Rhea!

I finally got a new kitty. My beloved former cat died of congestive heart failure several years ago and it took me a while to get over it. Finally, a couple weeks ago I went to the ASPCA, where I met Rhea. I love the ASPCA by the way – they are wonderful people there who do wonderful things. Anyway, Rhea’s a sweet little Abyssinan mix. Of course she was very quiet her first few days with me, but now she’s a nut, particularly at nighttime of course, running up and down the ladder / stairs of my bedroom loft, doing gymnastics around its pillars, playing basketball down on the floor with some little toy balls with bells that were given to her by her friend, Lula, who lives across town. And yes, I meant basketball, not soccer or hockey. I have no idea what she does with the balls to make them bounce the way they do… because whatever it is she’s doing it’s in the dark when I’m trying to sleep…

She actually makes me nervous when she plays on the stairs / ladder, because she most enjoys the top rung, and it’s a long way down to the floor. I kind of feel like this high ceiling-ed apartment, which is good for housing my art work, is a bit dangerous for a cat. My old cat never even tried to get herself up in the loft, nor has any cat I’ve cat-sat here since. But Rhea’s very inquisitive, and very small, which I guess makes her more inclined to acrobatics than the average cat.

She can also sit on my narrow windowsill, which no other cat has been able to do:

She sleeps in the oddest places, like on top of the book spines. A copy of Swallow was on top of Turow’s Presumed Innocent. She apparently thought nothing of smacking mommy’s novel down to make herself a little step to her “bed.”