CAT UPDATE: WE ARE CAT COLLECTORS
Here is a picture of Zeke taken a few weeks ago. I still haven't fixed the date on my camera, so this was actually taken about two or three days after we found him. The vet said he was six or seven weeks old then, so we figure he is about ten weeks old now.
Bonnie has been very tolerant of Zeke, as you can see from the couch shot above, also taken a few weeks ago. He wants to play a LOT, and he had been tending to attack Bonnie, Abby and Mackie. Our three older kitties have been saints, in that they aren't beating up on him constantly. They will let him grab on to them, kick them, bite them, etc. until they have had enough... usually within 30 seconds they are cuffing him or pushing him away. Anyway, he was pestering them enough that we thought he needed a playmate:
This is Ziva. I took this picture of her last night. She is about 4-6 weeks older than Zeke, and is about a pound heavier. We adopted her from an animal shelter in Emmett, Idaho where my sister-in-law volunteers, and brought her home with us on Monday. For the first couple of days she was very nervous. She growled and hissed at all the other cats... but within two days, she and Zeke have hit it off well. They have been chasing each other all over the house, knocking over plants, breaking things, etc. It is not uncommon to see them sprinting throughout the house, or frantically wrestling with each other. Ziva doesn't bother the three older cats at all, and Zeke bothers them far less than he had been doing because he knows Ziva will play with him. 
What a sweetie!
Baby Mackie doesn't mind Ziva at all. He is being very patient with the kittens, although in the above shot he does look a bit pissed off. It is probably because he wants to finish either Zeke or Ziva's food. That's good restraint you are practicing there, Mackie Boy! But...
...just like any of us who should be dieting, temptation often wins out! If you compare this picture of Mackie and Zeekie to one from a few weeks back, you might notice how much Zeke has grown... but Mackie still outweighs him by about 15 pounds; Mac weighs 17-18 pounds to 3 lbs. 3 oz. for Zeekie.
We thought it would be better to introduce a friend for Zeke now, instead of after Mac, Abby and Bonnie are gone. I'm guessing that the older three cats, ages 15, 14 and 13, will be around for a few more years in some combination. It is easier to introduce cats to each other when they are small, and Zeke would probably be 4 or 5 years old when the others have departed, making the introduction of a kitten then less likely to result in friendship... so... we are cat collectors. The number will eventually dwindle to two, but for now we have FIVE of them!
Time to go put away breakable items and "toddler-proof" the house... which we should have done BEFORE we brought Ziva home!!!
6 Comments:
Five cats? That's nothing. We have eight. It's been as high as ten, but our two oldest ones have died (one last year, one 3 years ago). The more the merrier.
Who Hijacked Our Country
I want to know what your secret is! Gallons of catnip? One of our older cats is still wary of the stray we brought in, and the other just plain dislikes him, and it's been about two months.
You already know what I'm going to say about little Zeke, don't you?
I bet that's what Fred the Cat looked like when he was a kitten. When I found him he was about a year old so his kittenish days were over.
When I see really cute things I begin to cry. Who the hell knows why? But when I saw those pictures the tears began to roll. God they are so cute that I really can't stand it.
I had three cats at one time, a few years ago. I took in a stray adult lady cat not knowing that she was smuggling contraband. Just a few weeks later four little kittens came into my life. My friend took two and I kept Mom Cat and her two remaining daughters, Grimley and Claire. When Grimley and Claire were old enough to do kitten damage to the house, what a fun time that was. Grimley was a priss. We often called her prom cat. Claire was a pig about her care of herself and we often called her pig cat. Claire loved to sneak into the bed room, climb up under the sheets and bed spread and go to sleep. We would look in the bedroom and see a little lump under the covers, it was Claire.
Both of the daughters had to be put to sleep some years later due to cancer. First Grimley and then two years later Claire. Mom Cat out lived them all. Fred the Cat showed up about a year before Mom Cat had to be put to sleep due to kidney failure and old age. Right now Fred the Cat is all the cat we need because we believe having him is equal to having about a zillion cats. :)
Now go and pet all those kitties for me and Fred the Cat too.
PoP: We refer to Zeke as SQUIRREL BOY. He is as agile as a squirrel, and as mischeivous as one! I refer to Ziva as Panther Girl or Tiger Girl.
Tom: I agree! I wish I could have that many cats. I see nothing wrong or crazy about it at all... I have friends in the Eugene area who have had lots and lots of cats at various times, and their house is built so that from any place where you can see into several rooms at once, at one time a person could see at least as many cats as there were rooms visible. WOnderful!!!
Randal: I'm not sure what the secret is... maybe it's just that the older three are all very mellow to begin with and also that they are getting too old to put up very much fuss!
It's good to see there's a new generation of Evans cats coming up.
So, it looks like you guys are filling your empty nest with kitties!
Love it!!
If I had kitties, I'd be just like you.
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