Tortitude
When I first introduced the kitten to my friend group via pictures and video, it was with the full knowledge that at least one of my friends (Hi Stella!) had torties. (Tortoiseshell cats.) And my first question was, "Are torties like calicos in that they're almost always female?" The immediate response was, "Yes." Which is what I figured, because torties are just the darker versions of calicos, it seems like.
The next thing I got was, "Torties have something called 'tortitude.'"
To which I replied, "Excuse me, what?"
Throughout the conversation, I was informed by two of my friends that tortitude = orange cat stupid with black cat superiority complex.
They. Were. Right.
Cinder isn't afraid of anything. Oh, she used to be afraid of Ori. That lasted maybe three days. She was wary of Small Creature. She now seeks him out to antagonize him. Demon still dislikes her, but they've now gone nose-to-nose at least twice, so she'll win him over in the end.
She loves the litter robot. She thinks it's the most fascinating thing in the world to pee in it and then sit back and watch as it goes through the shovel process. The first time she used it, I freaked out because I didn't know if she even weighed enough to register in it. Turns out, she does. As it also happens, it appears she has the bladder the size of a thimble because when she's running around the house, she suddenly has to go every twenty minutes. But only if she's near the robot. It takes her much longer to need to use the regular box.
Jumping off high places? Yup. Scaling a cat tree like it's nothing? Absolutely. Rocketing around the house and launching herself into the fireplace for funsies? Ooooh yeah.
There is absolutely the orange cat lack of consequences mentality. And if you try to correct her, all of her braincells stop computing at once, because how dare I tell her she was wrong.
Black cat superiority is best on display when she's dealing with the other critters in the house. She already had Ori playing with her and having a grand ol' time by day 4. She's been wearing SC down enough that there be head-boopins happening regularly now. Oh, and Demon? The one who hisses and growls at her if she even looks at him wrong? Yeah, she touched his tail and he didn't beat the shit out of her–and I was gonna let him; some boundaries are learned the hard way–which I will call a success.
Now, in my previous post, I mentioned how this little girl has gone through it. Not only did she have a botfly larva growing alongside her esophagus, I found a much smaller one behind her ear the day after her vet appointment. On top of that, I got a phone call saying she had roundworms. Luckily, all are easy-ish fixes. We got the botflies out and she's on a course of antibiotics. Her topical meds, RevolutionPlus, aren't just flea and tick meds, but also mite and parasite killers. So that roundworm she had? I had to pull that out of her butt the day after applying the meds. She also tested negative for the big 3 cat diseases, which was my biggest concern for allowing her around the boys.
My biggest concern now? Her learning how to use the cat door to escape into the catio. As my brother said, "Isn't that the point of a catio?" Not when her little body can squeeze through the fencing and she could disappear forever into the wild. Not that I think she would–she does kind of have it made here, y'know–but one never knows.
Which means we've started shopping for a tracker. I will NOT be using fucking Tractive again. (My review of them will be coming in the form of a rant. I just don't know when.) Fi has a new cat version available, so we're going to try that out. Problem being that the trackers are all currently the size of her face and she wouldn't be able to function with one on her body. So yeah...
And that's it. It's well past her bedtime and mine. Time to hit post and go to bed.
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