Tamanya update

Preoccupied as I’ve been by her hand-biting issues, I’ve failed lately to mention how satisfied I am by the way this kitten is flourishing.

Her fur becomes softer and prettier by the week. As an athlete she is world-class for kittens, courageous enough to dare ever riskier and more imaginative leaps every couple of days. Often her degree of creativity astonishes me.

It should also be said that the biting is always the final stage of much more affectionate behavior. Whenever I reappear after an absence, she runs up with a single meow, demands to be picked up, then purrs in my arms for 5 or 10 minutes. From there it starts becoming more aggressive, more attack-oriented, with claws and teeth involved. I get the sense that she’s trying to take her affection to the next level, and just can’t think of any way to do it other than a quantitative increase in interactions: harder clawing and harder biting.

I’ve seen this from pets before. My parents’ fox terrier would go into a kind of trance whenever he saw horses. And he was happy to remain in that admiring trance for a little while, but then the only way he could think of to develop his affection for the horses was to start barking loudly and aggressively.

But watching Tamanya jump, and creating inducements for her to do so, is one of my favorite activities.