Some funny cat business last night… Goodman started actively playing with Beemer.
He had a little help. Beemer has a fake-fur mouse with a rattly thing inside it that she favors, and while she was playing with it I threw it at Goodman a few times. He started playing with it too…and when I threw it up the stairs for Beemer again, Goodman couldn’t resist. He went after it. She went after him… and the next hour or so they spent chasing each other around the house like crazy things.
Maybe this thawing of relations has emboldened Beemer, because this morning, while there was still “wet” food in her own bowl upstairs, Beemer came down and started eating Squeak’s breakfast out of Squeak’s bowl. As if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, he got up from where he was lying (he hadn’t wanted his food until she saw her eating it. How typically feline..), went right over and stuck his face into the bowl. Beemer wouldn’t back off. He hissed at her. She just crouched away a little, but wouldn’t leave. Squeak growled at her. Beemer just crouched there. Finally Squeak got really steamed and hit her several times. She ran off then…but not very far: just up the stairs, a few steps, to watch, and then came down again several minutes later, looking wholly unconcerned.
Beemer is beginning to evince a stubborn quality that’s surprising in such a little kitten. I find myself wondering whether one of the reasons Squeak doesn’t like her much right now is that he can detect this stubbornness, and suspects (I think rightly) that it’s going to mean trouble for him later. But the question of how cats perceive one anothers’ personalities is going to remain a closed book from our end of things, I guess.
Nonetheless, Squeak’s general attitude toward Beemer has been thawing, too, though in different ways from Goodman’s. Squeak seems mostly to have given up hissing at Beemer when he sees her, though he does watch her almost all the time, with varying levels of annoyance. Sometimes he just lies down in the middle of the kitchen floor, gives her a dirty look, and then puts his head down and goes to sleep. She doesn’t tempt fate by trying to play with him at this point…but some of her interactions have been interesting, too. There was one point a few afternoons ago where Squeak was hissing at her as she passed through the kitchen, and Beemer simply went away a few feet — just through a doorway, but still in Squeak’s view — and in a way that was casual and yet also looked premeditated, sat down with her back to him. Squeak was nonplussed; in response he lay down with his back to her, but there was a disgruntled quality to the way he did it. He looked like he knew she was dissing him, and that if anybody should be ignoring anybody, it should have been him ignoring her…and he should have done it first.
Yes, yes, I know, anthropomorphizing animal response is dangerous. But at the same time, we live with these guys pretty much 24/7 when we’re not traveling. The differences in their personalities have become very easy to see over so much time. What’s interesting at the moment is to see Beemer’s personality manifesting itself, piece by piece, so quickly, and so clearly, even when she’s so young. Fascinating stuff…
Meanwhile, the milkman is due, and I wish he’d hurry up. We’re out of milk and almost out of buttermilk, and I want to make some soda bread. We got a new combination microwave / fan oven a few months ago, and what with all the traveling, I haven’t had a lot of time to test it. It bakes regular small breads and cookies and so forth pretty well; I’m curious to see how it handles Peter’s mum’s farl recipe.
