25 Til 30 - Feeling Age

It's a funny concept to me.  "Feeling my age."

I mean, I definitely know I couldn't party as hard as I used to when I was college age or even when I was 25.

These days, it seems like there's less and less time to fit everything I want to do into my schedule.  It always amazes me how quickly my schedule fills up.  As I've been dating around, it's almost laughable how little time I have to actually go on dates. 

Firstly, going to bootcamp is still a top priority for me, which means that I can't stay out too late on weeknights.  Weekends fill up ridiculously fast with social gatherings, practices for shows (did I mention I've got a belly dance recital coming up AND I'm in a production of the Vagina Monologues?), and generally catching up on sleep.

Catching up on sleep is definitely becoming a higher priority.  With the flurry of activity I've gotten myself into, my sleep has suffered.  I spent most of the day on Thursday feeling like a zombie, and I nearly fell asleep every time I rode the T.

I remember seeing my friend's Facebook status updates mention how much earlier they feel like they need to get to bed, blaming it on their 30's.  I've always been a fan of sleeping in, and I'm definitely okay with not having such a packed schedule.

I know that if I have a chance to chill and veg out, I will take that chance.  It not for my mental and physical health, definitely so that I can snuggle with Yoni.

so flippin cute!

Thankful 4 - Kitty Snuggles

In these 4 days before Thanksgiving in a month that has been both taxing and cruel, I want to recognize the blessings that I am privileged to have in my life.

It still amazes me that the kitties can tell when things aren't going as usual.  Strangely, Yoni has taken to sleeping with me, and sleeping ON me.  I love that little kitty-que.  I'm so thankful for her snuggles, even when it wakes me up.

Yoni and her early morning belly rubs

10 Day YOU Challenge - 9 Loves

9 loves:

1.  My Kitties

Yoni

Mencken

 2. My Family

3.  My Friends on Both Coasts

map of friends listed on Facebook

4.  My Zune and Music Collection

I've been listening to a lot of Tori lately due to her new album

5.  Dancing

Taken by Nina at Katia's Retreat

6. Food!

mmm..mickey mouse ice cream bar...

 7.  The Ocean and Beach

From Nahant Beach

 8. The Color Green in Every Shade

9.  What else but Mermaids!

my mermaid scarf

 

Simple Pleasures Sundays and Day 12 - Kitty Toes

One of my favorite things is when Yoni sits on my lap and cleans her toesies.

Simple Pleasures Sunday - Innocence

So, I'm still a bit traumatized from watching Yoni and Mencken play with the dead mouse.

I'd have to say that there was this beautiful innocence about them prior to the mouse debacle.  They were my babies.  My vicious babies.

It's been difficult for me to want to pick them up.  There's a part of me that wants to bathe them, though I'm sure they've cleaned themselves thoroughly by now.  Of course, I haven't actually stopped touching them.

I just happen to get flashes of the burned images of them playing with the dead mouse as I'm looking at them.

I know it sounds like I'm overreacting.  But it was definitely a stomach-turning sort of experience.

There's something to be said about "ignorance is bliss."  I'm sure I'll get over it eventually. 

They're still my babies.   They're just not as innocent as they were when it was just a jingly ball.

Nature In My Living Room: Kittehs Catch Their First Mouse

I'm about to recall the gruesome death of this poor mouse and then some.  Read at your own risk.

Consider yourself warned.

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At 1 in the morning, I hear Yoni growling and making a noise I had never heard before.  I looked into the hallway to see Mencken in our bedroom doorway and Yoni with her dilated glowing eyes.  It looked like she was heaving.

Out of concern, I thought that perhaps she had vomited or something.  As I proceeded to turn all the lights on, she runs into the living room.  I don't see any vomit anywhere, so I figured she is probably about to puke.

Then I realized she had something in her mouth.  At first, it looked like a leaf.  But then I realized that she had a MOUSE!!!

I immediately work up the boyfriend.  He wanted to make sure that we give a lot of praise to the kitties for catching it.  But Yoni wasn't done with it yet.  In fact, it was still quite alive, if moving slower.

She would growl when Mencken would get close to her, and yet she would drop it and push it about.

This went on for the rest of the night.

At one point, the mouse got away.  I thought I saw it scurry under our front door, but Mencken knew better.  After a bit of digging in our shoe area, he recovered the injured mouse and brought it straight to Yoni.  He, having always been an indoor cat, had never done anything like this and wasn't sure what to do with it.

At another point, they make their way into the bedroom.  It was almost 3 in the morning at this point, and I had to wake up in an hour and a half to get ready for bootcamp.  But I couldn't NOT pay attention to Yoni's growls.  She ended up under the bed at some point.  I was NOT going to be okay with a mouse carcass under our bed!

Here's why:
About 2 years ago, before our kitties were even in this world, we had quite a problem with mice.  They were attacking anything they could, regardless of being sealed in a plastic bag.  I could hear them in our walls, and scurrying about in the middle of the night.  It was horrifying. 

We started putting out traps and putting everything in our fridge.  We cleaned and we even put out some traps with poison in them.

One random Summer day, I noticed these HUGE flies flying around our living room window.  They were HUGE, I tell you.  Huge and slow.  Thus, they were relatively easy to kill.  However, they just kept showing up.  At first, I would see them flying over to the opposite wall, but they were mainly in the window.

I closed our windows and asked our Super to come look.  He couldn't figure it out either, and he hadn't gotten any other complaints from other tenants.

I noticed that the flies had these weird white lines on their thorax.  Naturally, I Googled it.  What I discovered was horrifying.  They were called "flesh flies."  Go ahead, go to the Wikipedia page and learn about them.  I'll wait....

Gross, right??!?!?

Since they were mainly in our window, I figured something must have died right outside it though we couldn't smell anything.

We must have killed over 20 of them.  Yes, I was counting.  It just made it more disgusting.

About a month later, I was cleaning around a pile of clothes and pillows that we were planning to dispose of.  As I lifted a pillow, I spotted a dead mouse!!! It must have been crushed underneath the clothes and pillows.

Suddenly, the stench of dead mouse and the memory of the flesh flies came flooding back.  It was horrifying, and the smell was not going away.

At that point, the boyfriend was picked up by a friend to take him to a birthday lunch.  And I was left with the smell.  I ended up leaving the house with the windows open (though I remember it was a torrential-rainy day), and went to the movie theater.

So, you can see why I was not about to let the cats just leave a dead mouse somewhere for us to find it later.

And I sure as hell wasn't going to take a live mouse and dispose of it myself!  I had already done that a couple of years before the dead mouse/flesh fly episode, when I was living with 2 roommates.

The mouse was stuck on a glue trap, and the most humane way I could think of disposing of it was to kill it quickly.  So, we took it on the glue trap outside in a plastic bag and grabbed a shovel.  My two roommates couldn't do it.  And since I insisted on the quick death, I had to do it.  It took a lot of thinking and yelling, and I'm sure the neighbors were about to call 911 on us.

I was so traumatized by that that I had to talk about it with my work supervisor.  And you better believe that I was re-traumatized by the flesh flies and shared that with my work supervisor as well.

But let me get back to today.
Eventually, the growling stopped and we heard Yoni munching on her cat food.  We assumed that Mencken ate it.

I went to bootcamp and returned to a knocked out boyfriend and kittehs.

But as I was getting ready for a phone interview and the boyfriend was getting ready to leave for school, I spotted the mouse again!  It was barely moving, so I pointed Yoni in its direction.

She took it under or kitchen counter table, and when she reemerged the mouse's body looked truly lifeless.  That's when Yoni started playing with it.  She would toss it in the air and push it about on the floor.

Mencken gets a hold of the mouse

Eventually, Mencken got a hold of it, probably thinking about how fun it looked.  But when he tossed it in the air, it would really catch air.  I was shrieking in my corner behind a blanket, scared that it would get launched in my direction.

But I had to do something.  I couldn't be shrieking during my phone interview!  After asking friends on Facebook, I came up with a plan.

We have way too many tongs, so I grabbed the crappiest one with a stray sock that ended up in our laundry (but wasn't either of ours) and a plastic bag.  After throwing away the bag complete with sock and mouse in our basement, I Wet-Swiffered the hell out of our floors.

I'll be honest.  I think pet mice and pet rats are cute.  They're a lot cleaner, though they still pee and poo everywhere.  But when it's a strange creature invading your home, it becomes a different story.

There was something both frightening and intriguing about the kittehs doing what nature intended them to do.  I couldn't take my eyes away for fear that I would lose track of the mouse, and yet I can't even eat without getting a bit nauseous.

There's a part of me that wants to bathe the kittehs clean, but I know that they do that on their own.  So, I'll just keep washing my own hands throughout the day.  I also made sure to praise them and give them some treats for their good-job-done.  Perhaps we'll feed them some tuna tonight.

If only David Attenborough was narrating, though I don't think that even his calming voice will prevent me from being traumatized from this for a while.

Simple Pleasures Sundays - Knowing I'm Where I'm Meant To Be At This Time

On Friday, April 1st, I woke up and thought, "Darn, I didn't think of a clever enough April Fool's joke."

I love April Fool's.  I think that many people take it way too far, either taking a joke too far or taking a joke too personally.  But, in it's perfectly childish way, it's a great reminder of your own humanity, humility, and humbleness.

At some point during the day, I came up with the perfect April Fool's Facebook post:

After some consideration, [the boyfriend] and I will be moving to Portland, OR. Yoni and Mencken need new homes :*(

Friday at 1:39pm via Android

Now, as with every joke, there is some truth in it.  The boyfriend and I have talked about what cities we would be willing to move to.  Portland, ME, while a beautiful coastal town is far too north (which means much colder then Boston) for me.  Portland, OR, while not California, is at least on the West Coast.

So, a couple of people definitely fell for it, while others were absolutely certain that it was a prank.  Obviously, the timing of the statement was all wrong, though not completely unfathomable.  The boyfriend had just started school, and there's no possible way that we would ever consider abandoning our two crazy kitties.

But, this doesn't mean that moving elsewhere hasn't been a real honest-to-goodness consideration.  Being that my unemployment situation has been less than pleasant, there have been many times when I've had to really consider whether it was worth it to stay in Boston.

I figure, however, that this is part of my growing up experience - the lowest of lows, the most depressing cry-my-eyes-out moments, the most desperate of situations, all of it and then some.

I made a pact with myself when I was a mere teenager - I will never regret my actions and my choices.

Each action, each choice has a consequence and a lesson.  While I might not be happy with the consequences, the lessons are what I have to take with me.

And as the first blossoms are peaking out of the ground, I'm reminded that the lows have a bottom, and better times are ahead.

Pretty Purple

And then I'm reminded that I'm where I'm meant to be at this time in my life.  Nothing has yet called me to relocate, and I'm not planning to budge too much. 

But when the time comes for me to leave and try out a new stomping ground, then it will be what I'm meant to be doing at that point.

Happy Holidays!

Kitty Parenthood

With 2 young kittens in our apartment, it's been quite a learning process to say the least.

Our apartment is definitely not kitty proof.  We have tall bookshelves with things on top of it, spaces behind bookshelves and other furniture that they are able to get to including getting behind the fridge (due to the old nature of our kitchen), and our floors and walls are not insulated enough.

Though Yoni is spayed and Mencken was neutered recently, they're still very energetic kitties and mainly in the middle of the night.

The other day, our neighbor below us finally came knocking on our door, complaining about all the noise at 2 in the morning.  We felt horrible that she was being disturbed, so we brought her a bottle of wine the next day as a way to apologize.

But, in truth, it's totally my fault.  I've been hoping that if we get the kitties used to being in the bedroom with us, they won't be so curious about the place.  They get a bit too excited and proceed to start chasing each other around the apartment.  The galloping around the house is pretty crazy for us, so I could only imagine what that's like for our neighbor below us.

I'm also too much of a softy. 

Recently, in the mornings, whenever it's about 8 or 9 am, Mencken will come to our bedroom door and meow and trill and mew and bark.  That's right.  Mencken totally makes bark-like sounds.  It's like he's like, "Hey, humans!  It's been daylight for like 3 hours already!  Get your asses up!" 

It's definitely very different from when Yoni will wake me up by insisting on snuggles.

Morning Snuggles with Yoni

Last night, Mencken just would not stop being a hyper kitty in the middle of the night.  When we put him outside of the bedroom, but Yoni was still inside, he mewed and mewed and mewed.  At one point, I couldn't take it, and opened the door to let him in.  He purred on my stomach, then slowly moved down to the foot of the bed.  Next thing you know, he was up on the window sill, interested in the noises the rain and wind were making.  Then he tried to start playing with Yoni.  We wanted him to be calm.  So, I put him outside again.

I feel like I tried to give him several chances, but he kept acting up.  I honestly don't know how many hours of sleep I got.

Finally, we woke up to a crashing sound.  Mencken had started to climb up our wall-hanging shoe rack and several of the hooks and shoes came crashing down.

*sigh*

I'm sure that there's no way that I can compare last night and the past couple of weeks to being a parent of human children.  But being a parents of kitties has felt really comparable.

Our Little Furrorists.

My Big Fat Greek Adventure - Kalimera, Santorini

On July 8th, at 7:30am, Jenny and I boarded a tiny aircraft headed to Santorini, one of the most gorgeous islands in Greece.

Santorini from Olympic Air's window

Our plane tickets told us that the flight would take approximately 50 minutes, which was about 10 minutes more than the flight from Boston to Montreal.  But we learned that that 50 minutes must have included boarding the bus that would take us to the tiny plane from the airport gate.

You know how when a plane gets to the right altitude, the flight attendants proceed to distribute snacks and drinks?  Then maybe 15-30 minutes later they start collecting your trash?  Well, this flight was so short that everything was super rushed!

*Plane reaches perfect altitude, seat belt signal turns off*
*Flight attendants start handing out drinks and snacks, which were cute little cookies that looked huge on the box, but were actually tiny!  It's like they multiplied as I opened the box.*
Flight attendant:  Here's your snack.
Me:  Thank you. *I start opening the box and were surprised by the tinyness of the cookies*
*Seat belt signal turns on*
Flight attendant:  Okay, give us your trash! We're landing!
Me:  But..wait..I just got my snack!  Aaahhhh!!

Seriously, as fast as you can read that scenario, that's how fast it happened!

Dog Lover Transitioning - Part Deux

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am now writing to you from my very own laptop!  Yay!

How fitting that packages that I've been waiting a long time for are finally arriving and my laptop is all fixed and happy (for now) just as Mercury is no long in retrograde, huh?

But onto the post!

**************************

It's May, and I'm pretty proud to say that I'm doing quite well at my 2010 Goals!

Remember this one?

2. Adopt 2 kitties with my boyfriend.

Well, that's another one we can check off the list.

The boyfriend and I officially have 2 kitties!!!

Little baby!

Though we had been planning for 2 kitties, we also felt very settled with Yoni in the house.  It just felt right, and I almost can't imagine what life was like without her.

Then, one Monday not so long ago (the 10th), I was on Craigslist looking for the usual stuff I look for - better apartments than the one we live in, jobs and experiments, and free stuff.  Once in a while, the boyfriend and I would check out the pets section, though we had only tried to pursue one kitten before to no avail.

So, here I was again, searching for kitties in the pet section.  I clicked on the location tab that was closer to where we lived, and suddenly a new listing popped up.

I clicked on it, and there he was.  This little 6 week old black fluffball, the last of his litter to be adopted.  I IMed the link to the boyfriend right away, urging him to call, if only to find out more information.

Within minutes, I receive a call from the boyfriend, saying that we could meet with this woman that day or the next day in a nearby town.  So, we planned to meet with her the next day in the evening.

It felt so surreal.  But it also felt really right.

Tuesday proved to be a long day.  I had a lot on my plate that day, between work, a teleconference call I needed to be on later that evening, and LOST.  But I was so excited and nervous about this new kitty.

We had started reading about how to properly introduce a new kitten into the household.  Though we had faith that our circumstances were working in our favor, we knew that we couldn't be 100% certain until the moment of truth.

As we drove closer to the meeting location, picking up kitty supplies on the way, I could feel myself getting extremely nervous.  I didn't want Yoni to be mad at us.  I wanted her to know that I still love her so much.  I didn't want this new little guy to have a hard time adjusting.  It was almost an intensified fear that I would make a horribly kitty-mama, similar to when we picked up Yoni.

We met this woman and her boyfriend at a Starbucks in Brookline.  The boyfriend had the little kitty in his jacket, and his friend sitting next to him had a little dog in his jacket.  I completely missed the memo on putting an animal in my coat for this meeting, so the boyfriend and I brought our pet carrier.  I realized later that it was the guy alternative to having a purse for a purse rat.

When the woman's boyfriend handed the kitty over to me, I was shocked at how small he was!  But I immediately fell in love.

He meowed, wide-eyed, all the way home.  The boyfriend named him Mencken, after H.L. Mencken.

I felt my anxiety growing even more the closer we got to our apartment.  As we stepped in front of our door, I said to the boyfriend, "This is it.  This is the moment of truth."  And all the advice about introducing a new kitty to an established kitty rushed into my head and flew out the window at the same time.

Initial encounter.

We established that the bedroom would be his safe space, so we set up the pet carrier and his supplies in the bedroom.  Yoni immediately went to sniff him.  She was tentative, unsure of what to make of him.  Thus began a cycle of Yoni sniffing him, batting at him, hissing, and running away.  For the most part, she watched him from the bed or from a distant spot.  But when he would make a strange noise, she would go right up to him and do the sniff-bat-hiss action.

Fuzzball

Things settled, relatively speaking, and Mencken fell asleep in the boyfriends pile of clothes.  Perfect timing for LOST.

Knocked out!

He managed to do enough exploring to know the exact location of the litter box, but we all fell asleep soon after he settled on my boyfriend's side of the bed on his fuzzy rug.

At 3:30 in the morning, I suddenly woke up to a lot of movement.  I thought back to all the times when we introduced a new dog into the house, and how one of our dogs would always try to bite around the necks of the younger ones to show dominance.  I feared the worst.

Once my lights were on, I saw that it was Yoni, playing with the new toy we bought for Mencken.  I peeked under the bed, but I couldn't see him.  The boyfriend woke up, and I told him I couldn't see where he was.  We were both immediately anxious that something horrible had happened.

As the boyfriend looked around the bathroom and living room, I tried calling out to him in the bedroom.  Suddenly, a little black fuzzball crawled our from under the boyfriend's night stand.  He's so tiny, he fit under it!

But now that we were all awake, Yoni wouldn't leave him alone.  Mencken would go behind the bedroom door, and Yoni would try to reach under the door to get to him.  The hissing grew more frequent.  At this point, it was almost 5 in the morning.  The boyfriend said that we should just close the door with Yoni on the other side, but I couldn't bear to think of her being confined even if it was the larger part of the house.  So, I slept on the couch to keep Yoni company.

Do you spot Yoni?

Now, it's been a week since Mencken's been part of the family.  Yoni has taught him how to play chase with her, and he's starting to climb up to the window sill just to "tag" her.  He's extremely playful, almost too much so - especially when he's trying to play with your feet while you make coffee.  He's also working on controlling his legs, but it's hilarious to watch him run somewhat diagonally, like a little drunk man.  We call him a "foot terrorist."  The boyfriend and I love them both so much.

Yoni will still hiss and bat at him once in a while, especially if she's had enough play.  But he's still learning, and so are we.

Meow?

Dream Escapes - Yoni's Owner

I'm feeling like I want to start using this blog as a place to put some of my dreams.

When I used to sleep more, in my younger and less busy days, I frequently had dreams and would often remember them vividly.  There were times when my dreams would hint at some event to come, and there were times when little bits of my dreams would come true.

My best friend/soul sister used to have incredibly vivid and foretelling dreams.  Once, our German Shepherd went missing, and she dreamed that he returned, barking at our front gate.  My father and I were sitting at our dining table, and said how much we would appreciate him now.  About 2 weeks, the exact thing happened.

Now, I like to think that I have my feet on the ground.  But I also believe that there are times when things are unexplainable.

Luckily, my boss also feels the same way.  I love that I can bring a dream to supervision as an agenda item!  She taught me that the best way to interpret a dream (no, not using those dictionaries!) is to figure out exactly what you were feeling in a dream, and find an example in your life where that exact feeling is showing up.  Then, you can ask yourself, if there was something I could have changed about my own actions in the dream, what would I change?

It's a great tool, really.  So, I hope you don't mind that I'm using this space as a part-time dream journal.

******

Let's start with a short one:

All I really remember was that the boyfriend and I were home.  This woman appeared at our door, claiming to be Yoni's (our kitty) owner.  She called her Yoni, though, which I thought was weird that she named the cat what we named her.

As I handed her over, I immediately started to cry.  I couldn't believe that we were willing to just give her back to this woman who lost her in the first place.  

I remember waking up slightly, and crying as I awoke.  I remember feeling like my boyfriend didn't care that we were giving her away, and he didn't care that I was so saddened by it.  

I realized that I had been dreaming, as Yoni lay curled up by our feet.

It's strange really, that I was feeling such anxiety from losing her.  Clearly, my boyfriend and I love her very much and feel very attached to her.  I suppose that I was feeling very alone in my anxiety, which is true, since my boyfriend seemed to brush away my dream as "just an anxiety dream" and nothing more.

But, sometimes I do feel like I'm alone in my anxieties, not necessarily about Yoni.  At work and in general, I feel like there's a lot of burdens being put on me - much of which I know I have to go through on my own, though people are still supportive.

Either way, I do know that my boyfriend and Yoni are constants in my life, and I can turn to their support in the worst of situations.  And if some lady were to come and claim Yoni as hers, she's going to have to fight me for her!

Toesies of the Month - March 2010

If you know anything about me, you know that green is my absolute favorite color.  Often, people will realize this after they see that I consistently wear different shades of green, which match certain shoes and most of my bags.

With St. Patrick's Day in a week, I'm starting to get pretty excited.  I'm not remotely Irish, nor do I take the entire day to stumble through the streets of Boston drunk off my tookus (like the rest of the city does).  But it's fun to see all these folks decked out in their greens, enjoying themselves.

So naturally, I would be painting my toes green this month.

Designed by Kim at Hollywood Nails & Skin, Boston, MA
Color:  SEPHORA by OPI - Leaf Him at the Altar
Occasion:  St. Paddy's
March 2010

I literally squealed out loud when I saw this color on Sephora's webpage.  I even called ahead to the store just to reserve the color just in case it ran out before I could get there.

Clearly, the name of the polish and the timing of its availability signals the upcoming arrival of Spring.  Interestingly, even the design the nail technician chose (a butterfly) is very Spring-themed.  But its name itself is feeling very poignant for me as well.

Last weekend, I attended a Wedding Expo for my night job.  There were moments when I realized that I was trying to see if there's a type of girl that gets married.  Do they wear their hair a certain way?  Are they a specific height?  Are they a specific type of personality?  Maybe they just say to themselves, "I'm going to get married now," and it happens?

Goodness, who knows...I do know that the ladies who where there, looking for the perfect photographer, cakes, or whatever for the MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF THEIR LIVES, are there because it's what's right for them.

I must say though, I would go to another Wedding Expo just for the cake samples.  But, it just felt even more so that that scene is just not for me.  I like the poofy dresses and all, but it just didn't feel practical for me. 

I don't know what it's like for the rest of you, but I CANNOT WAIT for warmer weather!

I've been very fortunate that I've been in Los Angeles for huge portions of the winter, though the reasons themselves have not been very fortunate.  But this past week has just been milder, providing a huge teaser to the upcoming change in seasons.

Okay...so I'm going to gush about my kitty some more.

Every since she's been here, it's literally like a whole new world.  Everything just seems brighter, more pleasant.  I almost cannot talk about how much I love her because I get teary-eyed.  I can't believe she hasn't even been here for 2 weeks, but it feels like she's been part of our lives forever.

She is our Spring.

What do you think of my new pedicure, Yoni?

Yoni approves!

Dog-lover Transitioning

Let's revisit another of my 2010 Goals and how well I'm doing so far.

2. Adopt 2 kitties with my boyfriend.

Well, we had put it off for a while.  What with the job situation for the both of us and house and dog sitting in Los Angeles for nearly 2 weeks, we felt we had to put it off. 

While we were in L.A, a friend of ours lets us know that her and her husband have taken in a stray kitty that was coming up to their porch.  Seeing that they already had 2 cats and 4 ferrets, they didn't think it would be wise for them to keep another kitty.  They knew that we were talking about adopting, so they asked if we would want to take this kitty.

I told them that I would leave that up to the boyfriend.  I, a dog-lover by nature, had very limited interactions with cats.  My family is much more dog-oriented, and the cats in our neighborhood were either all perched across on the porch across the street from my family's house or screech-moaning loudly in the middle of the night.

One thing I did know about cats was that they loved to sleep ON me.  Every time I would sleep over anyone's house that had kitties, I'd wake up to them nesting on my legs.  I always felt very constrained and trapped by that, mainly because I didn't want to startle them into clawing my thighs.

So, after being in the warm L.A. weather and bonding with the doggies, my boyfriend decided that we were ready for a kitty.

Did I mention the mice problem in our apartment?

Well, our apartment is old, perhaps built in the 1910's or 20's.  We have one of those elevators that have 2 doors to open, one being an accordion-type door.  It's old.  The wiring is old.  The walls and piping are old.  We also live in a neighborhood of Boston that has a lively vermin culture (for various reasons I suppose...but I like to blame the dirty college students...).  In fact, there's a bar/restaurant at the corner of our street, and our window overlooks it's roof.

We needed a kitty.  Badly.

Well, on the last day of February, the boyfriend and I welcomed this little one into our home.

Brawny Kitty!

We were nervous that she would take a while to get comfortable.  Coming from a place where she was not the "boss," we thought she might need to do a lot of adjusting.  But she was so chill!  

sniff sniff

At first, she did some sniffing and exploring.  We went to Target in the morning, so we were prepared with a pet carrier, litter box, food, catnip, laser pointer toy, and a little bed for her to get comfy on in the living room.

But she settled right in.  Our awesome friends did a great job in taking care of her.  They had taken her to get spayed the Friday before, so now we have to find her a local veterinarian and keep up on her check-ups.  The doctor said that she might be close to a year old, but we were lucky that our friends found her before she was knocked up.

It was surprising to the both of us that she was so comfortable from the get go!  She's still doing a lot of exploring, and she's possibly found the corner where the mice come through.  But if we're in the other room, she wants to be there with us.  She's already following us around the apartment, and she was very happy snuggling in bed with us.

snuggles

Oh, yes...her name.

Well, the boyfriend let me name her.  Everybody, meet Yoni.

So, while the goal was to adopt 2 kitties, the year is young.  Right now, we are so very happy with Yoni.  I feel like having her in our lives is just what we needed.  January and February were rough, as you all know. Strangely, I kept feeling like I needed to change the calendar to March a week before March was even here!

For us, Yoni really is the divine transition into a new part of our year and our lives.