The "Court Jester"

 

Before we welcomed Ginger into our family, we rescued Merlin in 2018. We have been taking in stray/homeless kitties for over 20 years now and until Merlin, we have never come across an orange tabby cat. Merlin came from a former co-worker via another mutual former co-worker who posted on Facebook that a litter of stranded kittens left in their backyard were in need of a good home. Two of them were orange tabbies - one male and one female. Since my personal preference has always been male cats (mainly because it has been my personal experience that males are generally more affectionate - with a few exceptions of course), I asked if the male was still up for adoption. He was.  

And so began our life with a male cat whom we decided to name, "Merlin James" (his middle name is because of my adoration for musician Jimmy Page (James Patrick Page). My friend sent me a pic of Merlin on Facebook and he actually looked more white in color when he was born ...

I took these pictures the first night after we brought him home on Fourth of July 2018 ...

We let him decompress in the bathroom for a couple of hours for about a week before introducing him to our other three cats - supervised, of course ...

"What? I ain't doin' nothin' ma!" Little did we realize that was just the beginning of Merlin's obsession with WATER!

Next step, we made an appointment with our vet for his initial examination complete with shots, feline leukemia test, de-flea, cleaning his ears of ear mites, etc. Until then, he spent much of his time separated from our other cats when we were at work during the day. We temporarily kept him in a large dog cage which was easily big enough for his food and water dish, litterbox and toys ... 

He was not at all amused and needed constant attention from us and the other cats as well ...

Hence, daddy and Leo were happy to oblige ...

He loved playing in the kitchen with the catnip and ball ring. It's worth mentioning that when we let him roam around in the bathroom, he was a complete and utter WILD CHILD, jumping in the hamper, on the toilet, in the sink, anywhere he could find to explore!

And, to this day he still enjoys eating his cat treats out of our hands...

Like my sister Aurora's cat, Hammy, Merlin plays with his water. He does not just stick his paw into the bowl to check how deep it is, he totally dumps the entire water bowl completely over making a huge mess all over the floors, rugs, etc. Furthermore, after he uses his litter box with the clumpy litter in it, he sticks his dirty paws into his water dish and I am constantly re-filling his water bowl with fresh spring water. .

Anyway, I figure if Tabitha is THE QUEEN, Leo is THE KING, Ginger is THE PRINCESS, and Butterscotch is THE PRINCE of the house, then Merlin must be THE COURT JESTER!