Our flight back from Auckland arrived on schedule right around 8 a.m. Wednesday morning. We already had almost all of Wednesday in Auckland, but got a repeat courtesy of the International Dateline.

By 4:30 Thursday afteroon, I had enough photos for today’s Feline Friday. Usually I can pace the picture taking over the full week, but I got it done.

Yes, it was a busy couple of days. Luckily, the cats cooperated.

As you’ll notice, Kinikini was the most visible. That’s because he is the most isolated while we’re gone. The other three–Kali, Bessie, and Kiko–all cozy up with our catsitter, and enjoy lots of petting, brushing, and extra food treats. Kinikini, true to his training in a cat colony, doesn’t trust anyone except us and stays out of sight while we’re gone.

And that means that when we return, he glues himself to me for 24-36 hours. After that, things get back to normal.

As normal as they can be with four cats.

This photo needs a bit of explaining. Meda had just opened the drawer, and Kali immediately climbed in and dug into the back until she was hidden away among my socks and underwear. You can see her face back there, almost hidden. Click on the photo for a larger version if you have trouble finding her.

She did this when I was leaving for the “No Kings” demonstration on June 14, but that morning I didn’t notice. Several hours later, not long before I got home, Meda heard something in the drawer. She opened it, and there was Kali!

She had been fighting to escape, and managed to rip the drawer’s interior veneer of the drawer, leaving what seemed like hundreds of wooden pieces of varied sizes as she tried to dig her way out.

I might have expected that experience to discourage future repeats, but she dove right in again today and could easily have been shut in the drawer again if we weren’t on alert.

Well, now that you know, here come the cats. It’s a full house of photos, with some settings repeated more than usual. After all, I had less that two days to let the camera do its magic.