Turf wars

If you think we have been very quiet, then you are half right. The blog half.
I have of course been a distinguished lady as always. I still like to hang out with my friend Leonie, I play very decently with the rainbow wand thingy (ignore Mom if she says that I too know how to use my claws), I sleep on my pillow or in my cat bed, and only on very rare occasions I have to pull Mom's hair in the morning if I am absolutely starving.

And I observe. I see. I know everything.
Lately Bruce, the shark, and der Dekan have been squabbling. Little things. Who gets the last kibble, who gets to tackle Mom on the way to the kitchen, who gets to jump on her belly when she is least expecting it, these kind of things.
Given that Bruce has no feet or paws, he usually doesn't have a chance and I could tell he was not happy about that.
Tension increased and it ended as it had to eventually, in the Shark Cat Turf Wars of 2023.
Of course I stayed out of it. If two young lads want to fight it out, let them, I am too grown up and much too wise to get drawn into this.

This was one of the times when Mom thought it might actually have been nice to have a smartphone. Why on earth she didn't just turn the video on her camera on, no one knows, but I have to admit that the pictures tell the story quite nicely as well.
Mom couldn't even decide which ones to pick, so you'll just get all of them. Have fun!

Now you probably want to know who the winner was, don't you?
Believe it or not, those silly boys fell asleep from one second to the other. Literally.
Boom. Best friends again? What do you think? I have a faint feeling the peace won't be lasting for long ...

Plotting for world domination

We shall fight on the beaches ... since der Dekan seems to have the goal to eat until he looks like Churchill, it seems rather appropriate to borrow from his famous speech.
In fact, however, we shall not only fight on the beaches, but on land and water which is the reason for us inviting my friend, the shark, to this little meeting.

We tried to make it look harmless, but something in Mom's eyes told me she didn't trust the peace. Der Dekan, who for good reason is the muscle (and belly!) of the operation while I am obviously the brain, came a little too close. He sat on me!
I could either get up right away and hiss at him or look extremely cute to make Mom think I have finally learned to tolerate the little creep. I opted for a mix of the two. For ten, fifteen minutes, I was cute while cursing den Dekan on the inside. I do have to admit, however, that he didn't play his part too badly. There were no stupid attempts to bite my neck or lick my ears, and no slap attacks.
Well, and Bruce - all sharks in this house are called Bruce - has been a cool dude from the very start.

When I finally decided we had had a good first meeting and needed to split to keep it believable, I gave him one short hiss and he got up and walked away, just like that.
Now if Mom weren't such an extremely suspicious woman! I guess it has to do with all those years of cats around here.

No worries, though. We can lurk for a very long time until we finally pounce.
We've got this!

P.S. I don't care much for Mom calling us The Gang now, though ...

I'm still afraid of no shark

Shortly after I moved in here, Ponder had a talk with Mom about me "being dangerous" and producing this photo of me and one of my shark friends for proof.

I wish I could show him in person that I'm still befriending sharks like this one that swam into the house today, on a wave of humidity, no doubt (seriously, it's hot!).
Look, Ponder! Mom says hi. We miss you.

Happy Gotcha Day!

Two years. Can you believe it has been two full years since my life has changed because THIS had been brought to our door??

Oh yeah, he was so small and he was so cute and he was such a **** from the start. Well, I only really met him after about ten days, but then I knew my quiet days were over. Mom said she wanted me to have a feline companion, but honestly, I think I could well have done without a fuzzy whirlwind trying to take all my spots and eat all my food.
Der Dekan was a bit like a shark caught in an eternal feeding frenzy. Thinking about it, he still is a lot of times, but for me that means I get breakfast earlier than I used to, so I won't complain. Also what he has actually learned is that he won't steal my food while I am eating which is a source of neverending surprise for Mom as he's not that well behaved when she is eating.

We have learned to get along. Every, now and then he chases me, sometimes it's like a ritual which is about the running and not the catching.
There are those rare times when he jumps me full force and I have to screech like a banshee (do they screech or is that owls?) and some fur is flying and Mom keeps yelling "Dekan! Leave her alone!", but it really doesn't happen often.

Mom thinks it would be nice if we slept all cuddled up, but I am an independent woman and also I got Mr. Radish.
I let den Dekan groom me sometimes which I couldn't stand at all in the beginning, so who knows, maybe once Mr. Radish has been slobbered on one time too much and leaves, things will change.

What I like best about the brat, however, is the way he has with Mom. He can turn from cute into a killer in a second and the other way round (Mom still can't believe how humming the Skye Boat song calms him down right away every time he's in biting mode, in her version of the song she has been humming to all her animal companions for decades), from really smart to incredibly dumb.
He certainly keeps her on her toes, makes her despair, but also makes her laugh, and I sit and watch from the sidelines thinking it serves her right ;-)

Well, Dekan. Happy Gotcha Day. I know you'll get a good treat (which isn't difficult to do because almost everything is a good treat to him). You are okay. Never forget, though, who's the boss here.
And for Bast's sake, stop sleeping on the job!

A new gal in town

I still remember when I was the new gal in town, a little more than six years ago. Can you believe it has already been that long?
Now it was time for another lady to move in. She's just a tad bigger than I, has a piercing look, and is very soft. Her name is Leonie.
Of course der Dekan had to try and suck up to her right away, playing the big tough guy card first and then trying to win her over by getting all cutesy with her.

The real reason Leonie came here, however, even if the egocentric little brat refuses to acknowledge that, is so we could become best friends. I can tell her everything and she can tell me, well, not much really, but she's a great listener, I can tell you (Mom says all Steiffs are great listeners, except for Jocko who's monkeying around too much ... which is actually a bad pun on Jocko being a Steiff chimpanzee *eyeroll*).
Leonie makes you feel very safe and relaxed.

The only thing we hate is if Mom is intruding on our feline girl time!!

I am grateful to her, though, for bringing Leonie here (initially as a birthday gift to herself) and then giving her this spot on the bed which she did just for us, by the way.

Love me tender

Thought we had disappeared? No way. Things haven't changed at all. Mom is still telling everyone that she lives with a sweet cat and a crazy cat and it is so true. How can a cat be so smart and so not smart, so cute and so unnerving, so relaxed and so wild, all at the same time? Der Dekan can make me tired just by looking at him.
While I don't mind a little harmless slapping and hissing duel every, now and then, not even a little chase, sometimes it's just better to stay out of the way during his crazy runs.

I have learned to appreciate soft blankets and beds, quiet hours, long naps, and cuddling with a friend. I am talking about Mr. Radish of course.
As you can see, Mr. Radish is no spring chicken. To be honest, he's not even the first Mr. Radish, but shhh, don't tell him that.
We have an on and off relationship. Sometimes we won't see one another in weeks or we just exchange a short hello, but when we spend time together, it's as it has just been a few hours. I tell him about what I have been up to, what has happened in the house since we last met, we talk about catnip (he's full of catnip stories, I swear), about den Dekan, and Mom's attempts to keep him in check, we laugh, and we cuddle.

I hadn't even noticed that Mom took some pictures of our last encounter.

Mr. Radish telling me a fascinating story about catnip.

Just dreaming together.

No comment ...

The photo box

It has been a while because, people, I have been too busy keeping notes of all the shenanigans going on in this house. Der Dekan will get his extra large font on the naughty list for Christmas this year.
I'll have to be fair. Sometimes he's very calm. He can sleep for hours and be very snuggly, and sometimes I even let him groom me for a few seconds before one of us raises their paw for a slap fight. Yesterday I even let him hug me, but not long enough for Mom to take a picture. That constant photo hunting of hers can get very exhausting.
Usually she can only get a good picture of me if I'm exhausted and trying to disguise as a stone.

This story I have to share with you, though.

After we got our breakfast today, Mom had the nerve to go back to the bedroom and shut the door. That's fine with me, after breakfast I usually take a nap on my favorite faux fur blanket. This time I installed myself on one of the chairs at the dinner table.
When Mom came out again after hours, der Dekan had already been getting ready to knock down that door because his breakfast portion had been too small. Adding insult to injury, however, Mom didn't run to the kitchen right away to give him a second one.

If der Dekan gets mad, he gets MAD. It usually involves running through the place at lightning speed, knocking things down here and there randomly, not actively, just by hitting them with his massive little body. If that doesn't set things right, he'll jump at walls knocking down what he can find, one of Mom's vintage hats, a picture, magnets off the notice board, you get the picture.
Today he took it out on the photo box.

You need a little backstory for that.
Mom had an open light tent that der Dekan loved right from the start. He looked very cute in it when he was still a baby, but he grew and the tent which was more than ten years old started suffering. So Mom decided we'd need a new box, one that she could close, so it wouldn't be used as a cave anymore.
In her calculations she forgot that we would definitely use the box as a stepstone between closet and shelf, though, and sometimes also just to sit on it. I move in an elegant way, so I'm not the problem.

Mom also hadn't figured that der Dekan would do his very best to get inside the box through the flap on top attached by velcro.
Last but by no means the least, she hadn't expected to be so annoyed by some LED strips. To make it short, Mom hated to use the box for taking pictures. Nothing worked the way she wanted and more than once we had to cover our ears because of the heavy cursing.
Finally she gave up. She put the box on the floor for us to have fun with - which of course made us lose interest in it immediately, especially because she didn't open the front flap - and got a light tent that looked like the old one. Now she takes pictures and then puts it up on a cabinet. She could have done that with the old one, but sometimes she's a slow learner. Humans, you know.

Now today der Dekan remembered the box standing there and from her desk Mom could hear him going wild with the velcro. She was on the phone at the time and didn't care what he was doing until it definitely got too loud for her to concentrate on the call and the printout she wanted to do. So she asked her conversation partner to wait a moment and went over there.
This was what she saw.

The little top flap really got it, just as she had expected. But where was der Dekan?
Any ideas? Yes, der Dekan was inside the box and tried to claw his way back out, but the velcro resisted bravely.
When Mom raised the flap, she almost got it as well because he tried to jump up there, claws out as usual. When she tried to open the front flap, a little striped arm came out hitting at her. She finally managed to tear it open with a quick movement and a not at all panicked, but angry tiger walked out ... and immediately came over to me to take it out on me next.
All that got him was a timeout outside - and a very small second breakfast.

Once again I wish I were better with the camera because Mom definitely didn't have a free hand to handle one while releasing the kraken. Sorry, den Dekan.

Not on topic, but Mom chose not to put up a Christmas tree this year. What a pity, I bet I would have had a few things to tell! ;-)

P.S. About 40 minutes later.
Wanna guess who just had to be released from the photo box? A hint, not Mom, not I.