My First ManCat Monday!

I'm very excited to be posting my first Mancat Monday post. I thought this picture was fitting. I'm not actually mean at all and I was just yawning when Mom took this picture. But I like how it makes my paws look big, as well as my whisker humps, and of course you can see that I have nice strong teeth. I could use any of these things to help save lovely lady cats (like Tipper!... oh and of course Harlie), and I think that makes me a man cat!

But as Derby and others have posted, it's important that mancats have a softer side too. This is really more like me... a sensitive, gentle guy. But my paw still looks big!

One time, when Mom cheated...

Back in January, Mom had to go away for a few days to get the last of her disseratation research done. Fortunately, the University she had to go to was near to her Aunt's house, so she got to spend some good time catching up with and being spoiled by her Aunt and Uncle. She missed us while she was gone of course, and we assumed she would just spend days in misery until she could see us again. We were wrong. While she was there, she fell in love with her Aunt's rats! She said it helped to make it easier because she still came home to four-legged furry creatures everyday, and they were fun to play with too! We won't be getting any rats here anytime soon, but I wanted to post this for the Poi Rats who are concerned about their upcoming move. I don't know what this really has to do with the Poi-land rodentia moving across an ocean, but it made us think of the time Mom fell in love with rats. Enjoy!

Purring and Purring and Purring...

That is what we are doing over here. While everyday there are so many great, happy, adorable posts in the catblogosphere, it seems like lately there have been more sad ones that usual. We are purring for DK and her family over the loss of Joaqin, for Missy, KC, and ML for the loss of Bear, for Millie, her Mom, Jasmine, and Mr. Karate for the loss of sweet sweet Gizzy, and for Grr, Midnight, and Cocoa for the loss of their friend Cashmere. Many kitties have been sick, so we've been sending lots of purrs to Lilly Lu and Rocky as well. Then there are all the cats and dogs becoming sick with tainted food that we are purring for. And of course there was the terrible tragedy earlier this week in Virginia. Many of you have mentioned that at times like these, you are glad to be a cat. I couldn't agree more. Not only are our lives less stressful, but we can provide comfort with our purrs, and use our purrs to strengthen the prayers of our humans. Even though we don't always make it around to comment or attend the prayer vigils, we want you all to know that you are in our thoughts and prayers always.

I'll continue the moving story in a few days.

Moving

So you saw what hard work we did packing. Next comes moving day. We don't have any pictures of that because Mom packed the camera a few days before and didn't find it until after we were in the new apartment for several days. I will tell you though that Harlie and I did not help with the move.

Many of you kitties mentioned that we may get locked in the bathroom. Well, thanks to Harlie and her ability to lock the bathroom door from the inside, that was not a possibility. Plus, Mom and Dad were worried about how stressed I would be with all the noise and commotion. And finally, if one of us did sneak out or try to bolt out of fear, Mom would never forgive herself. So we went to stay with some of her friends. They were a nice couple and had a clean, quiet apartment. We basically hid the whole day, but they left us alone and didn't try to pet us or do anything to make us more uncomfortable. It was less stressful for us in the long run, and Mom felt better knowing that no matter what happened, we were safe. We don't feel so bad that we didn't help on moving day because even Dad didn't help. He had to work.

So in the absence of moving pictures, here is a picture of Harlie and I snuggling in the old apartment on my favorite blanket. It's so great to have a little sister.

Packing

Well Mom finally loaded the pictures onto the computer! She even took new ones of us in our new home! But we'll get to those later. Here are some pictures of us at the old place, helping with the move...

First I had to energize with a little sun and bird watching:

While I was doing that, Harlie helped Mom take inventory of her yarn stash:
And then she helped her try to squish it down so all her yarn fit in one container:My first job was to start assessing boxes. I had to figure out how many we needed, if the sizes were adequate and then decide what should go in each one. Naturally they were all tested for quality as well. And we all know there's only one way to do that...

Harlie checked under the recliner for lost toys and other treasures. I stood next to the recliner to take anything she handed out, to give a high-five when she needed encouragement, and of course to wrestle the heck out of her paws. I mean, could you leave these paws alone?
Here I'm trying to move us along into the next room, but Harlie wants to make sure Dad doesn't forget is XBox 360. I'm pretty sure we were never in danger of that though.
One of the most difficult jobs was counting and organizing the books. It may have been easier if Harlie jumped in and helped instead of just meowing orders from the top of the desk. Final book count: approximately 1.3 squillion.
Packing is hard work so we needed to rest up often. Here Harlie is hoping her favorite nap spot on the back of the couch will somehow make it to the new home...I hoped my favorite blanket would come too!

Stay tuned in our next post for some shots of the new home!

We are Alive!

Sorry we haven't posted in awhile. The move is over and we are getting settled into the new apartment. Only a few more boxes left to unpack. It's a bigger apartment than our old one, so it's taken a lot of time to do all the exploring. We were a few days without internet, but I think we have now caught up on the blogs we read. The camera has been found as well, so hopefully we can get some pictures up soon. I think so, because Mom has to go back to writing her dissertayshun now that the move is over, and it's times like those that we do more updating and picture uploading! So Hello to all our Friends out there... you'll be hearing from us soon!