The cats are fine. I'm still getting situated...
It's snowing again this morning. This storm will probably drop another two to four inches on the metro area. (WTF?!?? I thought we were due for warmer temps and rain. What's with the "more snow" jazz?!??)
The cats are adjusting quite well to the new place. They love playing on the stairs. They've never lived in a house with stairs before, not even one or two into a sunken living room. Now they have places to stage forts and "guard" the upstairs, places to hide and play with each other, places to stretch out so that they can't actually see any of the other cats. They love it. It does mean a bit of caution on my part - if I step on a cat toy, well, they're soft toys, and I generally don't wear shoes inside. If I step on a cat, however, I'll feel like an ogre. (And the cats will help the process by ignoring me pointedly.)
A few days ago, I mentioned how I'd gotten the feline equivalent of junk food. I got it to mix with their regular, higher-quality, better-for-them cat food since I can't drive to the place that sells this particular cat food. I mixed it in, filled the pigfeeder upstairs, and left them to their own devices. Over a period of several days, the cats pushed aside the good food to get at the kibbles of the junk food. I would periodically hear one of them rooting around in the pigfeeder, but I just assumed: they're eating, no worries. They weren't just eating, though. They were being highly selective. (Damn cats.) There's now a small pile of costly kibble all around the edges of the pigfeeder. I expect to endure long sulks when I restock on the Good Stuff, and no longer feed them junk food.
There is a gap between the sofa and the wall because, since it's a futon-sofa, the back isn't perpendicular to the wall - hence the gap near the bottom. The cats now effectively have a tunnel-shortcut through the living room: one that the human cannot reach. Fog loves popping out from one end of that tunnel and surprising me as I come downstairs. They've chased each other in this new house, they've had their battles to re-establish the pecking order, they've had their fight-games...but this tunnel seems to be their equivalent of Switzerland. No fighting happens in the tunnel. I haven't even seen one cat enter the tunnel while another is using it. It's weird...but then again, that's them: weird.
There haven't been many days when I've had the windows open, so no BTV for the kitties. Fog has sat up in my office window and chattered at the neighbors' dogs, though. (And once at a squirrel, and twice at a crow - until the crow cawed and swooped at the office window. She's learned a slight measure of respect for the crows...but she still goes "on point" when one enters her field of vision. I once saw her bring down a pigeon, so her little walnut brain probably goes into predator-spasms of glee when she spots a crow: "I must catch that bird! I will catch that bird!! As soon as I figure out how to open doors on my own...!!!") I expect that as the weather gets warmer and I can leave the patio shades up a few inches, they'll take to clustering there and watching the bird feeder play host to the neighborhood wildlife. Tracks through the yard indicate that a few other neighborhood cats have done just that.
Today it's snowing and there's a slight wind. It's cold, cold, cold - just one degree above freezing. And the cats are doing just fine. (But they're about to drive me insane...which, I suppose, is par for the course.)
