Feline-- adj. meaning "of the cat family"

Feline.

I know many people don't consider themselves "cat folks." I didn't either before marrying Mike. He introduced me to the fun and frustrations of cat ownership.

We have a precocious cat. When we adopted her last summer, the boys were allowed to pick out a name for her. Zachary's first choice was Rainbow, because, as he said, girls love rainbows and she is a girl cat. After some discussion (and let's just acknowledge here that the discussion lasted far too long), he decided that Rainbow should be a middle name and he finally settled on the name Molly Rainbow Bishop. Let me also say here that any decision that Zachary makes is greatly deliberated and discussed. When he finally FINALLY made his decision I wouldn't have cared if he'd decided to name her Vomit or Gloob, just as long as the stinkin' cat had a name.

Anyway, she is part of our family now and she is a creature of habit. Her morning routine involves chasing the boys around while they are getting dressed. She especially loves to nip at their socks and pull at their pant legs with her claws. Depending on their moods, this either causes the boys to laugh hysterically or cry. One extreme or the other.

At midmorning she retires to her place of rest, which is on top of Alec's bed. She loves Alec's room and is usually either sleeping on his bed or hiding underneath it, peeking out from under the bedskirt and ready to grab at unsuspecting toes. The irony here is that Molly and Alec are arch enemies. She picks on him the most and he's usually throwing a toy at her because she is nipping at his toes again.

Her newest toys are my hair bands. Think extra large rubber bands. I was storing them in the small basket that is on our bathroom counter, but she kept pulling them out and I'd find the colorful bands strewn about the house, or wrapped around the cat. So I started putting them into the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink. She likes to sit in the bathroom watching me while I get ready in the mornings and, apparently, she spied the hair bands when I opened the cabinet. Just a day or two after I'd relocated the bands, I found her worrying at one of them. She couldn't open the cabinet door, but she could slip a claw up underneath and pull on the hair band. She pulled the thing entirely out of the cabinet. Persistence is one of those frustrating cat qualities. Frustrating but funny.

Feline.