Princess Lucy

The Bossy Cat has a new pillow/throne. Of course, when I say "new" I actually mean recently sprung from a box in storage, where it's been languishing for the past several years. It came out of the box and landed on the floor next to the front door on Sunday, and since then it has been occupied pretty much 24/7. The first night, she actually didn't come to bed because she wanted to sleep on it. There's almost nothing I love more than waking up to a sweet sleepy cat curled up at my feet, so now we're putting the cat pillow on the bench at the foot of our bed at night. Works like a charm.

This morning, the Bossy Cat was lounging and I was having my a** handed to me by Jillian, when all of a sudden Lucy bolted up off the pillow and pressed her face against the glass of the front door, tail wagging like crazy. I paused my workout and looked out the window to see what all the fuss was about.

There's this stray cat that hangs out in our courtyard a lot. She's purry and sweet as can be, and about a week ago (we think) she had kittens. Only nobody could find them. We've been out of the neighborhood loop on this one, what with being out of town all the time and hardly ever using our front door, so the first I heard about this was a few days ago. One of our neighbors is organizing to get the Mama Cat spayed and find a foster home for her and her litter, should they ever turn up. I've been worrying about those kittens ever since I heard about them.

Lo and behold, what did I see when I looked out the window, the thing that finally got the Bossy Cat to move off her precious pillow for a few minutes? I saw Mama Cat running down the path with a mewing kitten dangling from her mouth. I was so excited that I lost all sense of decency and darted outside in my shorts and sports bra (I'm usually SO not that girl). Apparently, the Mama has been periodically going into our neighbor's apartment, and today when she went in she scoped out the place and found a good spot to keep her babies: inside a big armoire full of clothes. Then she went and got them from the bush they were in, one by one, and brought them inside. The kittens are so little their eyes haven't even opened yet and they have those teeny pink kitten paws. CM and I invited ourselves inside the neighbor's apartment so we could look at them and pet their silky bellies.

I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen to these kitties, but I do know that a trip to Vienna with us is sadly not in their future. I'm just so relieved that they're all safe and happy.

The Bossy Cat seems to have finally recovered from the adventure. And the pillow has already been added to the "To Bring" list.