Finn McUpdate

Finn McCool, August 2nd, 2007

[Note: the one-year anniversary blogtour of Ireland continues in updates of the HI-POD entries of this blog. Just go to the most recent one, scroll down to the bottom, and enjoy the most recent additions. And that's an order.]

It's been a while since I wrote anything about our newest cat, Finn McCool.

The reason I haven't written anything is the same as the apocryphal child's who was utterly mute for years until he suddenly said, "This soup is cold": everything's been just fine. Unlike A. Pocryphal Child, though, there isn't anything wrong at present.

Finn has settled in here just wonderfully. He's fat, happy, sassy... and little. Maybe he'll grow up a bit in the next year, but being a year-and-a-quarter already, probably not much. (Not much up or long, that is -- he's already got a pretty good start on growing out.) His self-confidence has gotten to be almost comically out of whack with reality. Here, he's trying to grab dinner from Cooper, of all things. Cooper is about three times Finn's size (and actually is Finn's favorite animal in the Fort, which may explain Finn's chutzpah):

Finn McCool tries to intimidate a bantha. Fonzie, in the background, visits from a dimensional matrix in which food is served in sink drains.

When I last wrote about Finn, our older Maine Coon, Alnitak, was being a bad guy to him. That's stopped, but I'm glad, sincerely glad, that Al acted like that. It was so out of character for him to be so aggressive and hostile that Diane and I thought there might be something wrong with Al, something irritating him so much that adjusting to a new family member wasn't something he could handle with his usual grace. We took him to the Fort's vet, and multiple tests later showed some problems that could have become life-threatening if they hadn't been caught so soon. Several weeks of antibiotics and steroids have brought Al back to his suave, usual self.

Odd, isn't it? Finn might be said to have saved Al's life by being more of a pain in the ass than Al could tolerate.

Finn now hangs out with the 'Coons mostly -- a teeny, bright, orange splash against their massive brown-ness. Here they are this evening, sharing dinner:


(A note to anyone who worries about our cats eating on our kitchen counter: Pfflbbttt! They're clean, they're healthy, we're of ages that begin with a "6" and so can do pretty much whatever we want, and so there.)

A complete aside: I have a continuous feed from the HamCam on my computer screen. This is a scene therefrom while I was typing this blog entry (you really should click on it to see a bigger version):


I live in such a wonderful place.