I have good shots of Balin with Barley, and of Balin with Salamander… so with a little patience hopefully I will get good shots of all of them together before too long J Here are two photos from this morning:

The slightly wingnutty expression Balin tends to have in my photos may be because often I am waggling my fingers at him, trying to get him to look at me. Salamander on the other hand usually looks at me anyway, if I am anywhere within range. It’s one of the many, many things I love about him.

By the way, today is the one-week anniversary of Balin’s arrival here, and all is peaceful! The last of Sid’s growlings and hissings stopped days ago. I saw him and Balin sniffing noses yesterday, with no displays of hostility or anxiety. In fact the other day I was looking for them and found them hiding in my closet together. Oh, of course – the one thing Sid does that I really wish he would stop doing, and he has taught Balin to do it, too! Great! :-p

As for other bad habits, Balin is still doing the self-nursing, although we try to dissuade and distract him whenever we notice. Oddly, he doesn’t seem to do it when he is stressed; he seems to do it when he is happy. For example if I pet him a bunch and he is purring, often eventually he’ll get off my lap and start doing it. I’m afraid that maybe he connects purring with it… like if he is purring, and he’s not actively distracted with something else, his little brain thinks “what goes with purring? Oh, that’s right, self-nursing!” and he’ll start doing it. But maybe I’m wrong.

One of the few down-sides is the sleep deprivation caused by the nightly cat rodeo that has been going on since we let Balin out of the kennel so he could explore the house and mix with the other cats. Yesterday morning (or was it the day before?) I commented to Jim that it felt like Christmas. He said "did you usually get new pets for Christmas?" I said "No, it's the lack of sleep... and the excitement of having the new kitties." Something about the combination of fatigue (from cats galloping around like a herd of elephants all night, climbing on things that are not supposed to be climbed on, playing noisily with things that are not supposed to be played with, walking and purring on us, cuddling enthusiastically, and then stampeding off again), combined with the excitement of something good and new, felt like Christmas.

Barley & Balin: It's the greatest show on earth! That's right, it's a big cat circus, coming to you live from Shepling Stadium, where cat clowns have the audience in stitches, and cat acrobats amaze and appall everyone by climbing and leaping onto lofty shelves and window sills! What will they knock off and break this time? The suspense is palpable!

Balin loves having his tummy petted. Actually he just loves being petted and held in general.

Look at the beautiful peridot green of his eyes. They are green in the center and gold on the edge.

Well, Nero has been out of the kennel for just a little over 24 hours, and everything is going great! He and Barley have already made friends and have been playing together a lot. Salamander is our Wise Zen Master and is not fazed by his presence at all. Sid is offended but less offended than he was when Barley joined the family a month ago, and he now gets along fine with Barley, so I think everything is going to be just fine.

I've added a couple photos to this email… I haven't had a chance to get many good ones yet, but hopefully will this weekend. One of them shows Sid, Salamander, and Barley having treats, which is something we do every night. So far Balin (Nero) is not that interested in the Temptations treats. Is there another brand of treats he likes better?

Last night we had three out of four of the cats on the bed at once, with nothing more than a few disgruntled noises from Sid. I had Salamander on one side, and Balin on the other, purring loudly. Balin wanted to sleep with both paws on my face, which is fine except he kept moving them around and patting various parts of my face with his very large, warm paws. It was adorable yet also a bit difficult to sleep through. I would rather have the kitty affection than the sleep, though.

We are going to try to teach Balin not to do the self-nursing thing. He started doing it again last night in bed when we were trying to sleep, and the loud slurping noises were quite annoying. Luckily I was able to distract him with petting.