For the second time in Athena’s life, her human has come home early from work and curled up on the sofa under a blanket, and refused to play games. She’s improved on her ‘nurse cat’ routine a little bit, but she did curl up around my migraine addled head and purr loudly in an effort to comfort me. Poor little kitten. She tries so hard, but really doesn’t quite get why I don’t want to play games sometimes.
Nurse Cat was a thing my childhood cat used to do. She had a keen sense for sick days, and would immediately come to watch over the patient, and take advantage of the patient’s bed.
Athena will sometimes do things that remind me of other cats I’ve had, and it must be a combination of innate cat behaviours and the common environment I provide. For example, although it may significantly squick some readers out, she likes to sleep under the covers of the bed with her head on the pillow, another behaviour she has in common with the cats who have gone before her.
She’s beginning to ‘mummy’ (or knead/make biscuits) soft fabrics, but not nearly as much as our old cat, Posie used to do. She loves a fake fleece blanket that lives on the sofa and is torn about how to approach it – should she bite and play with it, or love and cuddle it? Her love of hunting and ‘killing’ inanimate objects is all Athena, and unlike any other cat I’ve met. Athena never gets tired of killing her toys, hunting scraps of paper, and when I changed the bed clothes this morning I found two wrappers she’d brought to me in the middle of the night and deposited lovingly under my pillows. I pray I never get mice again because my bed will become a graveyard (and I’m rethinking the idea of letting her become an outdoor cat if we ever move again).
She’s recovering well from her surgery, though today there’s some fluid build up under the incision. There’s quite a lot, but as there’s no evidence of heat or infection, she doesn’t seem to bother with it, and she’s been playing about loads, I’m not too worried. I’ll keep an eye on her and contact the vet if it doesn’t go down. Kittens are not very good at bed rest – for migraines or abdominal surgery!
