Reading this week:

• The Mute’s Soliloquy by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

This post is a special request from my only and most loyal reader, my super amazing girlfriend. You all will recall the wonderful day that I put up my first post about the world’s most wonderful cat, Tink! This is a follow-up post to let you all know how she is doing!

She is doing quite well! Back when I wrote the first post we had only had Tink for like a week or two, so although our love for this perfect cat was pure, it was young. Now, with the fullness of time, we have learned so much about Tink’s personality and habits. Some things haven’t changed. For example, in the last post I waxed on about how much she loves windows. She still loves windows! Her usual habit these days is right after breakfast she hops up onto the windowsill in our bedroom (pictured below, the one above is the office) to watch the birds out there. That is the prime bird-watching location because there is a tree underneath and so there are lots of birds to watch. Having been inspired by none other than the New York Times, we occasionally put cat TV on for her, which she seems to appreciate. The advantage of cat TV is she can watch it from the couch instead of the hard windowsill. She still prefers the windowsill, and gets grumpy if we fail to open the blinds for her, but it’s nice that there are options.

Another thing we’ve done for her is get her some cat grass. She quickly got into the habit of nibbling on every plant in the house, despite the fact that nearly every plant in the house was not good for her. We told her this, but we all know how 6-year-olds can be. So we grew some cat grass and she loves to munch down on that, especially when (in her opinion) dinner is late. She is fed at 7 and 7 every day and so at about 4 in the afternoon she starts making sure to remind us that dinner is in only three hours. To satiate her rapidly diminishing form, she’ll turn to the grass.

Of course we must remember that she is correct and she needs lots of nourishment. This is because she works hard every day. Her rent is only $50 a month but between you and me she has yet to earn it. This is despite all the time she spends on the laptop typing out emails or whatever else it is that working people do. She makes up for it instead by prowling around the apartment ensuring that all is well and that we don’t have to worry about everything, demonstrating her fierce capability to protect us by chasing down toys. She finds the ones with feathers to be particularly vicious and so takes extra delight in demonstrating to us how she would take them down if they ever posed a more substantial threat.

She’s not all work however. Tink knows the value of excellent work-life balance and pursuing hobbies. Here she is napping in her bag full of sewing and knitting projects. She hasn’t made much progress on them because being a cat she doesn’t fundamentally understand clothing, but she is getting there and we make sure to encourage her by petting her and giving her scratches on her perfect little head, the sweet baby angel she is.

One place Tink has made a lot of progress is in becoming a lap cat. Tink, who I will remind you is perfect, is not the world’s most cuddly cat. She enjoys the new perspective on the world getting picked up brings, but once she has verified that all the books in the bookshelf are still in place and there is still no likely way she is going to be able to get up there, she is ready to be put down. However, she has warmed up to the notion of cuddles. You will remember from the last blog post that she liked sitting on pillows. If you make yourself particularly pillow-like, she is, on occasion, willing to climb on top of you and knead you a bit and, if you are very very lucky, settle in. A good alternative to this process we have come up with is to lay down next to her and act like it was her idea the whole time to cuddle. If you catch her in the right mood, she’s delighted to play along:

And with that is my latest update on Tink for you all. We love her very much and miss her whenever we leave the apartment, which still isn’t much frankly, so that isn’t a huge problem for us yet. Though if work ever starts making us come in we might just have to quit our jobs and go live in a cabin in the woods or something just so we can make sure to keep Tink company. She’s worth it.