Mabel? (Bob’s first two weeks with us.)

Bob was meant to be called Mabel, because when we first saw Bob, a week and a half before we collected him, we didn’t think he had any balls, and because a friend had just acquired a kitten named Doris, which Emma liked as a kitten name but which we obviously couldn’t pilfer.

“How about Mabel?” I said, blurting of whatever old lady name came to mind first.

And Mabel it was. Until we went back and fetched him, when the breeder suggested that he might actually be male. Holding him in my arms, he peered up at me, and it struck me as he looked into my eyes that we ought to call him Bob if he was really a boy. An extensive bellyrub after the car journey home confirmed that he was indeed a Bob and not a Mabel. Bob slept the whole car journey home, by the way, which was cool. He then shat on the livingroom carpet, which was not. No accidents since though!

Bob is a ragdoll, as mentioned previously. Ragdolls are some kind of messed-up version of a Burmese that got hit by a car or something; lapcats that have confused laps with necks. They don’t like going outside but they do like curling up around your neck.

See?



Bob seems particularly fond of this, and has been since that first night. (Please excuse my bad hair here; I have a kitten on my shoulder.)

See?



Bob is also jealous of our MacBook. Technically you’re not allowed to call a MacBook a laptop anymore, because it will encourage you to give yourself cancer in your balls by sitting a redhot Apple battery on your nuts; Bob obviously has no time for this semantic claptrap, and neither do we. If we sit with the laptop in our lap, Bob leaps to action in order to obscure it from your attention.

See?



Bob also likes a drink.

See?



And a fight.

See?



These are Bob’s first two weeks. He shits and wees in the right place. He decides to go schiz at 6.30am and 10.30pm every day without fail. He goes promentalbatshit if you open a can of tuna or cook salmon. (As Emma is a vegetarian [sort of] this happens a lot in our house.) He likes cuddles and Yo La Tengo. He misses us when we’re at work. He is disgustingly cute.

See?





We love Bob very much. Except when he claws my eyeball at 6.30am in order to wake me up to play. Then I want to flush his fluffy little bastard body down the toilet.