George is the tabby kitten we acquired in July – if you want to know how that came about, check out the August newsletter in the archives. Also see the September newsletter for the first round of photos. He looks like he’s going to be huge – he’s not six months old yet, and his tail is a foot long, and very thick. He has great big paws. He seems to grow as you look at him.

He’s absolutely delightful – I think he’s probably the most gentle cat I’ve ever met. In fact, that’s a problem, in a way, because I don’t think he’s got the faintest idea how to be a cat. He seems so vulnerable. We still haven’t let him out in the dark, because it would be like letting a puppy out on his own at night. But, like a puppy, he comes running when he’s called, so it’s easy to bring him in when it starts getting dark.

In fact, he’s altogether more like a puppy than a kitten. Picking up balls (and anything else he can manage) in his mouth, and trotting off with them, testing everything to see if it’s for eating – trying to make friends with everyone and everything. Like the rabbit next door, who is petrified of him, or Greta, the part-Siamese who lives rough, and doesn’t want to know about George. Like her namesake, she wants, as someone pointed out, to be alone.

He’ll go up to her, and pat her, and she hisses at him. Or worse. One day he was out trying to make friends with her and subsequently came in with one eye completely closed. A trip to the vet and some ointment fixed it. We weren’t absolutely sure that Greta had done it – he could have scratched himself on a branch or something, but next day Una saw Greta giving him a clout. Does it put him off? No. He still goes up and pats her, and when she stalks off, he trots off behind her.

He hates closed doors – he tries to open them from underneath, with the result that all our carpets are being pulled out from the threshold strips. We’re hoping he grows out of it while we still have some carpet left. In the meantime, we leave doors open whenever possible. His only other drawback is that he is the messiest eater in the world. I don’t know how to teach a cat how to eat neat, so if anyone has any hints, let me know!

I hope my photography improves, but in the meantime, here are my first attempts with the digital camera. As you can see, he’s adopted my typist’s chair for serious sleeping, so I’ve got this brilliant excuse for not working! In the one with the shoe, he’s yawning, not yelling. He wasn’t yawning when I started taking it, but he was when I pressed the button, obviously. This was probably a comment on my photographic technique. And check out the tail in the one where he’s on the arm of the chair. In the other one, he wasn’t sleepy – just closing his eyes against the flash.