Whiskers in our Wedding Pictures

After many years of saving up the money and waiting for the right time, my fiancee Liz and I recently set our wedding date for June of 2007. After we put down the deposit on the wedding hall back in June, the real wedding planning began. Liz has already chosen her bridesmaids and ordered a wedding dress.

As the groom in this affair, I don't have as many things to think about as Liz. So I've started to wonder how we can include our cats or our love of cats in the festivities.

Clearly, we can't expect Arthur and Beowulf to attend the wedding ceremony or reception. We are having the ceremony and reception at a catering hall and, even if the hall allowed us to bring pets, it would be pretty selfish of us to drag them out of the house and expect them not to get lost or injured or scared in a strange place.

However, I do have some ideas of how to involve our cats in our wedding:

• Take a Photo: One of my coworkers has a picture of his wife in her wedding gown and himself in his tuxedo, with both of them holding their cat. I asked him how this picture was taken and he told me that they had had a photographer take the picture at their apartment on the morning of their wedding.
  
  Unfortunately, Liz and I are getting married at a place which is about an hour and a half from our apartment. We will be staying over at a hotel the night before and the night of our wedding so taking a wedding picture with the boys may not be possible. I asked Liz if we could stage the photo at some point after our wedding by getting dressed up in our wedding gear and taking the picture at home and she said that her dress has some beads that could fall off and be swallowed. Also, staging the picture seems somewhat fake to me. I feel like our boys should see us on our wedding day and I would be willing to take a limo into the city after the reception just so we could stop by and see the boys.
  
  
• Feature our Cats on our Wedding Invitation: We're probably going to print our own invitations and I would love to find a way of including a picture of the boys on the invitation.
  
  
• Encourage Donations to Animal Charities: Perhaps this sounds tacky, but I'll just throw it out there as a concept. I would love to find a way to encourage our wedding guests to donate to an animal charity like the ASPCA or Bideawee Shelter (where we adopted the boys). I had thought about asking for donations in lieu of wedding gifts, but Liz would like to register for all the normal things people get when they are married (flatware, cookware, etc.), and I can't really blame her for wanting those typical things.
  
  Another thought we had was to donate a few dollars in the name of each guest and give that instead of a thank-you gift. That might also go over like a lead balloon. Any ideas?
  
  
• Get a Cat Cake Topper: I would love to find a cake topper with a cat bride and groom or with a human bride and groom surrounded by orange cats. I've seen some sites that will custom make a topper for you, but they are hundreds of dollars and it's a little wasteful to spend more than $50 on a cake topper, IMHO.
  
  
• Name Tables at the Reception after Cats: Besides the Beowulf table and the Arthur table, we'd have to think of other cats for the rest of the tables if we want to have a consistent theme. I suppose we could have a Morris table.
  

Anyway, these ideas might seem a bit silly to some and, if you think I'm being impractical, I can't blame you. It's just that Arthur and Beowulf are such a huge part of our lives. We were engaged before the boys came into our lives, but adopting them really brought Liz and me closer together and made us a real family.

My Favorite Cat Things

Arthur has this habit of wrapping his whole body around my arm and going to sleep. It's one of my favorite cat things and I finally caught him in the act.

Beowulf is more likely to reach and grip my fingers with his paws, like he's holding hands.

Arthur Worships the Great Lamp God

Arthur has a strange habit and I would love to figure out what it means. Sometimes he'll jump up on the table next to the couch and start looking up at the torch lamp and meowing at it. He'll also try to lean on it or to scale the wall next to it. This behavior freaks me out because:

• He could very well tip over the lamp, break it, and hurt himself
  
  
• He only does this when I'm around (My fiancee Liz has never seen him do it when she is home alone nor has he played with the lamp when I'm in another room.)

I have theorized that Arthur does this for attention, but if that's his reason, it makes no sense, because he'll often jump up on the table and start his "lamp worship" when I'm in the middle of petting him and giving him lots of attention.

He also does a variation on lamp worship at the other end of the living room where he occasionally stands in the kitchen doorway and meows up at the ceiling, while trying to scale the wall. I call this "ceiling worship."

When he performs either of these behaviors, Liz and I scold him, because he's scratching the wall or tipping the lamp. I find it hard to believe, however, that his motivation is a desire to scratch something because he has a really good scratching post and because he acts like he's trying to talk to something up there.

Does anybody have any idea why he does this?

Desktop Cats

Forget about their $300 cat tree! The boys' favorite sleeping spot this week is on or near my desk. Beowulf, in particular, likes to lean on the keyboard while I'm working. Arthur used to do lately Beowulf is king of the desk while Arthur is lord of the chair.

Beowulf has learned how to lean on the keyboard in such a way that he is not blocking the screen or obstructing the mouse so I can work while he snoozes.

Cuddly Cats

It's still amazing to me that some people think that cats don't show love to humans. If having a purring cat lean on you is not a sign of affection, I'm not sure what is:

Arthur and Beowulf Turn 2

Friday was Arthur's and Beowulf's second birthday. We didn't do a lot to celebrate, other than spend a lot of time cuddling with them on the couch and give them their favorite food (Solid Gold Blended Tuna). We also made a donation to Bideawee, the shelter we adopted them from.

We actually adopted the boys on November 13, 2004, but Bideawee told us that they were born in the shelter on September 1st of that year. Below is a picture of the boys today followed by a photo from when we first took them home. Some would say they aren't cute kittens anymore, but I actually think they've gotten more handsome as they've grown up.