Tantalizing Tanya

You've met all of my cats now except for number seven - Tanya.  She was my last 'acquisition' - one of five kittens born under the shed behind my mobile home.  Of the five kittens there were two gray ones and three black ones.  I was actually trying to catch one of the black kittens I thought was so cute.  I put food in one of my cat carriers and was hoping I could coax one in and just close the door.  That was exactly what happened except that Tanya was the one who walked in, so I guess you could say she chose me.  I would say that I've saved the best until last except my other cats might get jealous.  But I have to say that Tanya has personality with a capital P.

And she is a very smart cat.  When she was still a kitten, she would play peekaboo with me.  She would hide under my bed and I would sit at the end of the bed and say 'Where's Tanya?  Where's Tanya?'  and suddenly she would pop her head out from under the comforter.  I'd say 'There she is.'  And she would go back under the bed and we would start all over again.  She seemed to know exactly what the game was.  She also likes to hide under the slipcover on the sofa.  Sometimes though she gets a surprise because one of the other cats will see movement under the slipcover and pounce on her!

She also invented her own game.  I have heat vents in the floor and when I used to put paper under the litter boxes sometimes the cats would scratch the paper and little bits would get torn off.  Tanya would take the scraps of loose paper and push them with her paw towards the heat vent and watch them fly up in the air when the heat was on.  Of course that game only works in the winter!  And now that I use plastic under the litter boxes, she has to really scrounge for her 'paper airplanes'.

She was named Tanya because she looks like a Russian Blue except for her yellow eyes.  And if she's sitting in the sun you can see faint tiger stripes on her tail.  Her favorite play thing now is a toy mouse and she loves to carry it around by the tail like it was real.  Doesn't she look like a true predator in this picture?

She also knows how to push my buttons!  She'll do something she knows she's not supposed to do.  I'll tell her no, and then she'll look right at me and do it again!  Now I'm trying to ignore her when she does things like that.   She's just like a two-year-old doing naughty things to get your attention.

She definitely thinks she's the one in charge.  I keep trying to let her know that I'M the boss, but so far I don't think she's convinced!  She's a real trip.