KITTY!

[krasnoludek]

We got our new cat at noon today. The shelter was calling her Nettie, which is cute, but we have opted for Carmen. One of the shelter volunteers had apparently been crying all week when she found out Nettie/Carmen was going to leave

Comments

[sweetorsavory]

For what it's worth, I think it would probably be OK to go ahead and let her out into the apartment. There aren't any other cats for her to get used to and nothing dangerous about the apartment, presumably, so I can't imagine that it would be better for her to be lonely than to learn about the whole apartment at once. Cat introduction guidelines always seem overly cautious to me (my family adopted two cats when I was in high school, and we gave them free range of the house within 6 hours. They turned out OK).

And congratulations and welcome to Carmen! Pics?

[btblue]

I was going to say something similar about letting her into the rest of the apartment. I volunteered at a cat shelter for many years and typically the reason they tell you to only have the cat in one room at first is to give them time to get used to you/their surroundings. Since many cats are shy, you don't want to give them access to so much space that they have issues with hiding. It sounds like Carmen's already comfortable, so go ahead and let her have free run of the apartment. Not all cats (including mine or some others I've known) would be ready for that so quickly. But it sounds like all parties involved are ready for it, so why not?