Kitten and String

Peaches and cream, bread and butter, kittens and string — all things that just really need to be together.

Maka Lea, the latest feline to join us (we have eight others!), is still in that cute kitten stage. He’s got some problems with his locomotion (more about that here and here, along with more pictures!), but he doesn’t let that bother him in the slightest.

Way on the right, little Maka Lea spots me carrying the camera into the livingroom. He can be hard to find — he’s so small that he fits into the tiniest hidey-holes, and under just about anything. But his curiousity got the better of him this morning — he saw that strange thing in my hands and just had to come see what it was.

Then I took him into the bedroom for one of his favorite games: playing with a short piece of twine. You can see how much he’s enjoying himself; he completely forgot about the camera. Eventually he did the universal kitten-and-string thing, getting himself all wrapped up in it.

It’s interesting to watch Maka Lea deal with his disabilities. Basically his strategy is to ignore them, along with their consequences. He’s bouncy and energetic, even compared with other kittens, and this results in all sorts of incidents that just look awful to us. For example, he might run headlong, at full throttle, into a piece of hard wooden furniture — making a resounding “thunk!” that we can hear on the other side of the house. Maka Lea acts like this is just a normal part of life; shakes his head a couple times, and resumes his headlong, full-throttle galivanting. We’ve seen him up on high places, not knowing how to safely descend. You can see him reach a point where he figures he’s got nothing to lose — can’t stay stuck here all day! — and he just launches himself into space. He might be over a hard rock or ceramic floor, or over a dog, or over some pointy object — it doesn’t matter, he just goes for it and ignores the consequences.

With this positive attitude, little Maka Lea does just about everything the “big kitties” do — even a little earlier, I think, than a normal kitten would do. His utter fearlessness lets him march right up to our dogs (who scatter whenever he comes too close, as they’re leery of getting nailed with Maka Lea’s awesomely sharp little claws). He just seems to have no idea that any action might have consequences; the very opposite of the stereotypical scaredy-cat. It’s good compensation for his disabilities, so long as we keep him strictly indoors (which we do)…

As usual, click on the small pictures for a larger view…