Hi! It’s me again, Mudskipper Rous. Only I don’t have a guinea pig with me now. Melanie says I am too big to play with a guinea pig, that I should stop growing so fast. So instead she got me a cat! Actually, he’s a kitten. His name is Driftwood.

Let me rant about names a little more. I know I covered this in my first post but it bares more discussion.

Why did I not get to name my own cat? I think I could have come up with a better name than Driftwood. How dumb is that? It doesn’t describe him at all. I might have called him Black Tail or Spot. Or maybe even Whirling Dervish, after all he is a Turkish Van cat. He might not exactly whirl but he comes close.

Now that we’re on the subject of names (we’ll get back to my cat in a moment), let’s talk about Melanie’s name. Firstly, it’s too long. It’s a real mouthful, and when you have as small a mouth as I do, and especially when your mouth is full of big, sharp teeth, you don’t want to be saying anything long. I know Caplin Rous used to call her “my owner.” I don’t like that because it is misleading. I own her, not the other way around. Garibaldi Rous called her “Melly” because he said it rhymed with smelly. I can understand that, but really, all humans smell. So I was thinking of calling her Mel but that really has too much dignity for her. And besides, she didn’t name my cat that well. So I am going to call her MelT. It is perfect because it implies that she is transient, ephemeral, in the process of becoming less than she was. Also, it is a combination of her first name and her last name, which starts with a “t”.

Back to my cat!

I didn’t know I would like a cat so much! He is the best! We love to play together. Sometimes he plays too rough and makes me eep. Sometimes I play too rough and make him climb up on his cat tower.

I used to have to wait for him to come down, as you can see in the photo above. He also had his food up there, which I resented. Why could I not get to his food when he can eat all of my grass and hay that he wants? That doesn’t seem fair. So I decided to do something about it.

I figured that if I was ever going to get up there I’d have to learn to climb.

You can’t learn to climb all at once. First you have to climb easier things before you try harder things like the cat tower. I learned how to climb on this bench and look out the window (except the blind was down, which was annoying). Driftwood does this all the time so I knew it was a good first step.

Climbing is tiring so I had to take a nap. Apparently it is even tiring to watch so Driftwood took a nap too.

All work and no play makes me a dull capybara so Driftwood and I spent some time on recreation.

I have to say, Driftwood provided some great encouragement! Mostly by eating up where I couldn’t get to the food, but also by giving me little kisses of support.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ywyt3-fcCQ[/youtube]

Finally I made it! You have to watch the video to see how I did it though.

Then, of course, Driftwood knocked the cat food all over the floor so I didn’t even need to climb to get it!