Sunny

Sunny is currently head cat in our house. It's a very demanding job, since there are 7 of them, which is probably why he's cranky all the time.

As I mentioned in the blog about Bruiser, Sunny came to live with us when we moved to DE. He lived in my parent's basement crawlspace, with his brother, mother, and other relatives. Some of these cats made the cross country trip with my parents when they moved to Arizona. Imagine 2 people, 4 cats in a chicken coop, and 2 cockatiels driving to AZ in a 2 person pick up truck. 7 cats on a daily basis looks pretty good right about now. :)

When we moved to our house, we brought Sunny's brother (creatively named "Brother" by my parents) to live with us and keep Sunny company so he would leave Bruiser alone. My dad and my sister drove him down from NJ and they stayed in the house with Sarah while I stayed in the apartment, as I had to work the next morning. I was at the house during the day, and Sunny and Brother set up camp behind the toilet and would not come out. I guess their collective fear of this new place was more than the year and a half separation from each other (we were afraid that they wouldn't remember each other). While at work at 4 am, I got a frantic phone call from Sarah. Brother had flown the coop. Our new house had different windows than what we were used to. There was the actual window part, but the only other part was a window-sized screen that popped into the window frame. There weren't any storm windows like we had in NJ, but you could open the window from the top or the bottom. Sarah had opened them from the top so the cats would not escape. She did not factor in poor Brother's fear of our house. He somehow climbed up to the top of the window (I don't know how, there were no curtains or hardware by the windows yet) and pushed his way out. They all went out to look for him, but we never saw him again. :(

Back to Sunny. Sunny was very playful and sweet when we first got him. He always tried to play with Bruiser but was constantly rebuffed. I don't know if that's why he's cranky now, but he is getting up there (he's around 13, details are hazy). There was a long stretch of time when all he would do was eat and he gained a lot of weight, and we were afraid that he would become diabetic like Bruiser. But then we got a lot more inside cats, and he actually lost a lot of the weight, trying to keep everyone in line. He likes to sit on the couch with us, and does not like anyone else to do that. He will either bat at them until they leave, or he will flop down on top of them with his ass in their face until they get the message. We shove him off the couch if he does that, or worse, give him kisses. He HATES getting kisses!

Sunny has the distinction of being the first cat to soil the carpet! This basically was our fault. We had a helium balloon from Sarah's birthday or some other holiday, with the ribbon that hung down from it. Sunny would grab the ribbon and run through the house with it. Ha ha, so cute! We were not aware of cats' fascination with string and ribbon, mainly how they like to eat it. I cam home from work one day and saw the ribbon was a lot shorter. I thought Sunny chewed it off, and I would find it later in the house somewhere. I did find it, but it wasn't where I expected. I went upstairs and saw poop prints on the landing, leading into the bathroom. There was Sunny, behind the toilet again, yowling in distress. I didn't see the problem until he flopped over, and there was the ribbon. I didn't know what else to do, so I pulled the ribbon out. I know now that you're not supposed to do that, but at the time, I panicked. It was a learning experience for all of us (except Sunny of course).

One of the funniest things that I remember Sunny doing was running through the house with a roll of paper towels in his mouth. That's one of those Kodak moments; if you don't capture it, you'll never see it again, and people might not believe you if you don't have proof. In the not-so-funny department (which was again my fault), Sunny ate half of a 4 pound roast that I had put on the counter to thaw. I guess he smelled it as it was thawing, and he dragged it off the counter in the kitchen to the living room. I was expecting lots of carpet stains from that one, but strangely enough, he was fine. So now we keep the thawing meats on top of the refrigerator. We also have to keep our bread on top of the refrigerator, because he started eating that too.

Sunny is a bit of a pain to the other cats these days, but he's healthy and he likes to snuggle with us. And that's what cats are supposed to do.