Kitties’ night out!
Our pregnant mare, Hannah, has been showing signs that she’s about to foal, so my wife is spending the night at the farm. Actually, no, to be more precise, she’s spending the night in the barn with Hannah. We love our critters.
In the meantime, I’ve declared it Kitties’ Night Out here at the house, and both Othello and Olivia are moving about freely. They’ve been playing quite a bit, though I think Othello’s feeling his age around this nutty kid who considers any moving limb – even a human ankle – something viable to play with. Any twitch of the tail, any paw moved, is likely to earn to poor guy a kitten pounce. He’s put her in her place a couple of times too, without hurting her. (He doesn’t have front claws, so there really isn’t much he can do. She, on the other hand…) The one thing that has calmed Olivia down has been letting Xena in for a bit, but Xena’s so much bigger than her that it just completely terrifies the kitten, which she then expresses by climbing up my bare legs with her little kitten claws. My favorite part of the evening has been going to bed (a bit early for me, especially on a Saturday night), and waking up with two sleeping cats next to me. It’s been a long time since I’ve woken up with two sleeping cats – the last time that happened, it was Othello and Iago.
Anyway, as of about 2:30am, I’ve put Olivia in the bedroom – with the door closed – so she can get some sleep. As long as I’m awake and there are lights on, she can’t/won’t sleep, even though her sleepy little kitten eyes tell a completely different story. She’s also discovered how to reach the top of my desk (after evicting Othello from his “co-pilot’s chair” next to the desk!).
One of Hannah’s stablemates gave birth to another filly this week, but did so unexpectedly (apparently the approaching thunderstorms didn’t do her any favors) and the filly was literally born in a less than clean environment (well, okay, a pile of manure); as a result, both are at the vet because an infection has set in. At last report, though, everyone will pull through just fine. So now that we’ve put the baby down, Othello’s sitting across my arms – a helpful talent shared by all cats – as I listen to some Mike Oldfield and work on the cover illustration for an upcoming new Odyssey2 cartridge from Packrat Video Games called … Read more
After finding Olivia asleep, I decided I should join her (though not on the bench), and after I laid down in the bed, I found that I suddenly had a kitten sleeping right next to my head. Funny how that works out – I guess my shoulder is even better than the bench, and probably warmer too. But then we woke up, and after jumping down to go eat some food and drink some water, Olivia decided it was time to attack the bench! … 
Poor Othello, he hasn’t been getting a lot of face time, what with all of the other cat-related news going on. Othello celebrates his 12th birthday in a couple of months, and before we adopted Olivia, we took him to the vet to get his shots brought up to date and for a general checkup. The good news is that my little fuzzy guy is the very picture of health – he’s still active and fit, and doesn’t have any major health issues. He keeps in shape with repeated bouts of IMS (Invisible Mouse Syndrome), symptoms of which include chasing across the house after invisible objects at top speed. I think he does this just for the exercise myself. As for Olivia, she’s fine and she’s fiesty and was bored to tears today because I had to feed horses in the morning, take out the trash, and then get what little sleep I was going to get before having to go to work. Life as a kitten is rough! We have bad weather on the way, so Xena will probably be coming into the house. We’ll see how Olivia likes her “big sister” who happens to be a giant dog. (Seriously, at most they’ll probably only get a glimpse of each other.) … 
Our new kitten now has a name – it’s Olivia! So we have Othello and Olivia. (It’s a bit of a reach, but you can also shorted this name to “Livia,” who was Xena’s daughter in the last season of Xena: Warrior Princess, but that’s a coincidence; earlier today I had proposed “Mitzi,” slightly rearranged from “Nimitz,” the sentient treecat who perches himself on Honor Harrington’s shoulder in the Honor Harrington sci-fi novels that my wife likes so much. Perhaps not coincidentally, this kitty like perching on her shoulder too. Probably just as well for the memory of the late real-life Fleet Admiral Nimitz of the U.S. Navy that I was the only one who liked “Mitzi.”)
To celebrate this momentous occasion, there’s – you guessed it – another video (getting to be a daily thing, eh?), this time it’s 
