The kitten has settled extremely well. When I came home in the early hours of Sunday morning the outside temperature was minus two and I worried a little about how he would have coped first night without his Mum. I needn’t have worried though, I found him snuggled up under a duvet on the sofa and he was was all warm and cosy. He was happy to see me and started playing. Master R woke up and was delighted to find his kitten playing so we snuggled up in the duvet together to watch. When the kitten got tired he climbed up with us and snuggled down against Master R purring. Master R stroked Buzz and we all went back to sleep.
I’ve been encouraging the Rs to check his bowls and feed him if necessary whenever he goes to his feeding place, to stroke him while he eats and whenever he starts miaowing and to just watch him when he plays. A couple of times when he’s woken up to play they’ve carried him upstairs to play ‘vets’ and while I’m happy with the way he’s settling in I’m not sure he’s quite ready for games that involve "Quick, catch him. I need to tie this round his neck". I’ve been deliberately not handling him too much because I very much want him to be their cat and already that seems to be the case. If Master R is watching tv and Buzz is tired he will go and lay next to Master R. I think Master Rs yoghurty fingers have helped to speed up the bonding process. Ms R has been getting a little frustrated that Master R has exclusive rights to Buzz but I have managed to entice Master R away a couple of times for things like eating easter eggs in the bath so that she gets a whole Buzz cycle (eating, playing, sleeping) alone with the kitten and she’s really enjoyed that. It will be easier once she’s had her birthday and has new things to occupy her. We’ve filled the fish tank and put the relevant chemicals in. It looks very empty at the moment. The last couple of nights she’s stayed in her own bed until morning(ish) and I’ve been waking up with Master R besides me instead.
On Monday we boxed him up and took him to visit my Mum. The dog was hugely excited by the presence of another kitten. It was unknown a couple of months ago when my parents first got Lucky whether the dog was a kitten eater. Great care was taken to always separate them when no-one was home and everyone kept a close eye on them when they were both in the same room. As it’s turned out they are now best friends and play together in a very Tom and Jerry way. Often Luckys head is completely in the dogs mouth and just as often the cat is clung to his back having pounced from the table. Then when they get tired they curl up next to each other. I was surprised that Buzz wasn’t in the least bit concerned about this huge dog sniffing at him but I was surprised at Luckys reaction. Buzz seemed quite pleased to see another cat but Lucky put his hackles up, looked wide eyed and then ran away. A little bit later Lucky followed Buzz under the sofa and they both went to sleep. It was a success and we plan to do frequent visits. Mum thought that Buzz might be a little girl kitten, she talked about distances between holes and made speculations about that little line under his bottom.
Lately we’ve been doing lots of spelling out of words because of birthdays and so now Ms R keeps either sounding our or spelling out words. She’s taken to calling me muh, uh, muh, muh, Y. and talking about the ker, ah, ter. She googled laz tan in an attempt to find the Lazy Town website which I though was quite clever. I’ve talked to her about using the names of letters rather than the sounds when spelling words out and she quite quickly told me the right letters for cat and when I told her that her birthday present was b,i,g she managed to work out what that meant. All this is very good but has an interesting side effect, Master R is trying to speak phonetically too. He’s been calling me mer, uhm, mee and asking for ber, eez, kits.
We went to the library today and chose books about kittens, goldfish and the environment. Ms R keeps asking me about the environment, she’s struggling to understand what it is and I’m struggling to explain it. We also got another book about going to the dentist but Master R is still adament that he is never going to open his mouth at the dentists.