Blogtober 2022 - Day 4 🐈

Today I think I’ll focus on our cat Juniper, seeing as it was her second birthday recently 🎂

We got Juni back in November 2020, our little lockdown baby! We had known we wanted to get a cat for quite a while and were just waiting for the right one to come along at the right time. When we got in touch with the owner of Juni’s litter we were actually going to have her sister (sorry Juni!) who was a pretty calico cat. Sadly she passed away the day after we chose her which was so sad but in a way I was glad we hadn’t had a chance to get too attached. I still cried though even though we’d only seen her in a photo. So we made the decision to have the white kitten instead who we were told was a little boy…

Driving to pick up our kitten was soo exciting! It worked out quite well that Ed was off work on furlough at this point so had lots of free time to look after her (or him as we thought!) during the days. It’s funny to remember her at the beginning, she had fleas and smelt of cigarettes 😆

I took Juniper for the first vet appointment about a week later and it was then that I was told it was almost certain that our little boy was actually a girl and that we’d be 100% sure by the next appointment! At first it was weird to get used to but we soon adjusted, thankfully we’d picked a name that worked for male or female! 😅 I remember saying she was too pretty to be a boy anyway haha.

She is such an odd cat, she definitely isn’t very sociable with people other than Ed and me but that could be because of her lockdown upbringing. Or maybe it’s just in her genes? It means that she often hides away when we have people round so no one gets to see the funny, crazy side of her that we see 😆 She loves to chase toys and can play fetch like a dog (although she usually decides not to bring it back and leaves that up to me lol). She loves coming into the bathroom when either one of us is in there, just to say a quick hi and brush against our legs and then leave again, she also likes getting into the shower after it’s been used and licking the water droplets. 

She can’t resist a comfy spot to settle down, whether that’s a blanket, a dressing gown, or the washing pile. When it’s cold sometimes she goes under the duvet. She loves to eat grass and even birdseed, she is an expert insect hunter, she drinks out of Ed's bedside glass of water every evening (she's a big fan of routine), and she chases off the neighbour's two young boy cats when they try to visit our garden. Even though Juniper can be quite wild, I won't forget how she kept me company whilst I was sick in early pregnancy, and how she slept on my bump as it grew. She does have a soppy side! Since my lap is mostly taken by baby these days she has taken to curling up on Ed when he reads his Bible in the mornings.

After almost 2 years of living in a very quiet house, she is still learning to coexist with a sometimes very noisy baby. She is definitely getting used to him and is spending more time in his presence without scarpering whenever he makes a sound. I was worried about how she would cope but she seems happy and very much herself. One of her favourite things at the moment is watching the sparrows on the bird feeder outside the baby’s bedroom window. Interestingly she hasn’t once got into his cot since he’s been here, even though she used to love sleeping there. 

I could carry on about the many quirks and interests of our feisty yet lovable, socially-challenged and extremely cute cat but I’ll leave it there for today’s post. After a rather long, photo-heavy post yesterday I think I’ll keep today’s a little more bite-sized. I’ve got a list going with ideas for posts this month, so fear not, I haven’t run out of creative juices yet!

Do you have a cat? If so do tell me something about them, your favourite thing or perhaps something odd or funny that they do 😸