By now most of you will have met, or at least will be familiar with, our two kittens Pogo and Flit.

Now when we adopted two kittens from the King County animal shelter we assumed that we were going to be taking home two kittens. As it turns out we were wrong. We actually adopted three.

Some days more than others Ogop will make his presence known in the house. Where Pogo is a sweet, inquisitive, and very affectionate cat, Ogop…… Well, Ogop is a challenge.

Ogop will reach through the holes in the laundry hamper, snag a sock or a pair of underwear and run off to kill it. If you try to get the purloined clothing back from Ogop he’ll run (and I’ve got to admit, it’s funnier than hell to see this miniature tiger running though the house with one of Andrew’s socks in his mouth trying not to trip over it).
Ogop has learned that my dresser occasionally sports hair scrunchies, fabric covered rubber bands, and ribbons. And I have learned that I need to keep all of my hair bands either in a drawer or in the lidded stone jar that Andrew gave me for my birthday a few years ago.
We have had to become very conscious of where rubber bands are around the house. Rubber bands, like paper clips, are one of those things that just seem to sit in spots all over the house. No one that I know has any official set spot for their rubber bands. There’s always a drawer where they live, a doorknob where they hang out, or a secret stash inside of a decorative something or other sitting on a shelf. All of our rubber bands have to be kept under lock and key else Ogop gets his shiny little teeth in them. I’m not so concerned about him chewing them up, but, being that I’ve personally removed any number of string like objects out of any number of cats, I’m really concerned with him swallowing them.
Ogop has become proficient at slipping his front feet under the blind that covers the window box in the kitchen. He doesn’t try to pull the blind out of the way and get into the window box, he doesn’t, better for his overall longevity, try to destroy the blind. Ogop just wants to stuff his feet under the blind so he can find out what’s on the counter in the window box. Which, for the record, has most recently been a pile of pumpkin seeds that I’ve been drying for next year’s garden. Ogop eats pumpkin seeds. And we’re considering smearing the counter with liquid soap.
Ogop’s triumph to date was last Saturday. Andrew was napping on the cough with Flit lying on his chest nurking at his beard. Unbeknownst to Andrew, Ogop had snuck up on the couch and had planted himself on Andrew’s lap. No usually this wouldn’t be a problem except that this time Ogop took advantage of the fact that Andrew was half asleep and half hypnotized by the nurking. Stealthy as a ghost Ogop spent a profitable (to him) ten minutes or so chewing on the fluid line that runs between Andrew’s insulin pump and the injection port thus severing the connection and waking Andrew with the pump’s alarm.

We rarely, almost never, have a Tilf. Save for an undying passion for chewing on drawstrings (she has, in fact, chewed half of the draw string out of a pair of trousers in the closet) and purposely losing her flying saucer toy so one of us has to find it and throw it for her, Flit is a quiet, snuggly little cat.

More than what my collection of coffee mugs says about my personality, I want to know what it is about my personality that leads me to adopt, or raise, cats that have a passion for learning things and putting that learning to use.

Sigh. Here we go again.