So cute it makes my teeth ache

I tell you, the amount of cute in the house is absolutely staggering.

Not just Thing 4, who, bless MY heart, while cute, never, ever ever ever stops talking. Yes, I should count my blessings, yes, they are healthy and happy and creative and active, ye gods are they active, but really, all I want to do now is put my head under a pillow for about a week.

But when I put my head under my pillow (sleeping with an elaborate System of Pillows is a holdover from my very first days at college), I'm not getting lots of sleep. Not because of talking children, but because of this:


He looks pretty quiet there, doesn't he? But a five month old cat is still enough kitten that tearing around in the night after the other two, temptingly adult, cats, is more than he can resist. Fortunately he has orange eyelashes (orange eyelashes!) and I find him endearing.

How did I end up with three cats? Am I really trying to go the Crazy Lady route? My hair is increasingly gray and curly; I'm still skinny enough that my clothes are falling off, so yes, the evidence is pretty strong that I'm just a few shopping bags shy of muttering to myself.

We got the Elusive Gray Cat, named Grebo, from the pound after our black kitten/cat ran off and was eventually presumed dead. We loved the gray cat -- big, bowling ball head and very affectionate. But when we got him home, it became quickly apparent that 1) the resident, lovely Burmese hated him and 2) he was going to pretty much stay under Thing 1's bed. He's a cat we more or less just support, rather than engaging with. It's been about four months, and he's still extremely shy.

Eventually, I discovered that another Russian Blue was at the shelter, and I thought, "We'll get another gray cat and there will be at least one where I can see it." So we went, and looked, and she was, well, boring. But. . .

There was a little orange cat, and we let him out just to say hi, and he rocketed around, batting at things, and then climbed the cages to a cubbyhole over our heads and by the time we pulled a bench over there and hauled him down and finally stopped laughing, we thought, "Well, why not?"

And that is how I moved from a relatively sane Two Cat Household to a Really Pushing It Three Cat one, but I'm not scooping, so I'm free to love the new one as much as I want to.

There's enough angst, real horrible sorrow, hurt feelings, bad job situations, financial crises, political misfortune, and pain to go around. For tonight, I'm going to celebrate Fred Weasley, our small clown cat.