Cats N Conflict

When you bring 4 cats into a house with 3 other cats and a dog (plus a second dog that comes and goes), you're bound to have conflict. But, it's also quite entertaining.

Here are the players:

The Home Team:
Squeak, the grumpy half-senile grey 18 year old cat
George, the whiny crotchety 16 year old cat
Motor, the scaredy cat
Lucy, the dog

The Visiting Team:
Midget, my little tabby (see my avatar)
Annie, the opinionated tuxedo cat with evil powers and road rage
Garfield, the complete wuss
Shponker, the alien cat, also known as Garfield's boyfriend

Other:
Zeus, my brother's dog, who comes over rather frequently

We fully expected Annie to be rather bold in making herself at home. We also expected Squeak to be rather annoyed by the presence of the intruders, and George to strut his stuff and throw a fit. Garfield, Shponker, and Motor were expected to disappear, whine, and hiss, depending on the situation.

Garfield, Shponk, and Motor have not disappointed. Garfield has been MIA most of the time, with some hissing and carrying on when someone does something scary, such as looking at him. Shponk has bravely emerged from our bedroom a few times, and allowed himself to be petted. Motor has done a lot of hiding, crying, and otherwise protesting.

Annie has proven to be a complete wimp, running away in terror from the other cats and the dogs. She's coming around though, especially now that she's found a few interesting perches (a kitty condo, the back of the couch, the kitchen counter), but the dogs still terrify her. Fortunately for everyone's safety, she seems to be so distracted by her abject terror of the drooling ones that she hasn't stopped to cast any spells on them (or on the rest of us). But she's starting to come around, so we may have a problem soon.

Midget, on the other hand, is being a pest. She has honed her cuteness to a calculated level of manipulativeness. She stalks Squeak (who hisses and growls and puffs himself up like the big tough stud he never was even in his prime), antagonizes George (who whines and cries in spite of being well over twice her size), and demands attention from anyone who's conscious. But, she is instantly exonerated from any wrongdoing (such as cornering Squeak in the bathroom until his hackles stand up and he hisses/growls) by standing up on her tippy toes with her tail in the air and her eyes round and huge, performing her dance of "look how sweet and cute I am!" Our military would be wise to learn to harness such cuteness and use it to manipulate our enemies.

Zeus, being Zeus, thunders in and makes everyone nervous. He bounces around, wide-eyed with his tongue flopping around, with an expression that says "ZOMG! KITTIES! PLAY!" The kitties do not, unfortunately, share his enthusiasm, and run away, hiss, or otherwise object. I suspect that he will be the target of Annie's evil superpowers sooner or later. Forget fearing the wrath of Zeus...Zeus needs to be worried about the wrath of Annie.

For the most part, they're all avoiding each other for the moment, but I foresee some critter smackdown in the near future.

So that's pretty much what's been going on here. In other news, Eddie and I went gambling with my brother last night, and actually did fairly well. Eddie was getting the hang of a method of card-counting in Blackjack, and while it was effective, he needs practice (these things really do take some practice), and lost. Dave lost $40 or so. I won $150 on penny slots. :D Then we went to Denny's and made asses of ourselves.

That's about it for now. Updates to follow as the tension builds between the animals.