuggling a lot. She doesn't want to be left alone. When I go downstairs, she'll follow me downstairs, stay with me until I finish cooking and go upstairs once I feel like watching TV or working. At times she'll meow underneath my table begging me to pick her up to my lap. But she tends to find the comfort in the weirdest place: my armpit. Once she does, she will be fast asleep.

My sister says, "It's normal. She's a baby afterall. All babies want to hide in the mother's armpit, no matter if it is sweaty and smelly."

Shy Kitty

The (still) unnamed kitty whom I keep calling with different names all the time is probably the shiest kitten I've ever known. She jumps at every little movement around her, at every louder sound made and at every approach my sister or I make.

The first morning she spent in my house, my neighbour was performing the dengue spray. It was super loud and she was totally terrified. She managed to climb the bookcase, which was very tall, and sat on top of a range of my thick Jamie Oliver cookbooks.

at the bookcase

Then a few days ago I was looking for a bag to contain a present for my mother, found it and threw the rest of the bags on the floor. She took it as her safe haven for days, feeling comfortable to sleep inside it.

one of her secret sleeping place

Now she is more comfortable with me. She starts eating a lot. When she is hungry she makes noises so that I would move my arse downstairs and fix her some meal. When she's lonely, she'll rub herself on my feet and hope that I will pick her up on my lap and pat her neck.

still highly alerted

But she's still got that awareness in her eyes. Like she doesn't trust me wholly. That's absolutely understandable, especially after I was mad at her for pooping in my bedroom. :P But she's getting to like people. And hopefully when Vincent comes back from France next Monday, she'll behave herself.

Such a lazy kitten

It pooped in my bedroom!!!!

Last week it pooped on the bathroom mat (I threw away the mat because it was cheap anyway). Not long after it pooped on the towel I put in the kitchen. Soooo.... lazy to get itself to its own litter box. But I gave it a good slap yesterday while pointing at her poopie mess on the wooden floor in my bedroom, then took it downstairs to the litter box. It knew I was angry and it tried to make it up by rubbing itself against my feet, but I wouldn't take the bribe until it knew it was wrong.

I think the kitty learnt its lesson.... for now. I just saw it go downstairs to the litter box 5 minutes ago.

Unnamed Kitty

Hello,

Welcome to our kitty blog. I wrote our to refer to me and my boyfriend, Vincent, but I don't think he will ever write here. Even to write an email consisting of 2 sentences is already very hard for him. :) But this blog is dedicated to the new member of the family - a kitten that I adopted a week ago as one of the Christmas presents for Vincent. Mr Boyfriend is now still in France and he hasn't seen the kitten in real yet. But I sent him this photo so that he would be aware that there would be 2 beings welcoming him back home this weekend:

Since Vincent is the one who is most fond of cats, and the kitty is meant to be his, it is unnamed yet. Plus I don't know whether it is a he or a she. But since it is soooo very shy (so different from Geisha, our former beloved cat who was super extrovert), maybe it's a she.

Right now I'm guessing that the shy kitty is hiding under the sofa or book cabinet as I'm writing this blog.