queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2006-09-24 01:56 pm
queerbychoice) wrote2006-09-24 01:56 pm
Stardust: The Finished Product
This week, I traded my kitten in for a cat. She's officially six months old - old enough that if she hadn't been spayed, she could have her own kittens now. To celebrate, I bring you the very last pictures of her kittenhood and the very first pictures of her adulthood. Here's the final, completed version of Stardust, as she looks this weekend!
She's still a little on the small side, but I guess she's just going to be a small cat. Her meows also still frequently sound more like mouse squeaks than like meows, but lately, every now and then, she occasionally manages to produce something that sounds almost adult cat meow-like.
So far, the most positive sign I've seen of her supposed adulthood is that ever since she turned five months old, she's been occasionally (very infrequently, but she'd never once ever done it before then) not jumping up to follow me quite every time I ever leave the room anymore. It used to be that even when she was sound asleep, she never once failed to wake up and run after me as soon as I left the room. Now she only follows me 95% of the time. This is good, because now I don't have to feel so guilty about ever wanting to leave the room.
But the most dramatic new behavior that has arrived with her adulthood was decidedly negative. Thankfully, it's only been one incident. I can only hope that it stays that way. What happened is . . . well, one good thing about Stardust has always been that she's never once failed to use her litter box. Unfortunately, her continued usage of it didn't do a lot of good Friday night, when she not only used it but also sat down in it, and then came galloping out of the litter box with GIANT GOBS OF POO stuck to her back end. And then sat down on the carpet and smeared some of it there too.
I picked her up almost immediately, because she stank so much that I suspected some such problem. I took her into the bathroom and attempted to clean her up with toilet paper, which accomplished almost nothing. Then I held her back end under the bathroom faucet and ran lukewarm water on her for quite a while. She struggled, but not nearly as much as you'd expect. Maybe she realized she stank and wanted the stink off of her too. Anyway, this improved things noticeably, but even after further scrubbing, she was still enough of a mess that I didn't want to let her back out on the carpet. I ended up locking her in the bathroom for several hours and checking on her every hour or so to see whether she'd cleaned herself up yet. Eventually she did.
I thought it was kittens who were supposed to have this problem. She never had any such problem until she became an adult cat this week. I am not impressed by her idea of adult behavior. (I have, however, generously spared you - and her - from any pictures of her with her back end covered in poo, and opted instead to perpetuate the false impression that she's always beautiful and adorable and not the least bit appallingly lacking in basic litterbox skills.)
Another of the most immediate effects of her adulthood is that I've found it necessary to remove my high school and college graduation tassels from the place on my freezer door (attached with a magnet) that they've occupied ever since I first moved out of my parents' house seven and a half years ago. She can jump high enough now that she started unraveling them!
She has also lately developed a slightly annoying habit of climbing into the refrigerator nearly every time I open it.
This toy originally had dozens of feathers on the end. Over the course of her kittenhood, she gradually removed every single one of them, one at a time. The feathers are now scattered all over the apartment.
The octopus strung from the living room ceiling is also looking considerably the worse for wear. Those purple spots on the carpet are severed octopus bits.
The octopus originally came with a red mouth, but the red nose is her own artistic addition. As are the unraveled bits of fluff sticking out everywhere.
Her favorite place to sleep ever since she came here has been in the bathroom sink, but lately she's developed a close second favorite, which is in the corner behind my bed, next to the sliding glass door to the balcony.
And her third favorite place is in this cardboard box in the opposite corner of my bedroom. This box may look familiar to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rekraft; it's already made the round trip from here to Singapore and back again.
Sadly, even being so neatly boxed does not prevent her from getting into trouble.
But her favorite place to play is in the living room window.
She becomes quite distraught if I go out on the balcony and don't let her follow me.
But if I come back in and put her on my lap and wave moving things in front of her face, she forgives me in no time.
She's lately become really fond of playing under the rugs.
And of course, wandering aimlessly around the kitchen.
She could probably win any contest that involves swishing really really fluffy tails around in people's faces.
She doesn't sit in this position anywhere near as often as most cats I've known did.
More often, she can be found stretched out blissfully to her full length.
But you have to be really really quick with the camera shutter (or really really lucky with your timing) to catch her on her back.
Whereas it's not at all difficult to catch her in the living room window.
She's still a little on the small side, but I guess she's just going to be a small cat. Her meows also still frequently sound more like mouse squeaks than like meows, but lately, every now and then, she occasionally manages to produce something that sounds almost adult cat meow-like.
So far, the most positive sign I've seen of her supposed adulthood is that ever since she turned five months old, she's been occasionally (very infrequently, but she'd never once ever done it before then) not jumping up to follow me quite every time I ever leave the room anymore. It used to be that even when she was sound asleep, she never once failed to wake up and run after me as soon as I left the room. Now she only follows me 95% of the time. This is good, because now I don't have to feel so guilty about ever wanting to leave the room.
But the most dramatic new behavior that has arrived with her adulthood was decidedly negative. Thankfully, it's only been one incident. I can only hope that it stays that way. What happened is . . . well, one good thing about Stardust has always been that she's never once failed to use her litter box. Unfortunately, her continued usage of it didn't do a lot of good Friday night, when she not only used it but also sat down in it, and then came galloping out of the litter box with GIANT GOBS OF POO stuck to her back end. And then sat down on the carpet and smeared some of it there too.
I picked her up almost immediately, because she stank so much that I suspected some such problem. I took her into the bathroom and attempted to clean her up with toilet paper, which accomplished almost nothing. Then I held her back end under the bathroom faucet and ran lukewarm water on her for quite a while. She struggled, but not nearly as much as you'd expect. Maybe she realized she stank and wanted the stink off of her too. Anyway, this improved things noticeably, but even after further scrubbing, she was still enough of a mess that I didn't want to let her back out on the carpet. I ended up locking her in the bathroom for several hours and checking on her every hour or so to see whether she'd cleaned herself up yet. Eventually she did.
I thought it was kittens who were supposed to have this problem. She never had any such problem until she became an adult cat this week. I am not impressed by her idea of adult behavior. (I have, however, generously spared you - and her - from any pictures of her with her back end covered in poo, and opted instead to perpetuate the false impression that she's always beautiful and adorable and not the least bit appallingly lacking in basic litterbox skills.)
Another of the most immediate effects of her adulthood is that I've found it necessary to remove my high school and college graduation tassels from the place on my freezer door (attached with a magnet) that they've occupied ever since I first moved out of my parents' house seven and a half years ago. She can jump high enough now that she started unraveling them!
She has also lately developed a slightly annoying habit of climbing into the refrigerator nearly every time I open it.
This toy originally had dozens of feathers on the end. Over the course of her kittenhood, she gradually removed every single one of them, one at a time. The feathers are now scattered all over the apartment.
The octopus strung from the living room ceiling is also looking considerably the worse for wear. Those purple spots on the carpet are severed octopus bits.
The octopus originally came with a red mouth, but the red nose is her own artistic addition. As are the unraveled bits of fluff sticking out everywhere.
Her favorite place to sleep ever since she came here has been in the bathroom sink, but lately she's developed a close second favorite, which is in the corner behind my bed, next to the sliding glass door to the balcony.
And her third favorite place is in this cardboard box in the opposite corner of my bedroom. This box may look familiar to
rekraft; it's already made the round trip from here to Singapore and back again.Sadly, even being so neatly boxed does not prevent her from getting into trouble.
But her favorite place to play is in the living room window.
She becomes quite distraught if I go out on the balcony and don't let her follow me.
But if I come back in and put her on my lap and wave moving things in front of her face, she forgives me in no time.
She's lately become really fond of playing under the rugs.
And of course, wandering aimlessly around the kitchen.
She could probably win any contest that involves swishing really really fluffy tails around in people's faces.
She doesn't sit in this position anywhere near as often as most cats I've known did.
More often, she can be found stretched out blissfully to her full length.
But you have to be really really quick with the camera shutter (or really really lucky with your timing) to catch her on her back.
Whereas it's not at all difficult to catch her in the living room window.
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Stardust is looking very lovely and grown up :)
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Ew, kitty covered in poo. Not fun. My old cat has started breaking wind a lot in her old age, which is not messy but VERY SMELLY.
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I wondered when she was little whether her tail would be fluffy, beause some long-haired cats have much fluffier tails than other long-haired cats, and when she was a tiny kitten she didn't have a very fluffy tail. But I guess tiny kittens never have really fluffy tails, because the tails in question are just so small.
I'm also really happy about her stripes. I've long wanted one of the tabbies with really big stripes instead of the million and one tiny narrow stripes. When she was a tiny kitten, she had basically no stripes on her body, just on her legs and face and tail. But as she got older, the lighter grey stripes showed up on her body, and now she has exactly the kind of stripes I always liked so much.
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I swear, Stardust and Ninja are the same cat, just with different coloring. And an age difference. And a sex difference. But other than that.
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I'd always heard that cats were still officially considered kittens, at least as far as the kitten food vs. cat food issue goes, until they're 1 year old. I adopted
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So, she may continue to get bigger and floofier.
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Long haired cats frequently have the poo stuck to ass problem, alas. Baby wipes work well for quick clean ups. Nothing like wiping a cat's butt to make your day. Switching to a food for hairball control might help, too.
no subject