Enter a kitten

Zeus was depressed after his sister died and on the vet's advice my exgf got him a 3 1/2 month old kitten, currently named Cheddar [1], as a companion. Interestingly Zeus perked up as soon as the carrier entered the house [2], although since then he's settled into a cautious mode and in fact for several days refused to acknowledge the kitten existed, even while sampling Cheddar's food dish.

The vet thinks he has some Siamese in him. He is very vocal. Also fairly long legged; if he grows as big as I think he will, he will tower over Zeus so it is good Zeus is establishing the pecking order now.

Saturday was Cheddar's first day of freedom. Young cats are very energetic until they aren't. It took him a surprisingly short time to find the hiding place under the couch, where he likes to entangle himself in the levers that would extend the foot rest if the couch didn't have a cover preventing that from working.

He's very good about burying (whereas Zeus announced he was still top cat by leaving a gift untouched on top of the sand) but this is of less help than it could be because from time to time he emits toxic gasses that would burn the hair off my scalp if it had any. I wonder if he is teething?

He is quite interested in Zeus and clearly wants to be pals. Zeus isn't really sure he's on board with that (he'd be even less sure if he'd ever caught the kitten dropping into ambush mode on seeing Zeus; Cheddar always reconsiders that choice) but he's happy to thoughtfully watch the kitten as he dashes around. Interactions have been reasonably friendly given they are cats who on Monday had never met and in fact at one point Zeus tolerated the kitten playing next to him on Zeus' couch right up to the third time the kitten swatted at Zeus' tail.


1: So far the other options are:

Bunbury
Cheddar
Chicago the Windy Kitty <<< MY SUGGESTION
Earl Grey
Isac
Leicester
Leopold Bloom
Livingstone
Miao-sy Tongue
Nigel
Oscar
Pekoe
Sebastien
Stuart
Thor
William

Suggestions welcomed. So far he seems to respond to Nigel most often.

2: The dog next door ran up and jammed their face into the carrier, then scurried away when the kitten hissed at him (the dog is about 20 times bigger). Since then the dog has settled into sitting in front of the door, waiting hopefully.

This I believe

A person can be socially clueless without any autism spectrum disorder playing a role in the matter.

Have calipers, will travel

Is anyone else bothered by the fact that if one applies the work of Franz Joseph Gall and Cesare Lombroso to the animal control boards making life or death decisions based on BSL, many of the board members have atavistic skull shapes characteristic of criminal inclinations? Which of course explains their proclivity for killing animals on the flimsiest of excuses.

Noted on Antick Musings

Carrie Vaughn is back with Kitty Steals the Show, the eleventh book (but only tenth novel) in the "Kitty Norville" series, a contemporary fantasy about a werewolf that actually seems to believe in the rule of law most of the time. (That's shocking for most urban fantasy, which tend to have a default morality of "whatever the protagonist does is inherently right" and a huffy attitude towards mundane police and other folks who might want to oversee Little Miz Vampire-killer's felonious activities -- come to think of it, most urban fantasy heroines have the same attitude towards government as investment bankers do: it's fine as long as it stays in its place and doesn't attempt to stop them.)

WHY

Am I ear-wormed with Barbara Allen?

Where matters stand