Being tasty is her #1 health risk.

Inigo Montoya:

I’ve decided to name the kitten Inigo Montoya

´Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.´

It is a good substitute for what I have been calling him: demon, demon child, demon spawn, Lucifer, evil little bastard, little shit, shit head, little bugger, snot rag… My host family will probably just stick to calling him Miche, which is similar to the word that means ‘small’ in Guarani, and as I’ve mentioned before, is the generic name for all cats. My initial names are due to the face that he always attacks me, usually my feet and legs. He’ll try to climb me like a tree if I’m wearing pants, but is always looking for an excuse to use me like a human staircase. I seriously feel targeted, he always comes to me, and I don’t want him too. Carly likes him and yet he’ll still hang around me when she is over and trying to play with him.

Inigo also attacks the bunny rabbit, which I do not like one bit. He is super spastic, one minute he is sleeping peacefully in Carly’s lap, then a second later the beast awakens and he is clawing and biting her viciously…and then 15 seconds later he’ll go back to sleep. I like the name Inigo because sometime he is really nice, and sometimes he is stupidly brave and unshakably focused on whatever. And calling him Inigo, as opposed to oh let’s say… demon spawn… makes me far more inclined to try and catch him during one of his nice moments as opposed to ignoring him completely.

Or maybe I’m just warming up to him because he almost got his behind kicked yesterday in the yard by a full-sized cat and has thus upped his pity factor. Even after I scared away the intruder, poor little Inigo was still frozen with his claws dug into branch pile he had been climbing on. For one of the first times he actually seemed to like me petting him for more than 2.7 seconds as I tried to coax him off and then calm him down when I was able to extricate him. Poor little guy, I suppose I need to remember that he is just a little kitten…He is kind of cute..when he isn’t trying to maul me.

Lila


(Lila resting near a cool water bottle on a warm day)

I think the bunny’s name is going to be Lila, which means lilac. She is cream and white colored, but whatever, it’s a pretty name. I’ve been around a few bunnies before, but I’ve never seen one as sweet as her. She likes to be held and will fall asleep in my lap. I think she likes me in particular, which makes me feel just so darn special. She will come to me if I call her sometimes, likes to stand between me feet when I’m ironing, and I have a much easier time of catching her when she escapes out into the yard.

The family was only feeding her a little bit of lettuce and having her drink out of the kitten’s milk dish, so I went and bought her more lettuce and carrots, which I feed her more frequently, and I’ve put out a water dish as well. I also found bona-fide rabbit food yesterday at the pet/feed store, so I’m working on getting her to eat that as well, though so far she is pretty resistant. At the cyber yesterday, I also read that rabbits are supposed to eat Timothy hay too, but I’m pretty sure it will be hard to find that in rabbit sized portions. The meager diet I can give her, combined with the fact that it is pretty much impossible to get her spayed [one rabbit site said that 80% of unsprayed female rabbits die of ovarian cancer], she will probably have a relatively short life.

Inigo attacking her constantly probably isn’t good either. He is going to get bigger than her quickly and could do some real damage. Right now the family’s solution is to put Lila in a box. I’m tempted to buy a cat-carrier for her to sleep in at night in the kitchen to keep her away from Inigo, and then have Inigo stay outside during the day so she can run around in the kitchen. Oh, and they both need some sort of litter box if they are going to live inside…

However my main concern regarding Lila’s overall life-span is the family. I think the parents are probably just waiting for Nati’s interest in the bunny to wane so they can cook her for lunch. Being tasty is her #1 health risk.