How This Little Ball of Fur And Death Came Into Our Lives

[pendamuse]

Over the week­end we acquired a kit­ten from PAAW - the Pet Adop­tive Alter­na­tive in War­ren. After link)','caption', 'The Old Man' );">Zeus died, I wasn’t sure we’d be a two-cat home again, but Doug and link)','caption', 'Uber Cat' );">Loki would let me know if and when they were ready for a new friend. I left it up to Doug, fig­ur­ing he would be the main care-giver. I was just the Buyer of the Food.

Calls were made, infor­ma­tion exchanged, and I was informed that Sat­ur­day was the meet and pickup date for our new friend. The loca­tion was a pet store in South­field, and while I new we’d be get­ting an orange and white cat, that was the extent of my knowl­edge. I asked Doug why he chose this one. The web­page said his name was Armonii (*twitch*) and he was an urgent adopt. He was 8 months old, set fire to, gen­er­ally abused and aban­doned, and hadn’t found a home that would keep him longer than a few days or weeks. He’d been returned twice. He wasn’t a cud­dle­bug, and when peo­ple want a kit­ten they’re think­ing of some­thing they can dress in a frilly hat and night­gown and parade around the front yard in a pram. Armonii, aka Buddy, wasn’t any of those things. He was hurt and sad and needed a home. That was all Doug needed to hear and wanted to help.

The paper­work went smoothly, some orga­ni­za­tions are eas­ier than oth­ers, and he was released into our home under the bed that after­noon, where he hid for the entire day.



YOU CAN HAZ NO PETS

There would be no coax­ing or cajol­ing. He was fright­ened and in a new home with weird smells and he had link)','caption', 'Uber Cat' );">Loki The Bunny Death Bringer to deal with.

Yeah, link)','caption', 'Uber Cat' );">Loki wasn’t thrilled with the New Guy either, and we had to have The Talk about what’s Accept­able Behav­ior. There had been some hiss­ing and a lit­tle growl­ing, but no fight­ing. Life with link)','caption', 'Uber Cat' );">Loki is pretty much out of sight, out of mind and for the most part, the new addi­tion didn’t seem to faze him.



Call me any­thing but late for dinner.

We set out food and water under the bed, along with a new scratch­ing post, andat the end of the day, bid all of our Lit­tle Men, seen and unseen, a good night at Lights out.

That’s when the fun started.

New Guy came from a home with noc­tur­nal cats. I sup­pose all cats are noc­tur­nal, but I don’t run with those tacky crea­tures.  The Stormer House­hold is Not Noc­tur­nal. The Stormer Cats are not noc­tur­nal.  Plus we lost an hour.

The New Guy didn’t care, so sleep became that that impor­tant phone call you’d been wait­ing for but you kept missing.

At 4am, there was the sound of some­thing large and heavy falling from some­thing high. Out apart­ment isn’t cat proof because we’ve always had cats that couldn’t jump due to age and weight. My whole world is now turned on its head. At the sound. Doug got up to inves­ti­gate. From the liv­ing room I heard one-sided con­ver­sa­tion and a lit­tle swear­ing so nat­u­rally I got up to see the damage.

I wish I could have got­ten you a pic­ture of the actual tableau but here is an estab­lish­ing shot:



All of your break­ables are belong to me

That there is a pic­ture of our glass­ware shelves (from IKEA). It’s bolted into the wall. There is an Expe­dit TV cen­ter next to it just to give you an idea of height. On that shelf sat Derby glasses from the 70’s and 80’s, our wed­ding cham­pagne flute received from the Las Vegas chapel, sou­venir glasses from Ger­many, and a beau­ti­ful cut glass decanter and sherry glasses from the Czech Repub­lic (I think), and other var­i­ous knick-knacks crammed up there just to the left of our Unity Candle.

Because cats are con­tor­tion­ists and inter-dimensional, The New Guy was also up there and he had wound him­self among the decanter and derby glasses and cham­pagne flutes, but man­aged to make that ver­ti­cal jump with­out send­ing every­thing crash­ing to the floor. The thing that had actu­ally bro­ken was del­i­cate per­fume bot­tle, and that had only fallen as far as the desk. We care­fully removed glass­ware while stand­ing on a stool and speak­ing quiet sooth­ing words to Crazy­pants so we could pry him from the shelf to less break­able climes. I lost blood and skin, but I got him down. We then clipped his nails, some­thing the Cat Lady said we COULDN’T EVER DO WITHOUT THE VET BECAUSE NO, but we’re big­ger and have thick tow­els, so it was a man­ner of min­utes to pare his deadly shanks. We set him free to hide again and went back to bed, but every few hours he reminded us he was still get­ting accli­mated and lots of things were on the floor in the morning.

Sun­day he spent mostly hid­ing, but came out a few times to see if it was all still a hor­ri­ble dream before dash­ing back under the bed or behind the desks or under the buf­fet. I bought him a tunnel-type bed and a few cat­nip toys he could call his own, but I was happy to see that he and Doug were sort of bond­ing. New Guy mainly squeezed him­self into every con­ceiv­able cor­ner in his explo­ration of his new home, and Doug would get on the floor and pet with a fin­ger and talk to him.



I AM THE NIGHT! FEAR ME!

He’s only really active when we’re try­ing to sleep, usu­ally between the hours of 2 and 5am, hop­ing on things, lib­er­at­ing items from the tops of night­stands, so that’s been a hoot. He’s hopped on the bed a few times, walk­ing across Doug’s head, stick­ing his nose in my ear and breath­ing quick and heavy, like a teen obscene caller dial­ing from next door and he knows if you look out your kitchen win­dow, you’ll see him. He has light steps, some­thing I’d for­got­ten cats had since liv­ing with Baby Big Feet and and he’s chatty. There’s a lot of talk­ing at night. I don’t know who he’s talk­ing too, and I don’t think it’s a pained or sad cry. It feels like a call of defi­ance to the Uni­verse - “I’m here. I’m still alive. Throw what you want at me and I’ll survive!”

That’s what I think he’s say­ing. He’s a teen from a bro­ken home, and we’re the new par­ents with the tough love pol­icy that will turn this awk­ward Dis­ney Movie into an awk­ward Life­time movie and there have to be defi­ant speeches and some run­ning away and hugs. Except he’s not chipped yet, so I’d like to avoid the run­ning away part.

link)','caption', 'Uber Cat' );">Loki is warm­ing up to him and has been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the accli­ma­tion process by rat­ting out the New Guy’s hid­ing spot. link)','caption', 'Uber Cat' );">Loki hasn’t had some­one to groom or snug­gle with since link)','caption', 'The Old Man' );">Zeus died. We all miss com­pany and some­one to look after.

It’s only Day 3 and we’ve got a whole life with this lit­tle guy. I hope he’s as happy as we’d like him to be.