In other news, our littlest furry baby turned five today! I find this somewhat hard to believe, but today is the birthday of Giles, our gorgeous -- though temperamental -- silver tabby!
Giles is the only native Brit in our household. He was born in Oxford and, indeed, has never left the City of Dreaming Spires. Our other three kitties -- Chirp, Stumpy, and The Boy -- are US-American and well travelled. They were
born in Arizona, and travelled the 1900 miles to Chicago by car a year later, eventually followed by a trans-Atlantic flight to Merry Olde England.
We met Giles when he was four days old and brought him into our home five weeks later; since then, he has been a much loved part of our household. Excepting, of course, when The Boy is trying to sleep and Giles wants to play; at those times, there is a little less love in the house for him.
Giles is a bit of an odd
duck cat, inventing new games for us to play with him like "Sink Game" -- wherein he jumps in one bathroom sink and meows for attention... then suddenly runs to the
other bathroom sink and meows for you to follow and continue what you were doing in the first sink! Rinse and repeat -- he can go back and forth between the two bathrooms for quite some time!
This is how baby Giles looked, nearly five years ago, at the age of two weeks...
Normally, I would include a birthday picture, to compare "THEN" with "NOW". Alas, being in Japan makes this difficult. Even so, here is an non-birthday adult shot, showing how the little guy developed:
Giles came into our home shortly after a time of profound loss, not long after a four month period where we lost our previous tabby, Totoro, to kidney failure and our lovely Foxy to cancer. Not only did my beloved
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cheshcat and I find our hearts deeply wounded from the loss, but our surviving kitty, The Boy, was confused and lonely at being without other feline company for the first time in his life[*]. Whilst nothing can make us forget our departed furry children, Giles filled a much-needed space in our home and in the hearts of all three of us. So happy fifth birthday to him... and I wish for many, many more!
[*] At that time, his sisters -- Stumpy and Chirp -- were still living at the Event Horizon, some four thousand miles away!![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}