Christmas "Helpers!"

Yesterday's post was about how the girls love to "help." Do you know when they are at their most helpful -- especially Zuzu? At Christmas! Perhaps this is because they are "Christmas kitties," as we brought them home on December 23 in 2006.

Here are some photos of the girls showing off their helpful abilities last Christmas, 2007. Below photos are of Zuzu "helping" Mia prepare oatmeal to put outside for Santa's reindeer:


We didn't have a big tree last year as Carter (dog) was only 5-months old. We tested him by setting up the tree undecorated for a few days and sure enough, he thought the tree was his own personal, giant chew toy. To make up for the lack of a tree, Santa left Mia the lighted reindeer and penguin you see in the pictures.

Zuzu

Anna

Both! (I've labeled the picture to help you find them!)

Zuzu: I put this gift in the living room Christmas Eve. I found it in our bedroom on Christmas morning. Apparently one of the girls dragged it all the way back there!
Judging by the way Zuzu appears to be possessively guarding the same gift here on Christmas morning, I'm guessing she did the dragging.

Zuzu: "These Mia's toys? But where MAH toys???"

Here's a few photos from Christmas 2006.
We'd only had Anna and Zuzu for two days -- look how little!

Anna with Rudolph characters

Anna with tent Mia received for Christmas.

TWO! (Zu in box, Anna outside.)

Baby Zu -- I forgot about this picture.
It looks like she's crying:



But no -- she was only playing with Christmas paper!

Hopefully I'll get some good shots of Anna and Zu helping this Christmas.
Hopefully too, Carter will let us have a tree this year!!!
We'll see ...

More kittens!

Felt like posting more AnnaZu kitten pics.
Enjoy!

Annabelle!

Finally, the promised ALL ABOUT ANNABELLE post!

Anna, December 2006

Anna is a "doll-faced" Himalayan, meaning she doesn't have the extreme or "flat face" that show quality Himmies have. This makes her eyes easier to clean. While she does get "goo," it cleans up quickly and easily as she doesn't have the folds around her nose like Zuzu.

Though Annabelle is her real name, we usually call her Anna or "B."

This happened as gradually her named shortened from Annabelle to AnnaB to finally just "B."

Anna's personality is quite different from Zuzu's. Anna is WAY more curious than Zu and has been from the day we brought her home. She is either very brave, very trusting -- or very stupid, as it seems she is afraid of nothing! Unlike Zuzu, Anna LOVES to be held -- in fact, she will stand on her hind legs and very gently knit her claws on my leg, begging to be picked up:

Visitors don't bother her -- she'll come right up to new people and is fine if they hold her. When she was younger, she was completely fascinated whenever my 8-year old daughter Mia took a a a bath. Anna would sit right on the edge of the tub and stick her paws in the water.
Eventually, she did fall in -- three times!
But, the next time Mia took a tub, Anna would be right back on the side of the tub, ready for more water fun.

Unlike Zuzu, she isn't much bothered by Carter, our 9 month old German Shepherd puppy. When he was smaller,Anna would lie, belly up, right in front of him. These days as Carter nears 80 pounds and is still learning -- slowly! -- not to chase her and to play GENTLY, she avoids him more than she used to. But as long his licking stays gentle, she'll still roll over and purr as he does this.

Anna and Carter, about 6 months old. He's much bigger now!

And boy oh boy does Anna roll -- and rolls and rolls and rolls! I think her motto is "Look at my belly!"

Ever since she was a baby, Anna's always had a very inquisitive/"Who?ME?" look on her face.

Picture by breeder Suzette.

Today, at over a year and a half old, she still has a similar look:

"OH! What you has there?!"

Anna is also GREAT BIG TROUBLE! Zuzu, trouble too, but Anna, oooh, she big trouble!

See?

"I do this."

"Will TOO get lamps!"

"I WHACKS you!"

"WILL eat this!"

"Too, eat THIS!"

Another one of her nicknames it The Anna Bear, so-named for her penchant of standing on her hind legs:

Picture by breeder Suzette. The very scary ANNA BEAR!

Again, The SCARY ANNA BEAR, one year old.

Anna is also much more vocal than her sister. She has much louder "meow" and ain't afraid to use it!

"Meow!" = Pick me up!
"MEEow!" = Did you stop petting me? Pet me more!
"Meeeow!" = I wanna go in the basement!
"MeeeeOW!" = I wanna go outside!

She big noisy baby!

She does want to go outside. Up until now, I haven't let her as I was afraid if she got scared, she'd wiggle out of a harness and I'd lose her!

Anna: Do TOO wanna go outside!
Kim: But it's too rough out there for you!
Anna: Do SO wanna go outside! WILL go outside!
Kim: But if you got lost, you're just a big, white, fluffy BABY and you'd stand out like a sore thumb 'cuz you're so white -- and predators would EAT you, Anna!
Anna: WOULDN'T!
Kim: They would, Anna!
Anna: WOULDN'T ! Go outside!

See? But now, after seeing Goma Brother and Sachie's harness, I'm thinking I'll get one of those for Anna. I feel mean keeping her in. She cries at the door when I'm outside on the porch, begging and begging to come out.

Too, oooh, she FAT! Even though Zuzu is a bigger cat frame-wise, I bet Anna out weights Zu by at least 4 pounds. I'll have to watch this. She may have to go on a diet.

Anna: HATE diet! WILL eat! Wanna eat what YOU eat, too!

So that's a little about Annabelle. I think my favorite thing about her is how I think she would literally let me hold her all day! Whenever I need to hold a kitty -- and sometimes you really do just need to hold a kitty! -- I pick up Anna and walk all around the house with her. She loves it -- will start grooming herself and purring as I hold her.

BABIES and A Bit of History

This morning, I thought I'd post some pictures of the girls when they were kittens. They were CHRISTMAS KITTIES, as we picked them up from (breeder) Suzette on December 23, 2006, one day before Christmas Eve.

A bit of background on deciding to purchase Anna and Zu: as previously mentioned, albeit not all that understandably by Anna and Zuzu here, I lost my Himalayan, Little Girl, in November of 2006. As I was keeping another blog at that time, I wrote rather a great deal on the whole experience of her illness and finally, death. Likely someday I'll post some of that here, along with the writings I did when Smoosh passed only four months later, as I still think about both of them nearly every day. But briefly, Little Girl died from a combination of diabetes and kidney failure, Smoosh from kidney failure. Both of their deaths were -- pretty horrible and I took it very hard.

Little Girl:

The pain of losing them and the whole grief process showed me, in a sense, how lucky I'd been. I'd never really experienced the death of an animal -- or person -- I loved before, save for some relatives who had been ill for sometime and I'd had time to prepare.

When Little Girl died in November, I had a very hard time accepting that she was gone. In my desperation to somehow hold on to her, I tried to find her breeder, thinking I could find out more about her; her parents; something. I had adopted her from a family in Vermont who was going through a divorce and needed to find a new home for her. I didn't know that much about her past, other than she had indeed been purchased from a Vermont breeder.

So I began doing Internet searches for Himalayan breeders in Vermont. I never did find Little Girl's breeder, but along the way I found Cozycreek Cattery and Suzette. I had sent Suzette a picture of Little Girl, asking her if she could tell me what kind of color point she was -- I thought maybe she was tortie point, as she had some orange in her; or blue point, but I wasn't sure. Suzette was very kind and patient, as in my grief, I probably sent her a million emails. She was also able to tell me Little Girl had been a blue-cream point and that she was a "dollfaced" Himmie, meaning she a longer nose then the "flatfaced" or "show quality" Himmies. She wrote that she understood I might not be ready for a new kitten so soon, but she did happen to have some blue-point female kittens available, one in particular named Anna Banana who was also dollfaced.

I didn't think I was ready for a new kitten at all -- but I kept going back to Suzette's site and looking at the pictures of the litter and at Anna. And going back. And going back. After about a week, I decided I wanted Anna, especially after Suzette described her personality, which was and remains utterly sweet and very curious.

Ah, then ... I started thinking about how Anna might be lonely. I knew at 15 years old Smoosh probably wouldn't be interested in playing with a kitten but I couldn't really afford two. When I emailed this concern to Suzette, she replied that she had a flatfaced female who she had been thinking about saving for a breeder friend, but that they had decided she was not breeding quality as her nose was turning out to be slightly off center. Even though Suzette assured me that Zu's nose would in all likelihood straighten out she offered to reduce Zu's price.

So we got two!

Zuzu's nose had indeed straightened out and I'm thrilled to have both a dollfaced Himmie like Little Girl and a flatfaced Himmie -- I never thought I have one of those FANCY FANCY SHOWKITTIES!

Zuzu: (proud) I be FANCY!

I cannot begin to tell you how much having Anna and Zu around helped ease my grief for Little Girl, and three months later, again after I lost Smoosh. They did not of course replace my lost kitties, but whenever I missed them, it was a huge comfort to hold a fat, baby Himalayan kitten.

To be honest, I felt a significant degree of guilt buying two kittens, with so cats and kittens in shelters needing homes -- both Smoosh and Little Girl had been rescues after all.
I no longer feel guilty about this.

Everyone's grief process is unique to them.
Me, I needed these babies very much.

Back to when Anna and Zuzu first arrived: Suzette had been emailing and posting pictures of Anna and Zuzu's litter for about a month before we picked them up. As I result, I knew sort of what they looked liked -- but I had no idea how LITTLE they'd be! When I finally met them at Suzette's house, I was almost afraid to hold them -- so tiny!

The drive back to CT was just under five hours. Anna cried for the first 15 minutes or so, then the both of them slept like rocks. When we got them home about 8PM, they burst out of their little kitty carrier and starting playing as if nothing had changed! I was afraid they'd miss their mommy or their home or be freaked out by the long drive and the new house, but they seemed to be right at home from day one.

The following pictures were all taken on their first night or the first week in their new home:

Anna: ooooh, so bad!

Zu with Christmas paper

Christmas morning

Anna: "I do stinky doodie again on my fluffy pants. I sorry!"

Zuzu

The next pictures were taken by Suzette when the girls were very young -- maybe 5 weeks old, I'm guessing:

Baby Zu:

And Baby Anna:

The last two pics are some of the very precious few I have of the girls with Smoosh. At first, Smoosh hissed at them if they came near her. That was her way with new cats: she'd hiss and growl if approached, but never attacked or initiated contact herself. After about a month, she'd fully accept the new cat.

Here's Smoosh during the first week or so with Little Girl: And a few months later:

With Anna and Zuzu:

Smoosh and Anna

Whew!
Didn't mean to make that so long!
Hope you enjoyed the kitten pictures -- coming soon, VIDEOS of baby Anna and Zu!