It's been five years since I found this thing inside another thing that we caught in a safetrap
Happy Smokescreen Chip Day To All Whom Celebrate
As mentioned back in April, in early 2020 one of our safetraps (a sentence that sure says a lot about my life) caught a small grey feral kitten; we found out shortly thereafter that she was pregnant.
Now - we've taken in so many cats over the years, but we'd never had one actively pregnant, so not only was this new to us it also means we have an accurate birth date for exactly one of the cats in our rescue.
Gargoyle decided she felt safe with both of us - so safe she tried to give birth ON us; we were sitting with her on the bathroom floor and well, I'll spare you the details but it probably wasn't conducive to the birthing process so eventually she settled on the floor herself and finished the job. We're not sure if it was her being malnourished or what, but there was just one kitten in there. No stillborn, no birth defects - just this little guy.
The creature Gargoyle birthed was named simultaneously 'Smokescreen' by our kids, and 'Chip' by his godmother (who, in a very 'what the fuck is my life' moment, is the former mayor of a major US city that we met entirely through early twitter and has since become an extended part of our family; if anything happens to Della or I, she gets the cats.) Smokescreen Chip it is.
and man, this little fucker grew SO fast.
As it turned out, what Gargoyle had created was not a son - but almost a perfect genetic clone of herself. Cellular division or some shit, I swear to god. Look at these beasts.
It was REALLY hard until about last year to tell them apart. Only recently has he stopped immediately resembling his mother because of his size; he dwarfs nearly every cat in our rescue by a LONG shot.
He's a massive fan of being on multiple surfaces at once. If his body can be both on the floor and on a rug, or in two rooms at once across a door frame? god he's so happy.
Weirdly, he's overly affectionate in rooms that have sinks and violent or edgy outside of them.
We attribute this to him being born in the bathroom, otherwise it kind of makes no sense? Purrs and nuzzles he'll give in spades in the bathroom, but if you cross that threshold you'll get a smack and a growl for the exact same interactions.
He also has this innate hatred of doors and things that block his path. I attribute this to when he was almost born twice (once on each of our laps but then....well..sucked back in before the final push...I'm sorry lmao), AND how he needed to be isolated from some of the other at-risk cats before he'd gotten his shots / fixed etc in his youth.
As a kitten he made it his mission to SCREAM HIS ASS OFF at our bedroom door while "trapped" in there with us and keep everyone awake. The alternative was for me to take him into another room, kick the at-risk cats out and let him sleep on my lap. Weirdly, this is both how I learned Blender and 100%'d Bravely Default II; I couldn't sleep because of him but he'd sleep on my lap if I was in the other room and upright, so I stayed up all night doing blender tutorials and level grinding.
Another fun thing about him is preference for running water; we'd tried those fountain style water dishes previously but cats always chewed the wires so we had to give up. Now he climbs up to the sinks and screams till someone turns it on for him.
Anyway, he's massive, he's fluffy, he's wonderful (except when he's mean but that's his right) and I'm so grateful I got to watch him get hatched.
Happy Smokescreen Chip day to all whom celebrate.
