cat food of choice

iams light dried cat food (chicken flavoured)
chef (definitely not wiskas) chicken by-product based foods
anything else that we eat  (tess)

cat toys we have bought that the cats never play with

jingle bell ball
scratching post with ball attached for batting
cat-nip mouse
wind-up mouse that moves across the floor

major injuries to tess

split open belly
split tongue
ripped in half ear
cystitis

total kill count for gump

unknown, but scary

I've just come from sitting down to dinner - chicken soup and cheese muffins - where I had to utter the words of the title of this entry to our cat Gump. So, in honour of saving her dignity, I'm going to write about our two cats.

Tess is the first born. She's about 6 1/2 years old. A black and white short haired moggy, that's a technical, vet's description. She's sitting, purring, in my lap as I write this. I'm hunched awkwardly over her, trying not to disturb her repose, her thick puffedup winter fur smelling of cold night air, her wet nose there for me to rub from time to time.

We got Tess from the SPCA. Or rather she chose us, meowing and rubbing up Deb's legs as we stood, unable to make the heart-breaking choice amongst the cats. She's grown from playful little kitten to somewhat curmudgeonly older cat. We tease her about over-eating and her size, but she's really not fat at all - we just enjoy the teasing.

Tess is the most loving of the two, in the sense of lapsitting, snookying nose-to-nose and kneading with her claws on woollen jumpers. She's also the most vicious. We've learnt her warning signs - a harsh sideways look, an occasional warning bat of the paw - but she has no compunction about drawing blood with her claws if she's not happy.

Gump is about one year old I guess. Our next door neighbour appeared last year with two adorable little kittens, Gump and Tabby. Gump is, like Tess black and white. They immediately started spending more and more time over at out house. And my god they were cute! They would curl up around each other on our chairs and go to sleep,and then one would wake up and start annoying the other until they ended up fighting and scrabbling and rolling around on the floor.

Tabby's name is self-explanatory. Gump is called Gump because she's hyper-active and not very bright.

In October last year, we came back from holiday to find Tabby had disappeared - to this day we don't know where - and Gump spending virtually all her time at our place, including sleeping here. We had never fed her up to this point, but she started looking so skinny and hungry that we worried next door weren't feeding her and so started doing so ourselves.

And that's how we adopted her. We've never talked to next door about it - we're not good at things like that - but she is certainly our cat now.

Strange is a word we use often in relation to Gump. She's a small cat, with a funny Siamese type face (Tess, on the other hand is just a beautiful cat). She has the loudest purr of any cat I've heard, but she can't stay still long enough for you to enjoy it. She's always rolling and biting and moving around.

Gump is a psycho cat. She has an innocent face, a cat next door face. She's unassuming and sweet. Everyone says that. But she's a killer.

Mice, rats, birds, lizards. All have fallen prey to her. It's like she has some psycho bloodlust that needs satiating one, two, three times a day. I think four dead animals and one partially wounded is her 24 hr record. The worst is finding just the bloodied head of a baby mice on the floor. Right before you wonder where the rest of the mouse is. Right after you've kissed her hello when you've come home in the evening.

Tess and Gump do not get on. They have an uneasy truce at meal times, brokered by their mutual greed and hunger, but outside of that it's guerrilla warfare. The sly hiss, the bat with a paw, the chase outside, and the staredown over the foodbowl are all moments where we see the civility of life rent asunder.

I feel for Tess, having to adjust to another cat in the house. Sharing is not innate to cats. So she gets a few extra privileges as number one cat.

It's going to be fun when the cats realise the biggest threat to their household status is not each other, but Matthew. I hope they at least share their food with him!