Jude has been asking to get a kitten for quite some time, now. As it happened, when my mother brought her creamsicle tabby, Peaches, up here for the summer, she was "in a way", thanks to an unplanned night out with a neighbouring Arkansonian feline.

So, last Tuesday, Jude got to bring home a little miniature male version of the kitten's mother, which he named "Tigger".


Tigger has been in the house, except for a few brief forays into the outside world, so we can make sure he is good and used to us. We have two other cats, both males: one is Simba, one of our original two kittens from 2009 that spent the winter inside (and contributed to Jason's contracting pneumonia the following spring), the other Samson, Simba's nephew.

Samson and his siblings were born in October of 2010, going into a particularly cold winter, and did not get handled much. As a result, he is feral--but he sticks around and keeps the mice population under control.

Still, it's a shame he won't let us near him. Because of that, Jason agreed to keeping Tigger inside for a limited time (ending today or tomorrow, methinks) to make sure he is good and tame--and also to ease him and the Great White Dork (aka "Thunder") into some kind of understanding with one another. Even if the understanding is just that Tigger learns not to let Thunder anywhere near him...