In early May, you might recall my mentioning a former co-worker throwing out a cat since she— the coworker—was pregnant and simply couldn’t “deal” with her— the cat— anymore. At the time, I was livid about the situation and, because my boyfriend is a huge sucker too, decided to take in the cat on a temporary basis to save her from the streets. My Mom (also a sucker) will be taking in Gracie the next time I go up there to visit. For the most part since we took Gracie in it has been an… interesting experience.

First off, I don’t really know how to describe how the boys act towards female cats without potentially offending someone. My brother jokingly calls them the “gay mafia” since frankly the boys hate female cats. Like, violently hate them. I don’t know what about them sets the boys off (other than them having a vagina) but there you go. I ended up with Blue because he used to terrorize my friend’s female cats. He is very calculated in his terrorizing of Gracie. Brutus and Bucky was occasionally chase her but Blue? He plots. Frequently, I will find Blue laying about a foot away from Gracie waiting for her to move, daring her to try and get past him without loosing her shit. I guess it doesn’t help that Gracie flips out whenever the boys get near her.

Which is why Bucky likes messing with her at 5AM. Because her hissing? It’s really charming.

Other than that issue Gracie came with a bonus feature: a large collection of fleas. When she first came into the apartment, the ex-roommate noticed that she had them, so we used some flea treatment on her. Did it work? Apparently not, since next thing I know I’m sitting on our bed working and a flea jumps on my leg like “Hey, sup? Where is the nearest cat for me to suck it’s blood, oh, and you know something else? My ancestors were the carrier of the bubonic plague.”

Mack was not pleased to get my text message of “@&*(!&@#)*#!#”

Last Thursday we figured this time we’d have to give all four cats individual baths before the flea treatment. The pictures speak for themselves:

You can see all of them at my flickr set. I can’t look at these without crying in laughter. Luckily, the baths and flea treatment seemed to have done the trick and I haven’t seen any fleas since Saturday. The boys, also, seemed to have forgiven to a degree… at least until my guard is down and they are ready to strike.

In Gracie’s case, however, she pooped on the carpet right after we finished with all four baths.

Mutter.

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