Friday Pets

It has been a bit since I have put up any adorable kitten pictures, so I thought it was time.  Above is Obi Wan and Puddin trying to take a nap without having me snap photos in their faces!  Sorry kitties! 

The kittens often like to play in the bathtub.  This time Luke has taken control of a tiny fake mouse.  Everybody but Puddin is really interested in it!

A closeup of Puddin chillin on the edge of the tub.

The dogs get jealous of me taking so many photos of the kittens.  But they are looking pretty tired!

This is Gordo.  She is so much larger than all the rest.  Everybody keeps telling us to change her name to match her gender.  I want to ask them, do you know who you are actually talking to?

Nice look from Luke huh?

And lastly we have Caesar.  I don't think I have ever shown him before, but he was being a ham while I had out the camera, so here you go!

That's all for today.  Thanks!

Love you!

Love kitties!

Friday Kittens on Sunday!

Here is Obi Wan and Luke.  Luke has the habit of standing on his hind legs; so cute!!

Isn't Luke super cute!!

Oh, I finally got a shot of Puddin's cute belly!  He looks like his is mostly black from his back, but you can see now that he has all sorts of white on his belly!

Here is our giant, Gordo, looking huge!

Obi-Wan sittin in the sun.

Another super cute one of Gordo!

Obi-Wan sitting in the sun still.

And lastly, Gordo attacking Ob-Wan!

Oh we finally found out what genitals that they all have.  Let's see, we have two penises and two vaginas, Ha!  I'm hilarious!  Obi-Wan and Puddin are both penis holders and Luke and Gordo have vaginas.  I think that is right.  Actually I have not paid very close attention to the whole what genitals do they have thing!

Hope you all are lovely!

Love you!

Love yourselves!

Love kittens!

Friday Kittens - Portraits

What a beautiful picture of Puddin.  Well all except for the fact that she has a bit of cat litter stuck to her face.  That is never an attractive look.  But of course, after I removed it, all the rest of the shots were nowhere as good as this one.  Boo, hiss!!

Obi Wan in her typical model pose.  She is such a contemplative kitten, it is so cute!

Gordo is SO much bigger than everyone else.  And her fur is SO soft still.  We are wondering if she is going to grow out of it or not.

And lastly we have Luke, looking dapper.  We are still super curious as to what she will look like when she is all grown up.  Lighter cats tend to change colors quite a bit.  She still has her blue eyes and we fully doubt that she will keep them, but we are crossing our fingers!

Okie dokie!  

Love you!

Love yourselves!

Love kittens loving you!

My Letter to a Counselor & Friday Kittens

I had an interesting day yesterday that I thought I would share a bit about before I presented most of my kitten photos.  Let's start with, do you know that I have never seen a counselor regarding my gender issues?  Yup, never have.  Never felt a need to actually.  But never mind that now right?  Anywho..... I am in kind of an interesting situation in that I am wanting to begin to speak to someone but the nearest person to me is about 70 miles away, one way.  Hmmm....  So I found an interesting enough looking online counseling service.  It is Betterhlp.com and I decided to reach out through them.  They asked for some info, so I wrote the following letter:

Hi -

What has brought me here is my gender variance.  I have known that I am transgender since being a child, though I didn't have the vocabulary about it that I do now.  I've dealt with my gender quite well for much of my life.  Currently I live in an openly non-conforming manner.  I am out with most of my friends, my wife has always known, and within the last couple of years I have come out at work as well.  Things have been going quite well actually, so I felt a bit foolish answering the questions on the survey, as almost all of them indicate a lacking for much concern.  

However, within the last 6 months I have been diagnosed with an enlarged prostate.  I asked my doctor to treat it with Finasteride.  That drug helps to shrink the prostate, but it is also used as a testosterone blocker with people who are pursuing transition.  While I am not interested in transitioning, I specifically requested that drug for the transgender issue, and not the prostate one.  There is a hope within me, that I would "suffer" the side effect of gynecomastia, but that I would continue to be able to sexually function as a male.  

So.... all was going well until today when I went to my doctor, he informed me that there have been many recent studies of prostate cancer in men taking finasteride and he recommends that I go off of it.   And..... do I have to say it?  That bothered me quite a bit.  Yeah, no I don't want cancer, who would?  So how can I justify taking a drug that might do that to me?  I can't.  

And that made me super sad today.  As my day has gone on, I have become more and more morose about the situation and thought, ya know, maybe it's time to actually talk to somebody about all of this.  Maybe there is something I can do that can help me that I have not thought of.

Where am I at right now?  I'm interested in pursuing ways that would help me, mentally and physcially be more comfortable in my body.  As I see myself mentally, I am somehwere between male and female.  Not fully one or the other, but a bit of both.  Physically wise, all I ever see is male.

Okay, I have blathered way too much, for something that was indicated to be "just a few short sentences."  Ha.  Me in a few short sentences, funny. 

Hey, I'm nothing if not direct huh?  Well we shall see where this leads, if anywhere!  The counselor they connected me with currently does not seem to have transgender experience, so I'm pretty sure that I'm going to request a change there.  I'll let you know!

Now, on with some furry furry love loves!

Here we have Puddin and Luke.  Luke is looking a bit evil in this photo huh?

This is Obi Wan and Gordo.  I thinkit is adorable how Gordo is peaking out saying hi!

A cute shot of Puddin.

And lastly Gordo.  I think this is an awesome shot.

Oh hey, could you tell, we bought a cat tree.  Exciting I know.  Well to us it is as we have never owned one before.  It was hilarious trying to get it home in our little tiny car.  Of course we did not have enough foresight to actually bring the truck!  Silly us!

Okay.  That's enough for today.

Love you!

Love yourselves!

Friday Kittens

Well last Friday I had a suggestion that I make Friday kittens a thing on my blog.  While I am not making any promises about the future, I considered the idea and was able to throw something together for today.

Featured up top is an attempt by Jules to get a family portrait!  Ha!  Good luck honey!  Of course the chill one, the model kitty, Obi Wan, who used to be Ichi, is just sitting there saying "hey guys, relax, lets get our picture taken."

Another attempt at the family photo.  Whose facing the camera again?  That's right, the model kitten, Obi Wan.  Everybody else is oblivious to the camera except for wanting that annoying flashing thing to leave them alone!

Here is a great shot of Gordo looking completely stunned.  He is so big.  Way bigger than all of the rest of them.  He is also super fluffy.  Currently we suspect he is going to be a long haired cat.

Here we have Puddin about to attack Gordo.  Being black cats they are a difficult pair to good photos of.  

This guys name used to be Yon, but recently we have switched it to Luke.  Yes, Luke Skywalker.  Well, we had Obi Wan, so of course we needed Luke right?  We are such nerds!  Ha!

So here is a reason that Obi Wan got his name, look at him just sittin there chillin!  He found himself a little nook and thought he'd just set a spell and check out what's happenin in the kitchen!

Well, I think I referred to everyone today as male, huh?  Maybe.  But honestly we still don't know any of their bits.  Occasionally we will look, make a guess, and then shrug our shoulders.  Is it any surprise that we are not all that concerned about it?

I think it will be funny if Obi Wan and Luke end up being female.  They will totally keep their names; I mean why not right?

Okay!

Love you!

Love yourself!

Love, Love!

Kitten Update #2

Our kittens are doing quite well and are so super cute!  I think they are actually getting cuter each and every day!  Can it be?  Possibly.

The above photo is Ichi.  She was born first.  Well in reality we don't know what the gender is of any of the kittens as of yet.  Would gender be the right term for a cat?  Do cats have gender?  Maybe for cats it is just about genitals.  What genitals do my kittens have?  I don't know!

This is our big puppy Indy and the mother cat Luna.  Hiding under the table is Gordo.  Is that bad?  He's really fluffy?  Are we fat shaming our kitten?

This is our older dog Buddy, taking a sniff and giving a shove onto Yon.  We initially named all of the kittens by birth order with Japanese numbers.  San and Ni have so far found replacement names, but not so for Ichi and Yon.

I have decided that Ichi is the model of the group.  I mean seriously, look at that photo!

Oh and how about this one?  They are such the ham!  Is that a better gender reference?  Actually in real life I go back and forth between calling them either male or female pronouns.  I laugh about it!

Yon was initially all white.  She is the one in the photo at the top as well.  When you compare the two you can totally see that she is slowly developing dark patches; so cute!!  

The protective mother with Gordo.

This is Puddin trying to figure out what that great big thing is.

Okay.

That's it.

Love you!

Love kittens!!

Kittens!!

The last time I had a cat that had kittens I was 7 years old or so.  I don't remember much, except for that she decided to have them on my bed.  It was a stilt bed, or some such thing; a bunk bed without the lower bed.  But recently Jules and I found ourselves with a cat that went into heat.

She had decided to pick this cat up from a local gas station.  Clearly someone had abandoned it there.  It was in kitty teenage-hood.  A time during which the kitten stops just being cute and starts to cause havoc on their environment.  We however are a super cat friendly household.  We currently have 5 of them.  Well how about 4.5 as we rarely see one of them.  She was also a rescue.  I found her and her littermates abandoned in a nearby field.

Anywho.... our newest edition went into heat unexpectedly.  We thought she was too young, but apparently not! Ha!  She went out of heat within a day, and we suspected we had a pregnant kitty on our hands.  We decided to take on the challenge of either owning all of her offspring or of finding homes for them, and decided to allow her to have her litter.

This past Monday night she finally gave birth to four healthy kitties.  The mother is being a super provider and we (the grandparents!) are there to help support her.  We are not sure if we are going to even try and get rid of any of them.  I mean they are all so darn cute!  How could we possibly let any of them go???

But that would then mean we would have 9 cats!  Yikes!  9 cats!  OMG!  My wife keeps asking if that would make her a crazy cat lady.  I suppose it would make for two crazy cat people!  But come on, they are adorable!