Adopted anoth­er kit­ten from the Humane Society (and I was­n’t able to wait until the new year). When I went to go see him at the shel­ter, he jumped into my arms, start­ed purring, and would­n’t stop nuz­zling my face. Even if he was any less cute, there’s no way I could have left him there.

He’s exact­ly what I was look­ing for: four months old, neutered, male, with a stub­by tail. Cats with stub tails from shel­ters usu­al­ly have their tails cut short because they’ve been run over by a bike, or caught frost­bite, but on him there’s no sign of scar­ring so he was prob­a­bly born with it.

I’ve yet to name him cause I want to see what kind of per­son­al­i­ty he devel­ops first.

At this point, his res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tion led to sores and he was bleed­ing from him nose. That’s why he looks sort of sad and grog­gy.

When I got him, he had an upper res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tion and was infest­ed with fleas. I kept him sep­a­rat­ed from Dolly for more than a week, but she still man­aged to catch both. Now she’s real­ly grumpy and sick, and he’s com­plete­ly over it. She also feels huge, because the lit­tle guy is so small right now.

He likes to sleep by rest­ing his chin on my cheek, or lying right across my neck. I’m cur­rent­ly try­ing to change his sleep­ing pat­terns because he’s still a noc­tur­nal cat and gets up in the mid­dle of the night to lick my face. And because he’s a kit­ten who does­n’t know any bet­ter, he thinks Dolly is play­ing with him when she gives him a swipe in annoy­ance. There haven’t been any real scraps between them yet. More of a play­ful fight­ing, where Dolly gives as good as she gets.

He tries to sleep with her all the time, and Dolly is usu­al­ly just too lazy to move away. I’m pret­ty sure this has helped her get used to hav­ing him around.

His tail isn’t buried under Dolly’s fat — that’s how long it is.

I won­der if I can be as good as Tiana and only write about him once a month the way she does with her son. But cats grow up so fast; they reach adult­hood in one year instead of 18, so I’m more tempt­ed to record him as much as pos­si­ble when he’s so small and cute. I just don’t want to be a mom­my blog­ger.