The Magic Touch

Our cat Shadow, Haley's Little Brother, is an old curmudgeon.

He has been with us since Haley was a baby.  We think he is 75 years old in kitty years.  He acts every bit of it.

Every morning he scratches at the door of the laundry room.  He lives in there because he sprays, yes he is fixed, but he still sprays.  Haley lets him out at every opportunity, so we keep the door locked.  

Every morning I unlock the door and am greeted by one of two scenarios.  

He either wants to go outside, immediately, or he turns back around and kind of does his feed me because I am so cute dance.  

We feed him twice a day.  First thing in the morning and last thing at night.  He can eat everything we have given him and then ask for more.  So that is all he gets.

Whether he wants to go out or get fed I usually pick him up and hold him and pet him.  He puts up with it.  Then Haley will come over and nuzzle up to him and give him a kiss on the head.  Then he purrs.  Without fail.  

She has the Magic Touch.

He will purr for me sometimes.  Usually if he feels like he was being ignored or neglected, then I know he wants attention.  He will kind of hug me back and purr.  

He purrs for Haley every time.

She is really gentle with animals.   She has never been one of those kids that pulls tails or pokes eyes.  She has always been very caring and careful.  Animals seem to know that about her.  They know that she is different and they treat her differently.

Shadow and Haley have a very interesting relationship.  Haley loves Shadow to death.  She loves to find him wherever he is and pet him.  She likes to give him kisses on the top of the head.  She likes to have him sit on her lap.  She will pet him in order to keep him sitting with her.

She also does something that we have not figured out.

Shadow will be sleeping soundly on the couch.  We usually make a nice little nest for him with one of our soft blankets.  Haley will come out of nowhere and pull the blanket out from under him.  We have told her numerous times not to do it.  She gets a good talking to every time, but she still does it.  

I really don't understand what she is thinking.

Nevertheless when I am holding him and Haley walks up to him and gives him a kiss on the head, he purrs.

Go figure.

~ Haley's Mom

I am participating in 31 for 21 Blog Challenge this month. The challenge I have accepted is to blog every day in October to raise awareness for Down Syndrome. Learn more about Down Syndrome at the National Association of Down Syndrome.

Yadow Yap

Going back to school today must have tuckered Haley out.

As soon as she had her shoes and coat off and put away and had visited the bathroom she laid down on the couch and said "Blankie." 

Haley's Photography

So if you have been around here for a while you know that when Haley gets a hold of my camera she doesn't just take one or two pictures. 

She takes fifty or sixty or more.

The other day when she was taking pictures of her Big Sis carving her Halloween pumpkin she took a lot of other pictures as well.  I love going through all of Haley's pictures.  I actually think she has a pretty good eye.

I have assembled here some of my favorites from that day. 

There was good light. 

I call this series:

"Surfaces and Shadow"

One and the Same

Haley and our cat are basically the same.

They both overreact when someone sneezes:

Shadow jumps and looks around for the offender - he seems to be worried that it is only a warning strike and that something more horrendous is sure to happen. Haley immediately goes in to imitation mode and makes disgusting noises endlessly.

They both want the same thing:

Shadow wants to be out of his room. Haley wants Shadow to be out of his room. They conspire. Haley will follow him around the house watching him, watching him do whatever nasty thing he wants to do, she doesn't try to stop him or warn us.

They both want food all the time:

Haley's insatiability is well documented here. I usually let Shadow outside in the morning, clean his room (the laundry room) and give him fresh water and food. When he comes in a little later he looks at his food bowl as if it is empty and then looks up at the cabinet where his food is stored, looks at the bowl, looks at the cabinet, looks at the bowl...

They both know that I am the mother:

It doesn't matter to either of them who is with them and how well they are being cared for and loved; if I walk in to the house (or the room) they both want...me.

Kisses

There is a whole lotta kissin' goin' on around here.

For a long time Haley didn't really know what a kiss was.  She confused hugging and kissing.  I would ask her for a kiss and she would lean into me for one of her famous side or back hugs.  She never kissed me of her own accord.

She received a lot of kisses and she never complained, but she didn't give them.

A little while back she started giving our cat Shadow kisses.  She would say "Kiss" and then put her face into the fur on his side.  It still resembled a hug.  Then one day I heard the smack.  She had actually put her lips together and made a kissing sound.

Now Shadow gets kisses all the time.  She visits him in his room (the laundry room) I hear the smack and then as she walks out of the room and closes the doors she says "Kiss.  Awwww."

I have to kiss Haley's little animals.  She will hold them up to my face.  If they are facing me it means I need to give them a kiss.  I usually don't touch the animal, I just make a smacking sound and she is happy. 

Her Dad doesn't participate.  If she holds an animal up to him he gives the animal a fist bump, which means he holds his fist up to the animal's face.  The fist bump thing is something that goes on between Haley and her Dad.  I give Haley high fives when she does something well, her Dad gives her fist bumps.

Haley loves her newest acquisition, a lioness that she got at the Zoo gift shop.  We call her Nala.  Nala gets kisses.  Haley will actually kiss Nala over and over again.  Smooch, smooch, smooch.  Smack, smack, smack. It is the cutest thing.

I will hear the smooching going on from another room.

I heard it a little earlier and I looked in.  Shadow was on the receiving end of those kisses.  I asked her if I could have one. 

She leaned in with lips pursed. 

I kissed her.

It's a start.

She Got My Attention

I love it when Haley makes an effort to get my attention.  I wish she would just say "Mom," but she doesn't.  Well, hardly ever.  There was that one time.

Last night after I had put her in bed she came down for a snack.  She went through the front room and around to the kitchen in what I would consider the "back way" or the "long way."  I guess this is her being sneaky, thinking that she won't get caught and sent back upstairs.  It cracks me up.  She has always gone that way - after I have put her in bed.

She had gotten her snack and had eaten it and was ready to go back to bed.  She won't just go back to bed by herself.  She always wants me to put her back in bed.  I was watching a show on the television; I was laying on the couch with a blanket covering me and I was engrossed in the show.

Pretty soon Haley is standing in front of me, in my direct line of sight of the television and leaning over toward me.  She whispered "help" and then stood up.  I told her she probably would have gotten a response from me if she had just said Mom, but I know that is a lot to ask.

This morning we were eating breakfast and I was reading the paper.  Haley had let the cat in earlier and he was sitting on the couch.  I was engrossed in the paper and I didn't hear her get up from the table.  All of a sudden I hear "Shadow upstairs."  I looked up and Haley was standing at the bottom of the stairs looking at me.  I jumped up and said "Thank you" and ran up the stairs to see what kind of mischief my cat was getting into.

See, she can get my attention when she wants to.  I think she has learned what will get my attention the quickest, too.

Little Brother

We call our cat Shadow Haley and her big sister's "Little Brother."  He is actually an it, but it works. 

Shadow came in to our lives when Haley was a baby.  He was rescued by our day care provider's youngest son.  My husband and I had cats before the girls were born and we had really decided not to have any more.  He was a little shocked when I picked him up from work one day after I had picked the girls up from day care and he got in the car, turned to say "Hi" to the girls and Big Sis was holding a small black kitten.  He has said that if the kitten could be held by a toddler in a moving car it was a good sign that it would be a good cat.  It was supposed to be a trial run over a weekend, but you know how those things go.  Twelve years later he is still here.

Shadow was fun when he was a kitten.  He got his name from following Big Sis everywhere she went, he was her shadow.  He was an inside kitty.  We loved it when he would come around the corner and "talk" to us.  Everything changed when a neighbor moved in next door with a big yellow lab.  Shadow felt threatened I guess and the bad behavior started.  He sprayed and he became aggressive.  He would lay in wait for Big Sis and attack her, actually leap on her back and bite her.  It didn't take long for me to say enough is enough and kick him to the curb.  Then he became an outside kitty.

For a long time Shadow would come in and spend the night in the laundry room and then go out during the day.  For the last several years it has been Haley's job to make sure he comes in and gets fed at night.  She also made sure that we let him out in the morning.  It was a nice arrangement until he got into a fight with a neighbor dog who "cleaned his clock" as they say.  Shadow will not go outside anymore.  Haley still seems to be in the "let the cat out" mode, unfortunately.  She doesn't open the front door and let him out, but she does let him out of the laundry room.  This is something that I cannot tolerate, he still sprays.  It is a constant fight around here.

Haley and Shadow have a special relationship.  Even during the time that Shadow was attacking Big Sis he would not attack Haley.  Haley was able to use Shadow as a pillow and he didn't act like he cared.  He does have his limits though.  If we pet him too much or brush him too much he will bite us.  He has only bit Haley once, that I am aware of.  I think she learned her lesson and when he starts growling or hissing she knows to back off.

Haley likes to have Shadow sit on her lap.  She will sit on the couch and ask to be covered with a blanket and then she says "Shadow lap."  If he is in a good mood he will knead her tummy and purr and sit with her for a while.  Sometimes he steps off as soon as you put him down. 

Haley says "Shadow lap" again and we try it once more, sometimes we wear him down after several tries and sometimes he gets unceremoniously marched back to "his room."  Haley especially loves to have a Shadow Lap before she goes to school.  Shadow usually doesn't mind that too much because it rarely lasts very long. 

He is becoming quite a curmudgeon in his "old age."