Rio

photo by Phaedra 

I first heard of Rio when people mentioned similarities in markings between her and fellow torby girl Saffron. I heard of her again in connection with her orange & white brothers Tang and Creamsicle. Phaedra was telling me a bit about the formerly wild trio and spoke fondly of her "litter lap buddy" Rio.

Rio playing Queen of the Castle, cat style

photo by Phaedra

I asked Phaedra to tell me a bit more about her. Here's what she had to say:

I guess she's just always stood out for me because she's so much more in the background than her brothers. She's sweet but shy and takes her time getting to know you. She started off playing with my laces while I was scooping and has progressed to joining me at least once on my single wide days for lap scooping time.

She's really affectionate but hasn't learned her manners yet and doesn't understand when it's over and will sometimes lash out when you think it's time to do something else. She will play with my laces or kneepads still, but if I try to play with her with my hands she gets very frightened and pretends to be fierce. This can make me laugh out loud for real but then I feel bad because she's a silly timid kitten and coax her back.

This made me want to meet Rio for myself, so I asked Leslie to point her out to me. This she did, but we must have caught Rio when she was settling down for her after dinner nap, as she simply refused to be coaxed out of her comfy bed on the top of the cages to interact with us in any way.

Disappointed, I eventually had to admit defeat and left to go and photograph the much more amenable Tang. This done, I happened to look up to where Rio had been sitting and found the place empty. I looked around a bit and found she'd ventured down to floor level, apparently now ready to visit with me.

As you can see from the photos she let me take while I patted and played with her, Rio is very much as Phaedra described her: playful, a little shy, occasionally a little swatty, but always very sweet.