Tea Blog

Can you believe that it’s been six months since I wrote about my kitties? Well, good news: It’s time for an update!

When last we visited the feline menagerie ‘way back in June, we had just lost our sweet Piţi, three months before his tenth birthday. He, along with his brother Sami and sister Shana, had come with us when we relocated from the NYC area to the Southlands. Piţi just wasn’t lucky with his health. We miss him terribly – Sami especially so.

Right around the time of their birthday I took Sami and Shana to the vet for their annual. Our vet works with an animal rescue group and keeps several kitties and canines at her office, all available for adoption. Every client who enters the office gets the same question: Can you adopt a cat or a dog, a kitten or a puppy? They manage to place quite a few little critters into good homes.

I had to tell them no, we just can’t adopt any more. Well, they asked, how about fostering? I thought that would be okay, and they introduced me to Lira, who had just been dumped onto their front porch in a state of imminent motherhood. I took her home, we set her up in a crate, and waited for the kittens. We didn’t have long to wait: the next morning when I woke up there were five new little furballs.

Over the next seven weeks we tended to, and enjoyed, both mother and babies. Lira seemed to fit right in with our other kitties, and she was so sweet, that we decided to adopt her. As the kitties grew, we noticed that one of them had inherited Lira’s bowed back legs, but even more so: he didn’t run as fast as his brothers, couldn’t jump as high, and sometimes the legs just gave out on him when he was sitting. But he was sweet and cute, and so … you guessed it … we decided to adopt him too. We named him Ashley for his light grey coloration.

By now you’re wondering what all this has to do with tea. Well, I’m getting to that.

When we liberated Ashley from his crate, the first thing he did was to run over to the computer desk and climb up my leg. He couldn’t jump, but he could dig those little claws in and pull himself up to my lap. (I had the scars to prove it.) And then on to the desktop – where I had my teapot and teacup. And then he proceeded to drink my tea.

Now most of our cats will stick an exploratory paw or a nose into our teacups, but Ashley goes after our tea with gusto. We can hear him slurping it up – that is, if we’re careless enough to leave a cup unattended. And then he heads over to the teapot and licks the rim of the spout, something I’ve never seen a cat do before. Thankfully.

On weekend mornings when we’d be relaxing in our tea room, there would be Ashley, clawing his way up to the table to drink tea. My oolong, my husband’s Söderblandning, the occasional green or white tea – it made no difference. He slurped ‘em all.

As he got bigger he also got faster, so we had to move quickly to keep our cups away from him. Occasionally we’d have to go out of the tea room for a moment and, if we foolishly forgot to take our tea with us, we’d be greeted by Ashley with his wet face and paws.

We’ve had Lira and Ashley with us for almost four months now, and his taste for tea doesn’t seem to be diminishing. If anything, he’s more determined than ever. Fortunately now he’s big enough to jump, so the leg scars are starting to heal. But being able to jump also means that he gets to the tea table more quickly, so we need to be ever more vigilant.

And when he’s not drinking tea, he’s preventing me from drinking it by curling up next to the teapot to take a nap. I imagine he likes the warmth of the pot and the softness of the cozy. Right now it’s cute, but I have a feeling that as he gets bigger it could become rather inconvenient. Eventually I’ll have to put out two teapots: one to drink from and one for him to sleep with!

Well, that’s it for this kit-tea update. Gotta go now to wash out my teapot and teacup and steep up a new potful … again.

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