When I interviewed technology evangelist Ramon Ray, he said that the did not identify himself as a blogger. Ray said that bloggers are people who sit in their pajamas and write about their cat. Well, that's exactly what I'm doing tonight. I'm going to be a "blogger", as I will spend this post in my pajamas writing about my kitty (and bother my mother at the same time. She doesn't like cats).
Last time I wrote about the kitty, he didn't have a name and we had just gotten him from Animal House Fund, the really cool no-kill cat shelter in St. Louis. It took us a few days, but we finally came up with a great poker-related name for him: Flop-a-Set Bluffy Cat BigStacks. Or, just Flop-a-Set for short. Cats need to have long names with multiple syllables, and this name suits him perfectly because he flops around a lot and he's a really big kitty.
He Tricked Us at the Shelter
He really did! We thought he was mellow, friendly cat. We thought he had taken his chill pills and wasn't too energetic. Boy, we were wrong! Flop-a-Set makes lots and lots of noise, especially around dinner time and particularly after I get up in the morning and open the bedroom door (and sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night and open the door. He loves me greatly.) He's mellow if my fiance and I are mellow, just working on our computers or watching a movie or something. But, we spend any significant amount of time doing something, say walking back and forth between the kitchen, or cleaning up, or getting ready in the morning, then he gets ramped up and runs back and forth throughout the apartment. He loves to play (especially with ANYTHING that dangles. This includes belts, drawstrings, and iPod ear buds).
We probably should have suspected something at the shelter, anyway. He caught our attention because I put my purse down to get to know the cats, and he came over and started playing with my purse. Then, four other cats came over and had to see what was up, and had to play with the purse too. After that, Flop-a-Set (named Murray at the shelter. It's a stupid name, so we changed it.) wasn't interested in the purse anymore and walked away. We also thought he was softer than his brother, and that he would need a little less grooming attention than his brother also (his brother was full of tangles. We weren't sure if he easily tangled, or if he hadn't been brushed recently since the shelter has over 200 cats and can't brush each of them every single day).
We Love Our Kitty!
Here's curled up behind me to take a nap. I really don't like when he does that because I'm always afraid I'm going to forget he's there and run over him with my chair. He would sleep in one of the camping chairs, but I had to put those away to make room for my new desk and to move out the old desk. So, now he has nowhere to sleep except the floor, although he still did that from time to time when the camping chairs were up. He's never been one for the couch, the bed, or the love seat. Because he makes a lot of noise, one thing that I like to do, when he's sleeping, is see how close I can get to him before he makes noise. It's kind of mean since he wakes up with my face right in his face, and no one appreciates that, but I do it out of love and affection.
