Cats – those funny little sweethearts

I was thinking about my two little babies this morning when I gave them food. Garfield is going to turn eight in a month. And Kenneth will be five in one and a half months. Gosh, where have the years passed?! How are they already so old?! I can still remember the day when both of them moved in. And now especially Garfield is getting old.

It was a true wake-up call when Kenneth got sick with the kidney inflammation in February. I realized how important they are to me when I was sure before the first vet visit that I’d have to put him asleep and I’d lose him. I’m really grateful the course of antibiotics helped and the vet could come up with a solution that healed him.

My cats are very sociable. They are like my very own kids. Silly or not but often when I ‘socialize’ with them I can imagine what they would say to me if they could speak. I can see it of the look on their faces and what their appearance is like. I can see when they are comfy, when they are grumpy, when they are upset, and when they are worn-out. I really can.

Garfield is very much after me. He always sleeps in the room where I’m in. If I suddenly go to another room he gets up and follows me. Then he sets himself to sleep there. He always comes to the entrance when I come home. He swarms around me, purrs, and butts my feet with his head. Then there’s a ritual that he wants to do every time I come home from somewhere. He wants me to bend down, so that he can smell the area between my nose and mouth. He wants to smell if I’ve eaten something.

I also love following their activities. A good example is what happened this morning when I fed my cats. Kenneth is really a funny case when it comes to eating. He has such a great appetite that it keeps amazing me. But even if he eats about three times as much as Garfield he weighs eight pounds while Garfield weighs eleven pounds. Both of them are slim because I watch what I feed to them.

I gave them canned tuna this morning. It’s one of their favorites. I put the tuna on two plates and to Kenneth I gave about 2/3 of the can. Garfield ate about half of what I gave him but Kenneth ate it all. At some point, he started seeming full but. He started stretching his limbs and looking around. But he didn’t finish eating. He always smacks his mouth when he’s eating – he really enjoys when there’s good food available.

When he had eaten all the tuna that was on the plate he started glancing at Garfield’s plate. Garfield usually eats a bit and goes away. But then he would come back to eat a bit more. Usually it happens though that when he comes back his food has disappeared, thanks to Kenneth. I call him ‘an arrogant pig’ because of that, lol! And when I notice that having happened I say to Garfield, “Sorry buddy but your food has gone to ‘a better mouth’,” as the saying goes in Finnish.

Kenneth tries to sneak in to Garfield’s plate in secret. He thinks I don’t see it even if I was in the same room. But when he sees me glaring at him he steps back. If he was a person he would probably whistle innocently and look away like he had really done nothing and he was there just by chance. When I turn my head away he starts sneaking in to the plate again. It’s really a lot of fun to watch him doing that. And he definitely does not do that because he was hungry. He does that because he’s gotten the great appetite.

Garfield is a very wise cat. He can open the windows and doors unless they are locked. He always comes like a dog when I call his name. I love making walks with him out there. He walks on the leash like dogs do. And we both enjoy nature, the forest, the river, and all that when we go out there. He’s very curious about the dogs. He’s also fine with them unless they do the fatal mistake dogs normally do. If they mistake to smell his but he tries to smash their faces in, bless the dogs!

I am a cat person thoroughly. And I’m blessed to have two really wonderful cats. They are sociable, they have ‘good manners’, and they are two true sweethearts. What is also really amazing is that they get along very well. When Kenneth moved in it was like there’d been a war between them for two weeks. Garfield teased Kenneth and Kenneth was so small that he didn’t really know how to defend himself. But then they suddenly became best friends. And they still are.

I have to raise my hat to Garfield though. Just two months before Kenneth moved in I moved to my own place. He had been taken away from his ‘home’. Then there was suddenly a weird little creature that was sharing the same food bowls and the same litter box. But he accepted both of the things like ‘a real man’. It was surely an A performance!