Meet the Boys, Pt. 2: Ronnie

Ronnie adorned with crown of unpicked serger thread

In the first part of this two-part series, you met Riley, my sniffly, foot-pedal-cord-chewing life-threatening-illness-prone runt of a cat. In this second and final part: Life With Ronnie!

This gray-and-white lapdog of a cat meowed his way into our home in November 2007, a few months after our wedding. We both work full-time and had started to worry that Riley, playful guy that he is, was lonely and bored during the day. Clearly he needed a friend!

Some friends of ours had just bought a house in Bushwick, and discovered they had three cats and a litter of kittens living in their backyard--extremely domestic cats that seemed to think they belonged inside said house. Big heavy metal fans that they are, our friends named the cats Ronnie, James and Dio and gave them food and water, but with three dogs and a cat of their own, there was no room in the house for more pets.

We initially thought we'd bring home two of the kittens--so cute and tiny!--but they wanted nothing to do with us and hid behind the lawn furniture. Ronnie, on the other hand, was aggressively friendly--within seconds he was in our laps purring and talking to us, and we just couldn't resist. He was a bit scrawny when we brought him home:

... but he beefed up in no time. It turned out he was already neutered and our vet was fairly certain of what we already suspected--Ronnie and his brother and sister were abandoned housepets, possibly left behind by the previous owners of the house when they moved away. (GRRR! For SHAME!)

And let's just say he has abandonment issues. When not being held or picked up or petted by us or played with by Riley, he just wanders around the apartment yowling forlornly (good practice for having a baby, maybe?). We can't let him in our bedroom at night for litter box access reasons, and he STILL doesn't understand--some nights he sits outside and cries until the wee hours. Within seconds of either of us (especially Masheka) sitting down, he makes a running jump for our laps. Dislodging him is nigh impossible--he has a magical technique of going limp and tripling his weight when we try to push him off.

Good thing he has Riley to keep him company. They mostly get along great, but do their fair share of wrestling and play fighting--mostly over who gets to groom who. They have a gross but hilarious fixation on licking the ear wax out of each others ears and our vet always comments on how clean their ears are. But when Riley was deathly ill last year, Ronnie just did NOT understand why his buddy didn't want to play, and we had to keep running interference so Riley could get some sleep.

Also--the dude really likes catnip. Riley could care less, but put a little bit on the floor and Ronnie starts rolling around and dancing and who knows what until he's covered in it:

And that concludes this extremely brief series that has nothing to do with sewing, and everything to do with the fact that I am a crazy cat lady.