Cat vs. Yarn

This is Bella, the latest addition to our household. Bella is about five months old. We adopted her from the local SPCA. Her name was Stevie at the shelter, but there wasn’t any way that was going to stick.

One of the things that I’d forgotten about having a kitten was that it means stopping your knitting every minute or so and saying “No!” It also means making sure that neither your working yarn nor any yarn ends are trailing across your leg; if they are, prepare yourself for the delivery of a tiny set of claws right through your pants and into your skin.

I’ve set aside a sacrificial skein for when Bella gets too obsessed with my knitting and won’t take no for an answer. I haven’t had to use it yet because, like most kittens, Bella has an attention span of about three nanoseconds. Just tossing a penny on the floor works wonders. And this afternoon Bella was quite happy going to sleep in my lap without trying to help me out with my current project.

Bella isn’t our first cat——Maxine predates her by almost eleven years——so you’d think I’d be used to the cat/yarn negotiations. But as you can see from the picture below, these days Maxine just can’t be bothered with anything that doesn’t involve being asleep.

20 Comments

  • Daerlyn says:

    Yay, kittens! Thankfully, neither of my cats are all that interested in my knitting. Their focus is on new and interesting ways to breach the food supply.

  • Paul says:

    Bella is quite the cutie! Fortunately, my dog, Lizzie, couldn’t care less about yarn, knitting, or anything fiber, so I’m all set. Thanks for the pics!

  • Meg says:

    what a cute new kittie!!!!! I’m allergic, but they are so sweet, especially when they’re small 🙂 good luck with the negotiations 😉

  • Sara says:

    So cute!! I adore cats =) but kittens are so exhausting! (they’re so adorable though, you can’t stay mad at them even if they wake you up in the middle of the night because they decided it’s time to play with your face)…arg…I need one of these =(

  • tiffany says:

    congrats! she is adorable! one suggestion: DON’T have an expendable ball of yarn as a possible distraction. your kitten can’t tell the difference between the yarn you don’t mind her ruining and the yarn that cost a fortune. keep distracting her with things completely non yarn related. i have learned this the hard way. she will probably always find yarn somewhat interesting, but if you can distract her from it as much as possible, you will both be happier in the long run!

  • Brenda says:

    Bella is adorable! Our neighbor’s cat, before they moved, used to spend some time with me while I knit. Amazingly, if I told him that the yarn was “very boring, completely uninteresting,” he would often ignore it and curl up in my lap to sleep (as long as mohair was not involved). But he was a large, neutered adult; I doubt that will work with Bella. Perhaps you could knit her a catnip stuffed mouse to play with. That worked wonders with my mother’s kitten (buy enough yarn to make several mice as disemboweling them is favorite playtime activity). Have fun with Bella!

  • Sean says:

    Congrats on the addition to the family! She’s a pretty kitty.

    I’m lucky that my dog Hudson pretty much ignores my knitting. If he finds a dropped stitch marker on the floor, though, it’s crunched up and swallowed lickety-split. One time when he was a puppy, he did grab the ball of yarn I was working with and tear around the living room like a crazy-dog, weaving my yarn under couches, around table legs, over chairs until Darren caught him. Silly critter.

  • Anne Sheridan says:

    do all of us knitters have cats? does that make us weird cat people too? Oh the horror of these stigmas!

  • Matt says:

    That is one cute kitten! My wife had better not read this post or We’ll end up with another one. My brother who knits has a “hemmingway” cat with a set of working thumbs and extra claws on each paw nicknamed “the yarn gremlin”.

  • Jessy says:

    My kitty had his very own ball of yarn to take out his “knitting jeaoulsies’ out on. I think he god mad that I was spending tiem with my yarn instead of him, so I sacrificed soem very cheap acrylic to him, at his joyous delight. He’s not grown out of attacking my yarn and doesnt even play with his own skine anymore. I also knitted the kitty dimsum on Knitty.com for my cats, and they love it.

  • Marg says:

    She’s very “bella”! My younger cat, Charlie, used to curl up in my lap when I knit. I just had to be careful not to hit him with one of the needles. In fact, I’ve found that neither of my cats are as interested in the yarn as they are in the flashing needles.

  • Miss Bliss says:

    Oh YAY…welcome Bella!

  • Jessy says:

    Good point Marg…the cats where I was house sitting last week were fascinated by my knitting needles.

  • JeraSue says:

    Yay kitty!

    I have two kitties, but I very nearly got knocked down to just one because they wanted to play with my yarn, behind my back.

    One brand new neurosis, $1200.00 and an emergency vet trip later, I still have two.

    Caution!

  • BryAnn says:

    Here’s a link to another yarnboy: Michael Wang’s knitting show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaieOORrhnA

    Michael is a child and I love that he ends it by saying it’s the first episode of his knitting show.

  • Kou says:

    Cats are so sweet. My cat back home is usually too interested in using our couch as a scratching post to bother with my knitting. This is both a good and bad thing.

  • Juanita says:

    Nice job on Avast there, boy!! Just a freak knitter stopping in to say Hi. Oh, and love the kitties…Me and my roommate have 4. Hours of entertainment, I tell ya!!
    Juanita

  • Your kitty is SO CUTE!!!!!!!!! both of them are. 😉

  • Melly says:

    Great blog. I have been trying to get away from knitting blogs because I tell myself no to knit, but this blog caught me. Thank you!

  • Sandy says:

    http://www.softclawstv.com/ Hey! I am going to try this stuff on my next kitten! See what you think! My kids hate the kitten training time due to all the painful scratches. I think this stuff looks like a great fix!

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