Alice? WTF is Alice?

Alice, a fellow IMAXian, arrived on a Tuesday having spent the last 7 months teaching English in France. We collected her from the E train platform at 42nd Street and dragged her giant luggage up the 5 flights to our apartment. As is now customary for visitors from home, first night food was Indian takeaway. I didn't bother with the inflatable mattress, knowing that it was unlikely that the hole had repaired itself, and set Alice up with some couch cushions, doonas and pillows. I had been under the impression that Alice was staying for 3 nights and flying onto San Fran before heading home. I was wrong. In fact Alice's schedule had her in New York and the surrounding area for 2 weeks! Muchos excitement! Luckily for Alice she arrived just as New York experienced a terrible, mind blowing heatwave. We're talking 40 degrees plus intense humidity. The fans Timon and I had purchased in preparation for summer provided paltry relief at best. And for some reason, on heatwave day, we decided to walk from 105th to Jack's Coffee on 51st. Through the park, we thought. That will be nice, we thought. Eugh. Ugh. Triple Boo.

We did our best to accommodate Alice's every NYC desire. We stopped outside the Seinfeld Diner for the customary photo, we had bagels and hotdogs and pizza and beer. We had frozen margaritas at Mother Burger, watched hours of trash TV, caught endless subway trains, cruised over to Staten Island and glimpsed the Statue, photo bombed the Chrysler, Flatiron, Empire State, Madison Square Garden and perused Martha Stewart kitchen gear at Macy's. We had diner food, dumplings, iced coffee and croissants. We were invited out to the Bronx for a fajita BBQ night with mojitos and dodgy kung-fu projected onto a building wall. We were on the list at the reincarnation of CBGBs and drank free cocktails all night. On her own, Alice visited Boston and New Jersey and left us sweltering in the heat for a quick trip to SF before arriving in the Melbourne winter.

WHILE Alice was here she had to put up with 3 rambunctious kittens harassing her while she slept. But on the second day we received a panic-call from Miriam, our cat lady, asking if we would take an emergency foster - a mum and her ? kittens. Why the ?? Well it seemed that the mother cat was heading to the vet on the subway and proceeded to deliver kittens in the carrier. Miriam wasn't sure how many, but could we do a swap and collect these little dudes from the vet on East 58th. Sounds like an adventure. Why sure.

This is why we now house one giant tiger looking cat and her 4 sweet angel kittens. They are almost 3 weeks old and get cuter by the minute. There are 3 near identical grey kitties and 1 browny ginger one. Their eyes opened last week and everyday they struggle to walk on their disproportionate legs. They haven't been gifted names yet as we're not 100% sure on sex but we know they will stay with us until they're 10 weeks old and ready for adoption. At the moment we only have to feed the mum and she 'takes care' of their bathroom needs. I think it's best if we don't think too hard about that.