I Miss My Guys!

Hey all!

I'm not even home to pet my cats at the moment and it's making me a little homesick, frankly.

I have been spending the week at the Frye Festival in Moncton, New Brunswick as a guest author at it has been one of the most awesome experiences. For the last several days I have visited high schools all over the region, reading to large groups of FANTASTIC high school students as part of this amazing literary celebration celebrating its 10th anniversary! I'm thrilled they asked me to be a part of it. Tomorrow, I'll be flying to Ottawa to take place in that city's annual Writer's Festival. I won't be home until late Tuesday and all of this talk of pets this week is making me lonely...

Yes, yes... I miss John, too. But thanks to intermittent Skyping, we get to video chat. And what do I make him do? I make him hold the cats up to the camera so I can say hi. Heh. (At least, I've made him hold up Smidgen and Jack. Smidgen might give him a hernia and Jack will shed him a new coat, but Butters might accidentally sever an artery with the slashing and the flailing. I'm not that cruel.)

Like some of the other Girls, we're all about the rescue cats at out place. Suckers for hard-luck cases. Smidgen (or "oh you great enormous fat thing, you" as she's now known *sigh*) was a shelter kitty. She is all about the food. And bathing. She will bath anything that stays still longer than a few seconds. She is very maternal. So we got her a pet.

Jack (the pet) was the most pathetic thing I've ever seen when we adopted him. He looked like that orange cat from the Bugs Bunny cartoon. The Humane Society lady was so desperate to get rid of him she gave his to us for free. We took him home with some trepidation and set his carrier down... and Smidgen started to bath him.

He is now the prettiest (cleanest) cat EVER and the darling of everyone who meets him. He is also boneless and quite possibly a dog in a cat suit.

Butters is... well... he was unplanned. We had always intended to stop at two cats. Then came the day that an orange pair of oversized ears attached to a skinny little ribcage and a too-long tail slunk into the front yard. Starving feral kitten. It took weeks of enticement-feeding and a 4-hour military-like operation to trap the little sucker in order to get him off the street. He now thinks he owns the joint. As you can see from the pictures, he ain't so starving anymore. He is a bit of a freak. He is also very very very clean (and usually damp about the head and ears).

So without further ado, I give you - the guys!

Smidgen, Jack and Butters sharing real estate.

Smidgen, contemplating bathing Jack...

Butters, contemplating attacking Jack...

Jack, doing his best to ignore both the impending bath and impending attack...

but still sleeping with one eye open!

Aww... if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go Skype the kitties again!