Kat’s most favorite pastime these days, other than listening to, jamming to, dancing to, and singing to music, is drawing with crayons. She loves her colors, and the crayons are almost always scattered over the floor where she can get to them.

As you can see, she has another artistic kitten interested in crayons–Delia. Cordelia loves to help with artistic pursuits–her current favorite room in the house, other than any room where Kat is roaming, is my sewing room. There are so many things to help with in there–fabric, thread, embroidery floss, measuring tools, notepaper, transfer paper, batting–you name it, she is into it.

And, she loves crayons. She picks them up and carries them around in her mouth, sometimes running away with them. She jumps over the baby gate and carries them off for nefarious purposes, sending Zak and I dashing to rescue them, as several of them have already been lost to her ministrations. She bats them on the floor, she carries them, and she, like Kat, chews on them now and again.

And she loves to watch Kat draw, and help.

As you can see–she assists in pushing the crayon across the paper, and she also holds the wayward paper down so it cannot escape the artistic additions of Kat. Without Delia lounging across the paper, most certainly, Kat would never be able to draw.

She is getting better at making deliberate lines, now, in a fairly controlled fashion. Both Zak and I have seen her do it–she is also learning how to make circular shapes. Actually, they are ellipses, but they are drawn in imitation of the circles Zak, Morganna and I draw for her. She has also started playing two new games that involve crayons. She has an animals book that she loves (and that she can identify all the animals but the insects in it, if you ask, “Where is the rhino?” she will point to it unerringly, for example.) and Zak has taken to drawing crayon versions of the animals in that book and asking her to point to the photograph he is copying . She can pick them out perfectly, every time–this is this bunny, and that is that dog, and can go back and forth from photograph to crayon drawing.

Another game she plays, which she initiated when we were drawing together Friday night after I came home from work, is she will pick up a crayon, and hold it up against some object in the room or on her person that matches that color. The first one she did was green–she was wearing rainbow leggings and she picked up the dark green crayon and held it against the light green stripe on her leggings. She nudged me to get me to look, and I said, “Yes! Green! They are both green.” Then, she picked up the light green crayon that exactly matched the stripe and held it against the stripe along with the dark green crayon. She understood that they were both green.

Then, she picked up the brown crayon and held it against the brown cover of a book, and the wood floor, both of which were–well, brown.

Then, she picked up an orange crayon, and pointed to the back wall of our living room, which is painted a russet-orange color. I affirmed it was orange, and then she put the crayon against the picture of a golden lion tamarin, a little fuzzy monkey which has orangish fur, and then put the crayon against my freshly hennaed hair. (By the way, if you ever want red hair, and you don’t want to use chemicals in your hair–which is a good choice, I think–go for body-art quality henna. Here is the best information on the web about using henna for hair, and it is also where I get my henna–the lady who runs the site, along with The Henna Page wrote her PhD dissertation on the history and use of henna in body art, cosmetics and medicine and the culture surrounding it. Catherine Cartwright Jones, the lady in question, also does some of the best henna art I have ever seen in my life.)

It was awesome. We now play the colors game regularly while we are drawing together.

Every milestone is exciting, but this one in particular is very exciting to me.

Kat has been primarily feeding herself for a couple of months, but she was using her hands exclusively. Now, she is using her spoon for most foods that grownups use utensils for, and can even slurp milk from a spoon with her cereal.

She isn’t even too messy, which is also amazing. In fact, she is the least messy kid I have ever watched eat. She is very deliberate in her actions and her face is always filled with serious thought as she carefully chooses each morsel to bring to her mouth next.

It is terribly cute.

Here, you can see her having a snack of rice pilaf with peas, carrots and cheese.

At first, her timing on when to open her mouth as she brought the spoon up was a little off, but she has improved a good bit, and now she has it down perfectly.

Well, not quite perfectly. She does spill stuff down her front, and sometimes instead of the bib catching it, it falls to the footrest of her Svan high chair. (Which is the best high chair ever–I love it. It isn’t a bunch of ugly plastic, and it has a great, neat design, and it doesn’t take up half a room. What is up with the giant high chairs? Babies are little, right?)

When food falls to the footrest or the floor, the cats act as clean-up crew–particularly Cordelia, who follows Kat around everywhere, almost like a dog.

Delia is very cute with Kat. Not only does she help clean up Kat’s little food mishaps, she also likes to cuddle with her when she takes naps on the couch.

Yesterday, while Morganna and I were at work, kicking ass and taking names in the kitchen (It was a very busy shift, but we never had a kitchen drama or freakout at all–we didn’t just keep up with the servers, we sometimes were a little too fast for them) Zak was watching Kat as he always does. And while he was watching her, she fell asleep on his lap. He was able to move her to the couch, and after he had her secured with pillows and the baby monitor, he went to the kitchen to get some coffee. He was only gone for a few minutes, but when he came back, he saw that Delia, whom Kat calls Deeya, had gotten up on the couch and settled in to share napspace with Kat.

Both baby and kitten slept quite comfortably for several hours.

When I got home, Kat helped us eat some pizza (I was too tired to cook at ten-thirty at night), even going so far as to grab a whole piece from Zak’s pie, and taking bites from it. She is learning exactly how useful teeth can be! (Deeya helped us eat pizza, too. She likes the crust best. Strange critter.)

Grimalkin is one of the smartest cats I have ever known. Not only is she intelligent, able to open doors, and very full of opinions on all matters involving the household, she has a sense of humor. She plays jokes on the other cats, and on her favorite humans.

We used to live in a house that had a walkway over the “great room,” which is a fancy way of saying, “a giant living room with a vaulted ceiling and a big stone fireplace.” The “L-shaped” couch was partially under the walkway, and when Grimble wanted to play fetch with her little furry, rattling mousies, she would go upstairs, peek out from the walkway, and drop a mousie onto the lap, open book or head of whomever was on the couch. She’d also wait until another cat was asleep on the couch and would drop a mousie on top of them in order to awaken them. Every time she got another cat to jump up in surprise, you could see the grin hiding in the corner of her mouth and in the sparkle of her green eyes.

She even, when our friend Howie was painting our house, after jumping back and forth over the paint pan many times in a row, dipped her paws in, and went running down the hallway. Dismayed, Howie cleaned up after her, but she sneaked behind him, and added fresh blue pawprints back down the hall going in the other direction. Even as I was washing her feet in the hateful, evil bathtub, I swear she was laughing. She as so proud of herself.

Here you see Grimble sitting with Kat.

Grimble likes Kat, but only when she is asleep. She curls up with her, and lets Kat her put feet on her tummy, and purrs, but as soon as Kat wakes up, she usually sidles away, because she rightfully doesn’t trust Kat not to try and hug her. And while Kat is quite gentle, such clasping hugs of Grimble’s person are seldom allowed to adults, much less drooly little babies who make loud noises and have sticky fingers.

So, the photograph above is a rare and beautiful thing.

In the next picture, you can see that not only has Kat realized that she is being allowed to pet Grimble while she is awake, but Grimble has realized that heathen sticky fingers are currently touching her rump, and from the set of her ears and the narrowing of her eyes, you can tell that she is not really approving of this turn of events.

Grimmy would never swat Kat–she is too good natured for that. She doesn’t swat at humans–other cats are another matter–but people are always treated gently, especially little ones. If Grimble is in a situation with people she doesn’t like, she just looks for the nearest escape route, and disappears.

Which is what happened here. While I was focusing the camera between the previous shot and this one, Grimble decided it was time to leave.

And leave she did, with a little huff and a swish of her tail.

Right now, Grimalkin is on the back of the couch, behind my head, purring. It is her favorite nap spot these days, Kat often stands up on my lap and reaches over my shoulder to pet her, which Grimmy now takes with good grace. She trusts me to keep the stickiness and ungentle thumping from the small one to a minimum.

As you can see, Kat is quite pleased with herself for having successfully petted Grimalkin, the stripiest of stripey cats.

So, here is an update on the antics of some of our feline friends, as they bring a smile to our days.

First up, we have Grimalkin, fondly known as Grimble, laying on her favorite perch, the back of the sofa.

Here, she not only looks dignified, but she manages to show off her Mona Lisa smile to her best advantage, turning her head just so like a seasoned professional model posing for the camera.

Grimble is asleep next to me right now, curled up in a purring ball of stripy, warm fur against my thigh.

Tatterdemalion wants everyone to know how pretty she is.

See how pretty she is?

Look at her plume tail, and at her puffs of perfectly groomed thundercloud fur.

And, look, look! See how bright her eyes are, and how poised she is, and how very graceful.

Watch her flirt, mincing back and forth, reaching out to be petted, then pulling away as if the proffered hand might soil her luxurious, oh-so-silky fur.

Isn’t she pretty?

Isn’t she the prettiest?

Well, isn’t she?

Yep, that’s Tatter. That’s just how she is.

And here is the cuddle-bug, the maternal love-cat, Dandelion.

We had put all of Kat’s stuffed animals on the love seat in order to clean the floor, and as I was putting away her books, Dandelion jumped up and settled herself among the pile of critters.

By the time I noticed her, she had gotten comfy, but hadn’t quite fallen to sleep.

At this moment, Dandelion is on the couch behind my head, watching what I write over my shoulder, purring her deep, resonant purr.

She has the most amazing, golden, throaty purr, like Eartha Kitt’s singing voice, and her fur is short with an amazing velvet nap to it.

I think that Eartha would have been a great name for her, now that I think on it.

Three days ago, I woke up and came downstairs to be confronted by the sight of Schmoo, our largest cat, curled up with Kat’s little baby doll, SweetPea, with one paw draped over her.

This was just too much. I know I giggled for hours over the sight.

And even though I took several photographs, all the while snickering, Schmoo was unconcerned.

He was perfectly happy, cuddled up with his little baby doll.

After I took the pictures, he settled back down and went back to sleep, cheek to cheek with SweetPea.

Finally, we come to young Cordelia, known by Delia by everyone but Kat who calls her Deeya.

Here, she had been sitting on the couch, washing her belly. When I said hello to her, she perked up her head and sat upright, forgetting her bath entirely. She sat like that for several minutes–once again, allowing Zak plenty of time to snap a couple of pictures before she realized that she was being immortalized in an embarrassing pose, and that she should sit more normally.

That’s it for this week’s Weekend Cat Blogging.

Stay tuned for next weekend’s entry which will focus on our other three cats: Gummitch, Ozy and Jack and their continuing adventures.

I suppose it is inevitable in this house.

With two parents and a big sister who love music as much as we do, and with a multi-instrumentalist and a singer in the household, and with musicians coming in and out, we should not be surprised at how much Kat loves not only to listen to music and dance to it, but also to make it.

Yes, that is her, playing one of Zak’s Native American flutes while he plays didgeridoo. She can only blow the open note–her hands are too small for fingering, but when she blows, the note is clear and perfect.

And–she has learned to keep time with the rhythm that Zak was playing. She was kicking her foot and waving her hand in time, just like he was doing, and then she started patting the floor. Her flute toots were in sync–and she was bobbing her head in time. Music is a whole-body experience for her now.

And she is learning how to sing–she tweedles and trills along with vocal music now–and has matched pitch with Morganna and I fairly often.

She likes it when her Uncle Dan comes over and plays drums, too, and will wiggle and bounce in time with whatever he is playing.

And, she has not lost her fascination with guitars and guitar music; when we last took her to Salaam for dinner, she was thrilled to watch and listen to the classical guitarist, Dimitar Zarev while he played. He is a wonderful guitarist, and it was the first time she had seen anyone play acoustic guitar–Zak pretty much only plays electrics. She danced around with Morganna and had a wonderful time.

Of course, when she isn’t playing music or dancing, (or learning how to walk, or riding her little velocipede), she still has her kitties to play with. Her she is loving on Delia, who was asleep beside us on the couch last night, and let Kat hug her for an extended lovefest, which delighted Kat to no end.