Hippolyta ("Lyta") 1978-1998
Phaedra 1978-1986
Theseus 1986-2002
Loki 2004-2018
Muldoon 2004-2019
Castor 2020-
Pollux 2020-
Lyta was the proto-kitten, the cat against which all future cats were to be measured. My sister gave her to me for Christmas. In a box. In a box that I suspected contained a small appliance for my new house. Until I opened the box's top, and a furry paw reached out.
We bonded within seconds. Lyta was the cat who never struggled against being picked up. Who I could carry around the house absent-mindedly indefinitely, with no complaints. Who, when someone knocked at the door, immediately jumped in a single bound, up to my shoulder so she could join me in greeting the guest. Amazing cat.
But she was given to me when she was only seven weeks old, and demanded my full attention the second I returned home from the office. After a week, I realized she needed a peer for a friend. I went to the Seattle Animal Shelter, where I secured another kitten of the same age. Phaedra. Phaedra was a nice cat, but quiet, reserved, and played definite second fiddle to hyper-active Lyta.
Lyta -- as noted above -- was a jumper. There was no spot in the house that she did not explore. She pranced around my mantel and my piano top -- both crowded with small, useless objects -- with virtually never a false step, never disturbing any of the items. She jumped to the top of built-in kitchen cabinets. She jumped to the precarious spot atop curtain rods over the windows. She jumped every day to my shoulder while I shaved -- poor Phaedra tried to follow her example one morning, and ended up digging her claws into my back as she precariously hung on, able to jump no higher, while I screamed.
I substituted a rare bath for a shower one morning. After I got out, Lyta jumped into what she thought was an empty bathtub. She instantly jumped back out, hardly breaking the surface of the water. Without apparently getting her paws wet. Don't ask me how she did it.
Lyta was a small, wiry cat. My later cats tended to be heavier and more ground-oriented. Loki did have the body to be a jumper, but it wasn't his thing. He jumped as high as the back of living room chairs, where he could sit in splendor, gazing out upon his domain.
Which brings me to Castor and Pollux, my now 16-week-old twin black kittens. They both have small, wiry bodies -- they're still growing, of course, only five pounds now, but I can read their future -- and they are jumpers. Definitely jumpers. As much as Lyta? We'll have to wait a few months to decide, but yes, maybe.
They aren't quite as closely bonded to me as Lyta, and they therefore don't routinely leap to my shoulder. But they have her curiosity and willingness to take chances. They are faster and more energetic than Lyta, maybe only because there are two of them, egging each other on. And they're male. You know how competitive boys can be.
I have a cat ladder, purchased several years ago for Loki and Muldoon who treated it as an ungainly piece of uninteresting furniture. But these boys knew its potential uses the second they saw it. They don't climb it, as I expected. They take flying leaps at it, soaring to the top level, barely touching the lower steps on the way up.
Their most astonishing feat, however, occurs outside. I have a spindly butterfly bush beside the rear deck. They treat it as a jungle gym. They climb it, of course, from the deck railing. But wait, there's more. From the ground, they dash toward the bush, take a leap up onto the bannister of the steps to the deck, barely making contact for the sake of propulsion, and then launching themselves at the bush. Looking like nothing so much as Rocky the Flying Squirrel.
They have no idea where on the bush they will land. They just trust that there will be some small branch they can glom onto. Which they do successfully, time after time.
Thus today's photo, above.
Grounded by the pandemic, my watching the antics of Castor and Pollux has all the appeal of going to the circus. Back when we still had circuses.
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