Death-defying cuteness!

How's this for cute? These were my boys, who I was deathly allergic to (well, not quite) and loved to pieces. For Jim's and my 9 month anniversary, for a New Years present to him, for... well, my own benefit, we adopted the boys from the Eastgate Animal Shelter. They'd come in not five minutes before we arrived, abandoned with their mother by their former owners. They were caked with dirt, crawling with fleas, obviously wormy, and I knew on sight that they were the ones we'd been looking for. We spent a few hours exhausting names ranging from Mortimer to Yoshi, but finally settled on Lars for our blond and blue eyed boy, and Liam for the patched grey kiddo with hazel eyes.

These pictures were taken in the first week we had them, when they were still of a very similar size, at about 10 weeks of age. Part of what drew me to them so closely was that in the shelter, when they were terrified of everything that had happened to them, they cuddled together while they figured out what was going on. Lars had settled against the wall of the room that we had carried them into, and Liam promptly sat down... right on his brother's head. They were an inseparable pair (especially to Lars, who cried when if he did't know where Liam was).

The boys were each other's best friends, and it was highly surprising to find them in different rooms... even more so to find them sleeping more than a few feet from each other. Lars was a much deeper sleeper than his brother, and therefore much easier to contort into amusing positions. This one was none of our doing, though. Jim moved over a few inches, and Lars just kinda... drooped. I wish I could be a kitten - they may not sleep as much as adult cats, but still... their only responsibility is to put it in the box, and beyond that, they don't have call to do much else other than sleep, play, sleep, eat, sleep, chew on shoes, sleep, cuddle, and sleep some more.

From the beginning, we could tell that Liam was the more delicate one. He had a more finely shaped head, softer fur, and generally looked more fragile. He was the one of the pair who warmed up to us quicker; while both of them spent their first day or so with us as skittish as all hell, Liam was much more willing to be held temporarily, was more curious and outgoing (he led his brother on a grand safari of the entire apartment), and was much more playful. As their personalities developed to us a little more, it became clear exactly what Liam was - he was the attention hog.

On the other hand, Lars turned out to be much more of a lap kitty / people cuddler than his brother. Even in those first days, when they were tired, he was much less resistant than Liam at getting picked up, and continued to pick spots closer to legs, laps, and noses over just about anywhere else to sleep. Liam, in contrast, seemed to have a marked preference to sleeping on Lars than anywhere else. So Liam often was the one playing with people, while Lars slept with them. Not that they didn't do both; but it was interesting to watch their personalities diverge from the unified freaked-outness of that first day.

The color of these pictures is a tad off, but trust me, Lars' eyes were of a beautiful sky blue. He was the spitting image of Niko as a kitten, which is part of why I always called him my favorite. My princess was a little more lost to me when I wrote this, a middle-aged lady who spent the latter half of her life only seeing me on alternate weekends... but when I held Lars, I remembered a hyperactive, brainless girl whose world centered around me and my lap (thankfully, Lars seemed to have a little bit more of an intellect to him than poor Nikki). He may have replaced her in my heart, but the reminder of her made him just that more special to me.

Of course, all this talk of cuteness sort of leaves out the fact that the boys spent 90% of their awake time duking it for ultimate king of the couch status...