This is the last of the 4 pets intros. I'm absolutely certain they'll be getting more time on here (they're too cute not to), but now I have to write actual content for you next week!
So let's do this. Meet Cally - short for Cailleach (please forgive my pronunciation if it’s awful, that’s the best I’ve been able to find), a divine hag & goddess associated with winter & creation.
We might have done the wrong thing by naming her after a magical goddess lady, because this kitten is a trip. She basically teleports around the place—she’ll be in one spot, and you’ll blink, and she’ll be somewhere entirely different (usually underfoot).
Her brain consists of FOMO, adventure, zoomies, and trying to get treats. She’s a smart kitten though, learns quickly (even when she doesn’t want to), and she’s very cute when one of us is upset over something. She’ll come and sit with us until we feel better.
Gone are the days when a teeny ball of fluff used to sleep right behind/stretched over my shoulder. It’s rare she comes to settle on one of us now, but she comes regularly for cuddles, and she does spend a lot of time asleep at my feet on the bed. She also adores the dog, Doofus. Cally will just smoosh up against her face and rub along it, and Doofus will just sit still and let her.
Cally loves to playfight, with Monster and Squeak. Unfortunately, she’s really bad at it. She can’t quite bring herself to properly pounce on either of them, so she’ll get down and do her calibrating butt wiggle, then she’ll pull herself off to one side or slightly back so she’s just not quite hitting them. Then she’ll get smacked in the face by a paw. She seems to enjoy that bit? I dunno, she keeps going back for more of them, at any rate. They play follow the leader, hide and seek, punch Cally in the face, chicken (where they both get into pounce position and see who breaks first. Which is always Cally, obviously).
She’s a force of destruction as well, of course. She’ll climb on things till everything falls over, and she’ll destroy any toilet or kitchen roll left unguarded in her vicinity.
And her food choices! We don’t mind giving the cats a lil bite of our food. Monster rarely wants any—though she and Cally will drink Cuddles’ cereal milk. Squeak and Cally will usually ask for any meat products we happen to be eating. That’s all normal. But even with her pallet narrowing as she grows up a bit, Cally is so weird. She loves potatoes—in any form. She loves bread. She loves rice. She loves licking off bean juice, mayo, ketchup, sauce, etc before nomming. She also loves Wotsits. Obviously she only gets tiny amounts of these things, but I rarely get a meal I don’t have to share!
When Monster was a kitten, I taught her to sit for her food—kept her from getting in my way. I did the same for Cally, and she will always now sit politely when getting fed, or asking for human food. The one exception has been treats. She will sit, but she will also shove the others out of the way and straaaaaain her neck over to try and get them or try and sneak in to steal someone elses’. So, I taught her to offer a paw for shaking, before she got her treats.
She did noooot want to learn that 😆. But I’m more stubborn than she is, and now she knows I will request her paw before giving treats, so she doesn’t try to invade mine or the kitties’ space so much anymore in order to get hers.
Of course, now she knows the trick she’s smart enough to use it for her own gain. So if I take too long giving the treats, she will just shove her paw into my hand. And she will occasionally use it to request more, and I can’t not cos that’s what I taught her and it’s just too cute, so sometimes everyone just gets an extra round of treats.
Main treat time is always bedtime. They all love bedtime treat time, and I work on an ‘in the order you arrived’ system, but Monster, bless her, will often arrive first, then step out of the way so Cally can be at the front, even though they both know Monster will get her treats first. It’s really very cute.
Story: Cally when she’s just woken up is unbearably cute. For one, if she’s not in the same room already, she’ll start shouting for me and Cuddles and won’t stop til we both reply enough times and she comes to where we are. But she’s a slow waker, so she can’t wake up and bound over to see us, meaning this can take a while (and yes we are trained by all of the cats to respond to their repeated shouts). But even better, when you see her wake up, she’s basically me. She just sits there, slowly blinking herself awake, and it’s adorable. But what makes it unbearably cute is that one of her eyelids is slower to blink than the other, and never is that more obvious than when she’s doing her slow, sleepy blinks. So damn cute.
Some names Cally also answers to:
Cally Babba
Calastrophe
Calamity
CallyBrat
Brat Features
Brat Pack
Menace
[EDIT: Cuddles would like me to add a very important nickname I forgot: Cooking Fat]
OK, final thing. Dancing kitty. Cally doesn’t like being carried, but she will let us pick her up and dangle her with our arms under her front shoulders, then sing the Dancing Kitty song whilst making her do a lil dance. She’ll let us do it, or just let us dangle her and give her kisses. Then when she’s released, she will teleport away. We figure she just thinks we’re fuckin weird hoomans, but it makes us happy, and it is also kinda funny, so fiiiiiine.
Anyway, clearly Cally is part fae, sent to ensure our lives are never dull. She’s so odd and lovely and sweet and destructive, we love her to bits.
The paw trick is so delightful