An apple a day

The orchard blossomed when they got out of the kitten room and began to explore the house, though they tended to run back into the comfort of the kitten room when they got tired. With the exception of our resident grumpy old man cat, they settled in with my house cats easily. They particularly liked my youngest, Wicket, and my diva, Mochi.

Fuji got along particularly well with Wicket- bonding over their attachment... to my face.

My puppies LOVE apples and cats... but most of the orchard aren't huge dog fans. Only Fuji feels completely at ease with them. The dogs respect the kittens and mostly ignore them, but Braeburn still puffs up and hisses if they saunter by him too closely.

While the Orchard is mostly not impressed with dogs, they LOVE people. They love to be held. I'm not sure why, but they like it best when someone is sitting on the floor. If I ever sit on the floor for more than a few minutes I end up with a kitten in my lap.

Their other favorite cuddle spot is whenever I'm on the computer... paying bills, making forms, data entry, blogging.... they've helped me do it all. In this very moment Fuji is curled up in my lap and Honeycrisp is sleeping on my monitor stand. I had to take a 20 minute break in blogging to get them settled- because they and their siblings kept insisting that I needed to write 897777777777777 or iuyoouiooooooooooooo into the blog.... sometimes in all caps.

But the orchard helped me through a very rough time. About 2 weeks ago I got my second covid vaccination on my way home from work. Within an hour I was sick to my stomach and by the next day I was so weak I could barely stand. For nearly 3 days I crawled between my moon pod (big bean bag chair) on the floor in the kitten room and my bathroom. The orchard was absolutely thrilled with this new development and stuck to me like glue. Ambrosia was the clingiest, curling up in my neck or under my chin.

After that first weekend I was able to make it to work, but I've still been weak and I have no stamina. I've been heading to bed shortly after getting off work, which was great for awhile.... the orchard was happy for the cuddles. But a few days ago we discovered Wicket is pretty sick, so we've been trying to limit their contact. It's tricky to split time between the babies when I have extremely limited waking hours. But we finally got Wicket on medicine that is helping him feel so much better- so there is hope.