7Quick Takes 19: A boy and his cat

1. I had a spike of excitement last Friday when my post got a little interest on the blog and Facebook. It just goes to show what using the words "confessions" and "knickers" does for traffic. So I thought about what might garner even more interest, and obviously the answer is "cats" (but not cats and knickers, or I might have people reporting me to animal protection agencies).

My first idea was for a cute photo essay, but that was scuppered by several factors:

• I'm short (near) sighted and take bad photos.
• Trying to take photos of the cat and baby while holding the baby is pretty impossible.
• I'm too disorganized to spend the whole week snapping away in order to sift out the few good photos from the thousand bad (so here are the few bad ones anyway).

2. So. Odie. This cat turned up on our doorstep as a kitten - quite literally. I heard cries outside the front door, opened it, and he crept out from behind the woodpile. It took us about thirty seconds to decide we would keep him if he was a stray. We named him Odysseus because he'd obviously been wandering around before he got to us, but he turned out not to be quite as cunning as his namesake (i.e. pretty stupid), so Odie stuck instead.

3. Odie didn't read the manual on cats and babies, because he actually likes Alcuin. He comes running when the baby cries. He follows us on walks around the garden. He lets Alcuin 'stroke' him, even when it involves grabbing a handful of fur before I can intervene. Heck, he's even teaching Alcuin how to pet him by rubbing up against his hands.

4. As I've mentioned before, this cat also loves water. He leaps onto the sink to share the baby's morning wash. He's ready for bathtime fun, especially playing 'catch the flannel (washcloth)'.

I'm trying not to show the naked baby here.

I'm holding the naked baby in this one.

5. He showed me that breastfeeding pillows make great cat recliners. That's my husband trying to escape the photo.

"Hey, that's mine!"

6. Odie understands that I have declared the crib a cat-free zone.

It was bed changing day. Don't judge.

Especially when the baby is in there.

He was starting to get suspicious of my taking pictures by then.

But he doesn't care.


7. Kelly's blogger question for this week is: what is your favourite blog you have discovered through Seven Quick Takes?  That's a hard one to answer because I can't recall whether I discovered certain blogs directly through Seven Quick Takes or by clicking through other blogs on there. I know This Ain't The Lyceum was one, but that sounds like sucking up. Better than Eden is another blog I currently subscribe to, and think I may have discovered via 7QT. I love reading about Mary's organized, intentional life even though, as I've mentioned, my own could better be described as "Comparable to the London Underground at Rush Hour".

Head over to This Ain't The Lyceum to read blogs and enter the sweepstakes!