My cat is small, lightweight, and very fluffy. He's mostly gray but has a white belly, white paws, and a white bloop on the left side of his face. He has pea-green eyes. He looks like a little gray fox, and just recently, Kelly pointed out to me that he plays like the fox we saw in the backyard the afternoon on the day before my father passed away. Riley Beans likes to toss his toy plastic springs up in the air, then leap up and pounce on them. He'll swat them, chase them down the hallway, grab it in both paws, toss it up in the air again...and the whole production begins again. It's fun to watch him because he gets so involved in his play that he's oblivious of everything else.
Tonight, when I lay down across the foot of the bed to write in my journal, he jumped on the bed like he usually does to have "quiet play" with me. Quiet play is that he lies near my pillow and watches what I'm doing and I'll wiggle the pen around for him to catch, or slid my hand under the covers and he'll attack my fingers. Sometimes he burrows under the flannel blanket and attacks my fingers that are on the outside of the blanket, which can be more dangerous for me since I can't really see when he'll attack. He's got sharp little claws!
When we first adopted him he wasn't a very sociable kitten. He'd been fostered in someone's home but I think they mostly kept him in a cage and didn't interact with him much. When I adopted him he was by himself in a cage in a room by himself. He had no problem taking over Kelly's room when we brought him home. She was away a college at the time. So in the week between my adopting him and her coming home for Thanksgiving that November, he more or less ruled the roost, not taking any attitude from his older brother, Revere. Kelly had adopted Revere in June after we'd lost Isador.
Riley had juvenile gingival hyperplasia which means his gums were growing over his teeth, and eating away at them. The vet originally wanted t pull all his teeth out, but we asked him to look into something else because Riley was only 5 months old if that and I thought it would be cruel to pull all his teeth. So, the vet did some research and then decided to try lasering the gum tissue back from Riley's teeth by himself, a procedure he'd never attempted before. He did an excellent job. Riley lost three teeth because they couldn't be saved and cleaned, but he came home with fresh breath for the first time in his life. He's been fine with annual cleanings since...some cats don't outgrown this. He was lucky because he did.
But it took him a long time to learn how to play. He liked to sleep, he was skittish and hid when people came to the house. He didn't seem to know how to play. Both cats had a large box of toys but only Revere would play with the catnip and squeaky mice, the crackle balls, etc. The first thing Riley played with was a hair elastic, one of those thick stretchy bands you get in the hair accessories aisle. I had longer hair that I'd pull back into a ponytail at the time. He was sitting on the bathroom counter one day while I was putting my hair in a ponytail. He was watching me, and then he looked down into the still open drawer and saw one of those elastics in there- and quick as a wink he snagged one and tossed it out into the hallway, then leapt off the counter and pounced on it. That was his favorite toy until he got a little bag of plastic springs I found at Dave's Soda and Pet Food City- cat toys. He loved picking up the springs, carrying them around in m\his mouth, dropping them and swatting them up and down the hallway.
The springs are still his favorite toys. He has never played with a mouse or a ball.
Over the past year and a half he's really bonded with me and become my best bud. He sits in the chair beside me at the kitchen table when I write. He lays near y chair when sit in the living room. And he sleeps snuggled up beside me every night. Wherever I go, he goes. He's always looking at me as f reading me like a book, or he's studying me...like a lab experiment? I don't know, but he's cute and he's won my heart.
He's fun to come home to after a bad or long day at work. He's so devoted now...and he does such cute things. And he talks. Well, at least he thinks he's talking to me. I usually can understand what he wants- treats, to play, for me to follow him and pet hm.
He's also a master manipulator..he knows how to play his mother and get his way!
John calls him the little devil in gray fur. Well, he lords it over the man of the house too, sitting at the end of the couch and glowering at John until he gets up...and then he portly takes the warm sot against the pillow John rests his head on while watching TV. What a smug bug he is when he has his way!
I call him the fluffy tyrant. Kelly calls him the brat.
But, I think all three of us love the little guy.
And yes, we love Revere, too, but it's Riley Beans who s loaded with purrsonality!.
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