Family

The leading image in my last post is Crumb, our first cat. Adopted at a shelter about an hour from our home on 23 December 2024. Since then, we’ve adopted a second one, Tony. You’ll see photos of him starting around September 2025.

Let’s see, how did this happen? Obviously it’s the kids’ fault. They wanted cat, want cat, want cat…etc. I told them I wasn’t intrinsically against cats, but these were my concerns:

• Getting a cat probably just means more chores for Mom and Dad, and promising they’ll take care of it won’t cut any mustard, they have to show me they can
• Non-trivial chance that a cat could make our house an unlivable environment for KrisDi
• Travel

After the fact, I now have another concern:

• Cat(s) is another excuse to buy objects to clutter my house

So, KrisDi and the kids worked up a chore routine that included sweeping, mopping, cleaning up, etc, and the kids stuck to it without being butts for about a month.

So we went to a shelter and the kids (and KrisDi) fell in love with a mostly black cat, six months old, named Ava 2.0, and it didn’t seem to bother KrisDi’s allergies. We took her home and the kids renamed her Crumb.

Fast forward…things went pretty well with Crumb, until she started pissing on things. This was probably related to lack of home stability while we were in and out of the house and she was at our place or others’. At one point, when KrisDi was cleaning a litterbox, Crumb crawled into a plastic bag and pissed. Hence the nickname Piss Goblin.

The kids convinced me that a second cat would help soothe Crumb (they actually did some research and gave a presentation). Mostly, I figured two cats wouldn’t likely be worse than one, and I have now remembered I like having cats around.

So now we have Tony Crouton, an orange cat who is about six months old now.

They’re fun and obnoxious, and the kids have stopped all pretense at doing the chores they were supposed to continue, though they do a fair amount of the cat care stuff, like baths and poop scooping. KrisDi is 110% in love with them, and I bought a Nerf gun to shoot them when they get up to no good (super fun, and seems to mostly work as a deterrent, and gives me ample opportunities to sound like a psychopath with things like “Tony’s sleeping too much. I should shoot ‘im.”)

Chilkat has taught Crumb that if she’s being held and not released, she can request release by licking the nose of the person holding her. However, Chilkat likes to abuse this by not letting Crumb reach her nose. Tony is dumber than Crumb, and very skittish. The family insists Crumb knows her name, which I doubt, and I am quite sure that Tony doesn’t.

The cats like to sit with KrisDi, sometimes sleep with Chilkat, and seem ambivalent toward me and Chilkoot.

Expect to see lots of blurry phone photos of them going forward.