New(ish) Cat
We don't go looking for new cats. They seem to find us. As has often happened, shortly after we lost Minikin, we learned of a cat who needed a home.
An acquaintance moved to the opposite coast where his wife had gotten a job, and apparently, for reasons I don't understand, they only took one of their two cats with them. They left the other cat behind with a friend who had never had a pet, and simply had no idea what to do with a cat. She found the whole experience very traumatic (He makes noise! He scratched me!), and kept the cat in a cat carrier most of the time. Needless to say, neither she nor the cat was happy with the situation. So, we ended up with a new cat.
Here's what we've figured out about him so far:
An acquaintance moved to the opposite coast where his wife had gotten a job, and apparently, for reasons I don't understand, they only took one of their two cats with them. They left the other cat behind with a friend who had never had a pet, and simply had no idea what to do with a cat. She found the whole experience very traumatic (He makes noise! He scratched me!), and kept the cat in a cat carrier most of the time. Needless to say, neither she nor the cat was happy with the situation. So, we ended up with a new cat.
Here's what we've figured out about him so far:
- He's black except for a little white patch on his chest, and he has green-yellow eyes. His claws are pretty sharp, but he doesn't use them on us.
- He is completely traumatized by going to the vet, to the point where the vet told us that they were taking him off the list to be called back in for routine physicals. They simply aren't able to examine him because he fights too much.
- He has a very loud voice, causing me to suspect that he is part Siamese. Usually he only talks if Eddy comes too close. A few days ago, however, he started meowing when Eddy was nowhere near him, so I went to see what he wanted. He had food and water... so I picked him up. It seems that he just wanted a good cuddle. Awww.
- He absolutely loves wet food! Eddy doesn't care for wet food so we are accustomed to putting out dry food and water. Several times we noticed a fair amount of the dry food, now soggy, floating in the water bowl, so we moved the two bowls farther apart. The cat moved the bowls back together and we found more soggy dry food in the water bowl. Then one day several weeks later we opened a can of soup for dinner and the cat came running. That's when we finally realized that he wanted wet food and that when he was scooping the dry food into the water bowl he was making his own wet food. We gave him wet food and he gave us this look like, "Finally! What took you so long?" Now he gets wet food every day.
- He thinks everything in the kitchen is a scratching post, e.g. cabinets, the garbage disposal, the dishwasher. I can sort of understand the cabinets, as the doors are made of wood/fiberboard, but I am baffled as to why he thinks metal is a good scratching surface. He will only scratch the scratching post if we move him to it and put his paws on it.
- He spends most of his time in the kitchen, or on one of the lowest steps of the staircase going upstairs. I think this is primarily because Eddy doesn't like it when he comes out of the kitchen, and he can't be bothered to have a stand-off with Eddy. He and Eddy still aren't getting along that well, but overall, I think the situation is improving.
- When we got back from visiting relatives for Christmas, both cats actually came to the door to greet us. That's normal for Eddy, but the new cat has never done that before. Then yesterday, he came and jumped up on the sofa with me to be petted. Last night he came up to the bedroom, something he has not tried since the first week or so that we had him in the house. Today, he ventured out to the sofa again. I have no idea what happened while we were away, but I'm glad he's being more sociable and adventurous.