3Cats

Slash Darling, Blaze Shadow, and Quest Sequoia were born in June 2009.  The three girls came to live with Patti (my wife) and myself in September 2009.  Originally, we were going to take two of the six kittens that were born, but Patti had three names ready to go.  The fact that they all have stripper names is my wife’s fault, but I can only blame myself for translating the three names into getting three kittens. Slash and Blaze were the original two we were going to take.  Whenever Quest is bad, we remind her that we could have not taken her and threaten to take her back.  We never would, but don’t tell her that. We need the leverage.

Our nickname for each of the cats is “bad cat.” They take turns living up to that nickname everyday. If they are not destroying various parts of our house, they are keeping us up at night or getting into places they shouldn’t be.  We tried putting tin foil where we didn’t want them to go, such as on the piano.  We heard cats don’t like tin foil.  It was apparent very quickly that this theory was wrong.  They put their claw marks in the tin foil on top of the piano as if to say, “Your tin foil is but a toy to me.  I’m not afraid of your stinking tin foil.”  Next we tried squirting them with a squirt bottle.  This method actually worked well when we were witnessing their crimes, but was useless when we left the room or we dared to leave the house.  The last and most effective deterrent to their destructive behaviors was to gut the house of everything they could destroy and cut off areas that couldn’t be made destruction proof.  It’s like making your house child proof, but worse.  These kids have the ability to jump over those little fences that stop babies.  You can see them in action below:

Slash is distinguished by what looks like a mustache under her nose.  She usually looks like she’s frowning because of the white hairs above her eyes that are angled down.  She both meows and purrs.  This will become apparent why I mention this when I talk about the other two cats.  When we have had anyone over to the house, she runs away and hides.  If you try to bring her out to meet people (as I did once), she will claw you like there’s no tomorrow.  She started the trend of crawling under our covers when we go to sleep at night and staying there most of the night.  Now it is all the rage with the other two.  She has begun a daily ritual of what I have called her “daily mauling.” Just before I take my shower, I pet her from her head to her tail. Her sisters have caught on and are starting to come around for “maulings” as well.

Blaze is notable for the white tip of her tail and her run everywhere attitude.  She has much shorter fur than her sisters.  She also looks smaller than her sisters except when you pick her up.  She’s a little porker!  Her belly actually has a fold in it.  She’s too young to have a folding belly.  I don’t know how she weighs so much.  Like I said, she runs everywhere and jumps the highest out of her sisters.  Unlike Slash, she has turned out to be the most social of the three.  If you pet her be warned that you will be receiving calls from people in other countries complaining about the noise.  Her purr is loud, but her meow is almost non-existent.  We have heard her in a rare meow, though.  She also does this adorable waving thing.  You can see it below:

Quest has an all black face and is quite photogenic.  Her eyes stand out on her dark face.  She meows quite often, but she never purrs.  We have tried and tried to get her purring but she will not do it.  She can be rubbing against us and we can be petting her until our hands are tired, but we never hear a purr.  She has this rather odd way of rubbing against my leg (especially if I have jeans on), quickly placing her paws around my leg as if she is hugging it, and then running away.  I have tried to capture it on video, but I can never tell when she is going to do it and she doesn’t do it as often any more.