HEY BUDDY!

During the week and a half that Fred’s been with us, she’s managed with her winsome eight-week-old looks and her pitiful mews to convince the other cats that she’s not a kitty axe murderer. She’s disruptive, it’s true. When she’s in wildcat mode, there isn’t a twitching tail she won’t pounce on, or a crotch she won’t lunge at with fangs bared and claws extended. It’s as if she's a crack assassin trained by the military to go for the ‘nads, particularly when her one of her owners is casually standing around the kitchen, not expecting to find a tiny kitten scrambling up his pants leg.

Sarah, through hissing and growling, has made quite clear her limits when it comes to Fred’s antics. If she’s not in the mood to be used as a grappling dummy, she’ll growl the moment Fred walks into the room. At the same time, she’s also a lot more tolerant of the kitten than she is even of Chloe, with whom she’s lived for nearly a dozen years; even when she sees Fred napping in the crook of one of my arms, she’ll join us on the sofa where I’m working and occupy the other. Yesterday she even hopped up onto the bed where she saw Fred and I relaxing, curled up against me, and allowed Fred to chew on her tail for a good twenty minutes.

It’s Chloe, though, that Fred really likes. Whenever Chloe walks into a room where Fred is pretending to nap, Fred’s enormous ears will perk up, levitating the rest of her head. Hey buddy!, you can practically hear her say. What’s going on? Hey buddy! Hey, buddy, buddy, buddy! Hey! Hey buddy! It’s your buddy, buddy! What’re we doing, buddy! What’re you doing? Hey, buddy! Let’s do something! Hey, BUDDY! HEY BUDDY! Then they’ll be off, shooting across the house with a skittering of their claws on the living room wood, followed by the thuds of their bodies colliding into the furniture, rasslin’ like wildcats. Chloe mostly loves it. When she doesn't, she hops up onto one of the high places as yet inaccessible to the younger cat, letting Fred gaze at her adoringly.

Yet I think my favorite times with Fred—other than the moments she’s sleeping and purring and not requiring me to figure out what trouble she’s causing—are mealtimes. Fred eats with such lip-smacking, zesty gusto that it’s impossible not to laugh. Especially when she looks up at me, food decorating the fur around her little mouth, blinking with such gluttonous happiness that it’s clear she’s saying, OH MY GOD YOU GUYS HAVE THE BEST FOODS I HAVE EVER TASTED IN MY LIFE!!!