Here Comes A New Challenger!

We've seen more feline action than a Christian in the Coliseum over the last few months, as the cat population of OurFlatville has unexpectedly doubled.

He also contributes to the MacBook overheating problem

The new arrival's name Striker, which goes to show that you can give the fluffiest little furball in the entire history of cuteness to an eight-year-old boy: he's still an eight-year-old boy.

I shall call him Lord Deathcrusher!

The kid in question is B*, and the whole Striker-centric business was our fault. B's entire family had been hovering on the edge of"Want a cat want a cat" for years, but Neutrino-exposure tipped them all over the edge. Even though the father's allergic to cats. Neutrino is that cute.

*"Posting other people's real names online" is right at the top of the internet Don't Do That list.

For a few months all was incredibly well, before the mother became allergic as well, meaning B had to choose between his cat and his own parents. Luckily Striker had grown beyond the "appallyingly cute kitten" stage by then so B was able to make the right choice. But since giving the cat away would mean the family would at least three heart transplants (and probably another nine before they stopped breaking every time they missed the little guy), we took him on instead.

They quickly reached the cat version of equilibrium - both of them up higher than us

The result is pure perfection. We love Neutrino and his biting in a way any student of Stockholm Syndrome could write a book about, but in the words of a visiting friend "Hey, this one's a real cat! You can stroke him and he doesn't try to amputate your fingers!" After some initial "trying to tear each other to pieces" struggles, things have settled down to a much friendlier "only occasionally trying to tear each other to pieces for fun*." Even better, Neutrino now needs all his spare energy to fend off the younger generation and is only one-quarter the complete-breaking-things-bugger he was before.

*NOTE: At 5 AM, the human and feline interpretations of 'fun' differ radically.

But it's not all buggers and battles. Most of the time they're fine*.

*That's a lie. Most of the time they are ridiculously adorable.

The Made-Up Cat

That title doesn't mean that Neutrino's a Cheshire cat, fictional but full of personality - our abundance of scars and the rapid turnover of martini glasses confirm his existence - but that he's made a concerted cosmetic effort to look cuter. Since he's starting as a leopard-skin-tuxedo-wearing cat with little white gloves that's a tall order, but if there's one thing my ex-glassware has revealed it's that no height is beyond his reach.

It started with his feline fascination with our washing habits. Whenever we're rubbing, scrubbing, or showering he stares with wide eyes as if to ask "What's wrong with you people? I know you have tongues! I've seen them! Why do you use weird smelling horrible non-spit on yourselves?" This confusion upgrades to outright horror when watching me shave, aghast at my self-mutilation. I guess watching someone shaving their own whiskers off is the cat equivalent of a Saw movie.

We didn't realise that he'd decided to try it for himself, mistaking months of desperate scrabbling of every pot and bottle on Xin's cabinet onto the floor as standard "Destruction = Attention!" buggery. In our defense his entire existence up to this point supported that view - we'd no more suspected that he really wanted to try the cosmetics than you'd think The Incredible Hulk kept ripping shirts because he was looking for a good tailor.

But poor Neutrino persisted in his frustrating, thumbless quest to open one of the containers, and his limited "knocking things onto the floor" strategy eventually succeeded! One Friday afternoon we walked in to find tiny blocks of brown powder scattered over the floor (painful experience instantly assured us it wasn't excrement) only to see an artfully eyebrow-powdered Neutrino staring back at us. But this isn't like the college movies where a little make-up (and taking off the glasses) turns the quiet girl into the belle of the ball. All eyebrow powder does for a cat is give it extremely brown eyebrows. And nose. And paws. And bellly. (That'll be the lack of thumbs again.)

Then again, your make-up must be successful if it motivates a married couple pounce on your body and drag it to the nearest bathroom. I'm not sure exactly what he was expecting, but a few minutes of vigorous rubbing under the taps disabused him of the notion that cat cosmetics was the next thing, as well as most of the powder. The problem is that cat fur is to human hair what the Amazon jungle is to a shrubbery, and the eyebrow powder had adapted to this new environment like a lab mouse shot to the Moon by NASA finding it really is made of cheese. It was Not Coming Out.

That's when Neutrino started getting seriously mixed messages, when the lady who'd been vigorously rubbing his wet flesh moments before shouted that he would NOT be allowed into her bedroom for a long time. But then, the finest minds of our generation cannot understand the heart of a woman. What chance does a cat with a make-up kit have?

It's now a full week later and his paws are still shaded. Our only hope now is erosion eventually removing the stain, or that the whole "every cell in your body is replaced every X months" eventually removes it along with his entire current body. Because if seven days of cat-licking can't remove it, we humans have no chance.

Feline Education

Train accidents, baby-snatching, nuclear power plant accidents - all manner of terrible things happen because people weren't paying attention for a few moments. So Neutrino's trying to help us, training us not to leave anything unattended for even a single second.

(Note: when you have to bring up nuclear disasters and kidnapping to turn your pet's behaviour into a good thing, there may be room for improvement).

He's not a cat - he's a glass-seeking missile. You'd be safer leaving a drink inside a pinball table because there's a small chance the ball will fall between the flippers, but none that Neutrino will miss. You've be better off just dropping your drink and hoping gravity doesn't notice (which still wouldn't work, as Neutrino would soar through the air to take it out moments later.)

You can tell he's trying to teach us - on the few occasions we've had more warning than a loud crashing (from another room), a low swearing (from ourselves), and the patter of tiny quadruped feet (running like hell), he knows exactly what he's doing. He locks eyes with you then reaches out his paw - magnetically attracted to the breakable by some unknown fifth force of the universe - and taps it over.

Some people talk about baby-proofing their homes, but we're way ahead of them: any toddler would need special forces demolitions training to outdo our existing Neutrino defenses. And as any physicist will tell you, it's wasted: you can't keep neutrinos out of anything - they almost completely ignore normal matter until they hit it. Scientists use vast tanks of chlorine. I can do the same with a single martini glass (or at least I could, but no longer have a single martini glass. Or regular glass. Or several varieties of cup.)

His other favorite things are trash bins, or "Neutrino Present Collection Vessels" (as they apparently translate into feline). Throw something in and he's there like he heard sleigh bells on December 24th. Again, it's all for the best: training me to empty the bins approximately every minute, or sometimes skip the bin and just carry every piece of trash direct to the disposal.

And do we still love him? Of course we do. Would I love anyone else who rummaged through my trash and smashed my stuff? Since the only other type of person who does that is a stalker, I'll have to get much more famous to find out.

Three Views on Getting a Cat Together

Views arranged in order from least-to-most important, apparently.

Scientific Americat

Update: This was picked up by Kate Wong, aka "Editor of the actual Scientific American." Cool!

Cat Rubix Cube #1

It looks like the first one was a little easy. Not a mistake I'll repeat!

Neutrino Predicts The Superbowl!

That's right, our cat has cast the future and predicted that the Saints will win the Superbowl. We gave him $50 and asked him to tell the future - read what happened after that here!