MK is a beautiful, black kitty, long-haired with one spot of white on his back paw. He is about 5 years old and he showed up one night during a major storm. I had opened the door to let the dogs in, and he walked in right behind them as if he owned the joint!

Because I have so many black cats here, it didn’t dawn on me for a few minutes that he was “new.” When I finally realized he wasn’t part of the group, I went over to him slowly and he turned and ran into the kitchen, vanishing down the tunnels.

He mostly hangs out in the cat enclousure, but about a week ago, I found him in the house. Knowing this wasn’t part of his routine, I feared he was ill.

I sleep on the couch so I can be near Mike if he gets into trouble, and in the night and early wee hours of the morning- the floor below is littered with cats. In the dark, I reach out and am able to pet and stroke Dash, Chappy, Scottie and a few others who don’t venture from the cat enclosure often. The minute I stand up they scatter, but if I lie there and talk to them and leave the light off, they stay. MK added himself to this pile.

As I was petting him a few nights ago, I realized the back of his rear was getting matted. Mats are no joke, and I knew I had to clip him to get him better.

Our bathroom is a water closet. Those of you who have no clue what a water closet is, count yourself lucky, but our home is ancient and in our bathroom there are not even outlets to plug my clippers in so this would take planning.

I ran an extension cord from the pantry to the bathroom, stowed the clippers in the bathroom and put my grooming basket behind the loo. Like I said, our bathroom is tiny.

Last night, while I was petting MK, I took a deep breath and scooped him up. I was wearing my robe as I knew I was going to do this and didn’t want to get scratched. He didn’t resist- just screamed to the heavens and I took him in the bathroom and proceeded to clip all those nasty mats off him.

To his credit, he did really good. There’s not very many places he can escape to and I ended up putting towels in the sink and placing him on top of the towels. He seemed to know I was helping him and he allowed me to take the mats off him before he started getting really antsy.

I let him out to escape into the house and I hope he will visit me tonight, but I am doubtful he will. He’s such a beautiful kitty but definitely skittish.

Rayne is doing so much better, she is on the downward spiral of the URI. Pippi is coming into the house more often . I think she knows that this is her forever home now.
She has joined the pile of kitties that I encounter in the wee hours of the morning and pushes to the head of the pile to head butt me hard!