Jaffa and Popcorn - unleashed!

Well it's been a week now since two terrible felines entered our house and turned it upside down! In one swoop we went from being a no-pet household (after the last of Lenore's elderly cats jogged off to the great cattery in the sky) to one that seems to revolve around kittens! Still it isn't so bad as they're real little darlings; incredibly sweet, affectionate and entertaining. Oh and for obvious reasons the children absolutely adore them - they just can't get enough of the furry fireballs and would quite happily carry them anywhere. In fact they do....

Anyway just who or what are these moggies? Well we picked up Jaffa in Golders Green last Saturday where he shared a house with his brothers and sisters; all of them orange tabbies and bright as buttons. We could have spent all afternoon choosing, and almost did, but in the end Joshua picked Jaffa (known as cat #3 at that point) for his placid temperament and all-over colouring. Isn't he cute?

His Master's Arms!

After that we enjoyed a quick jaunt up to Aylesbury where Popcorn, as we eventually named him, lived with his brothers, mother and assorted cousins; all of them pure-bred Tonkinese. Now this might seem like an unusual choice but my late Mum had a Tonkinese cat called Chocky and he was a truly delightful creature and I know that my Mum would have adored another; so really it had to be Tonkinese (a cross between Burmese and Siamese) or nothing! Fortunately Lenore managed to track down a breeder with kittens and so it was that another little boy came to join our family:

You looking at me?

Now it's fair to say that Jaffa and Popcorn didn't exactly see eye to eye on first meeting; in fact they circled each other warily and hissed with gusto when the other one came near. Not too surprising given that both of them had just been torn from the only home they'd even known and deposited in a strange house full of strange people. And yet within 48 hours they were snuggling up together and playfully wrestling like born brothers; truly remarkable. 

As a special treat I allowed them a short amount of supervised time in the garden this weekend - almost like the exercise hour that hard-bitten cons get in the movies! Given that neither of them has ever stepped foot outside before they were both utterly wide-eyed and remarkably brave. Who knew that long grass could be such a blast?

After this high excitement they were both a bit pooped and looking forward to a little cat-nap (had to get this in here somewhere!). So we went out and left the boys to their own devices for a while and, for once, they didn't tear the place up:

We're going to need a bigger box!