Tortietude

With the changing of the season, it appears that Kayla's behavior has changed a bit as well. I don't know if it's because it's cooler at night and a better temperature for cuddling, but Kayla has been much calmer at night. Rather than going through her midnight shenanigans, she has spent most of the last few nights asleep on the bed with only brief periods of alertness accompanied by noisy batting behavior. One night she didn't disturb us at all!

I'm not sure what to make of this, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts. She still refuses to let me sleep in much past 7:30 am on weekends, announcing with her loud meows and attacks on my arms and feet that it's time to get up. She's forcing me to take the advice of sleep experts to go to bed and get up at the same time every day. I suppose I should thank her!

Kayla also has a page at Catster.com, a web site that provides free web pages for cats (and their owners). You can look at other cats' pages and invite them to be friends with your cat, or give them an electronic "treat." To read about how Kayla became part of our family, take a look at Kayla's Catster page. And while you're there, browse around at some of the other cats' pages. It's a lot of fun!

Kayla usually sleeps on my bed at night with me, either curled up against my chest on top of my arms or leaning up against my husband's legs in the crook of his knees. It's very cute to have a soft, purring cat sleeping next to you. What's not so cute is her habit of waking up around 2 am and taking the grand tour of our bedroom -- first the corner shelf of our headboard, the top of the headboard, then off to my vanity, the bookshelves under the window, and finally next to the windowsill itself to bat at the blinds. At every stop she finds something to rub against, bat at, or otherwise make enough noise to wake us up.

I've tried picking her up off the headboard and tossing her to the foot of the bed, but she stubbornly returns to jump over my head back onto the headboard. After a few tosses she'll jump off the bed and in a few minutes I'll hear my makeup brushes rattling or eye shadow containers being pushed around. I reach down to the floor, pick up the squirt bottle and slide out of bed, aiming the bottle toward the dark mass that I think is Kayla. A good squirt will get her to run off (sometimes just reaching for the bottle is enough to make her flee), but it doesn't deter her for long (did I mention that torties are stubborn?). Soon I'll hear the telltale creak of the book shelf or feel the gentle thump as she once again alights on the bed.

Usually this behavior lasts for 15 or 20 minutes before she pads to the head of the bed and curls back up on top of my arms (yes, my arms are pinned there, sometimes for hours, but of course I don't move). I've pretty much grown used to this nightly interruption, but what's really maddening is the occasional night when she continues her noisy disuptions for two hours or longer. It's like she's on a cocaine-fueled bender that keeps her from settling down for more than five minutes. Needless to say, these are the nights when Kayla is definitely not adorable.

Fortunately for Kayla, all she has to do to get back into my good graces is to give me one of her squinty-eyed looks, or rub up against me, purring, in the morning when I sit up in bed. She has me wrapped around her polydactyl paw!

Allow me to introduce you to Kayla, my polydactyl tortoiseshell cat. A tortoiseshell (or tortie) is a color pattern, not a breed, and they are a beautiful combination of orange and black fur that is intermixed all over their bodies with an occasional splotch of orange here and there. They are similar to calicoes which have large patches of orange, black and white solid-colored fur. Torties are almost always female and they always have an attitude.

OK, you're saying, I get what a tortie is, but what's this about a polydactyl? Polydactyl cats have an extra toe on each paw, often making their front paws look like mittens. They have been popular with seafarers and with Ernest Hemingway, who owned several polydactyls at his home in Key West, Florida. Polydactyl cats can be quite dextrous and can pick up things with their paws that most other cats can't.

Kayla is a true tortie -- loving and affectionate one minute, crazily racing around the house like Stitch the next. She's smart and stubborn and very determined -- and very adorable. As this blog will testify, there is never a dull moment with Kayla.