Cat!Central
Aug. 29th, 2005 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaAt the moment, I have 4 cats. How this happened still puzzles me, but before I attempt to explain it to myself or anyone else...
I need to find another home for one of them. She's a sweet, all-white short-hair with pale yellow eyes and a beautiful heart-shaped face. She's about one year old. She's been spayed and has all her shots and is litter-trained. No adoption fee. She would prefer to be in a home with no other cats. (Or even with just one other cat.)
Folks in the New York area: anyone in the market for a young adult white cat? Gentle, shy, elegant. Sits by the ferns and looks absolutely gorgeous. If I can borrow a digital camera, I will try to post some pix.
After my little 15-year-old cat died a couple of weeks ago, I still had her sibling, well-known by reputation in Malsperanza circles as The Invisible Kitty. She is by nature a creeper-behind-chairs and a lurker-under-couches. For 15 years she has jumped when I pet her. No one except my boyfriend and one other friend has ever seen her, including people who have stayed in the apartment for weeks. She's a sweet creature, but not exactly a cuddly companion. Most people believe that I've made her up and that this is one more sign that I have cracked.
So I wanted another cat. I held out for a whole week before I caved and began trawling www.petfinder.com to scan the pictures of the shelter rescue animals. I settled on a small white kitten. When I got to the shelter, there was the kitten and her mother, both pretty as a picture. In a moment of classic muddled thinking, I decided that the kitten would be too hard on my old cat, and needed a younger playmate. And then I decided that an adult cat would be easier than two kittens. And adult cats (even very pretty ones) are harder to place. So I took them both. I thought: 3 is a lot, but I can manage it. 3 does not make me one of those insane people who collect dozens of cats. Plenty of perfectly normal people have 3 cats.
I got them from a rescue shelter in the suburbs and brought them home on the train. So, I get on the train at 8 pm at night with cat carrier with 2 frightened small white cats cowering in it. Train is fairly crowded so I sit next to an older guy who smells strongly of beer.
Beer guy peers into the case and says, "My wife and I have 13 of them at our house in Florida."
"Thirteen cats?" I say.
"Thirteen white cats," he says. "My wife is an animal lover," he explains.
"Thirteen white cats," I say. "That's gotta be a lot of good luck," I say.
"Yes," he says. He looks thoughtfully at my paltry two, who suddenly seem to be scarcely any cats at all. "We have four dogs," he says. "Two Rottweilers and two red-nosed pit bulls."
My apartment is seeming less and less like a future menagerie by the moment.
He says, "I met a white guy in Brunswick, Georgia, who raises wolves. I stopped for breakfast at a diner and saw one in the back seat of his pickup. I wanted to buy one, but he wasn't selling."
"The dogs might not have liked it, though," I say.
"Maybe not," he says. "But it's a five-bedroom house. And there's a big yard. You have a good evening, now." He is getting off at Fordham Road, in the Bronx.
"Say hello to the thirteen cats," I say. "Goodnight."
Nevertheless, when I got them home, I suddenly noticed that I do not live in a five-bedroom house with a big yard. Even without Rottweilers and wolves, 3 cats is quite a few cats.
My old cat is Not Pleased, but has been coping fairly well. I am doing all the usual things: keeping them separated, letting them mingle for short periods when I'm home, giving Old Cat lots of extra attention and the bigger space. To my great surprise, Old Cat and White Kitten found a sort of detente quite quickly, but White Mommacat is miserable and she and Old Cat terrify each other. And worse, White Cat and White Kitten do not get along either. White Cat has made it clear that while I might be able to manage a 3-cat home, she cannot.
Still, 2 weeks isn't long and I thought I should give it more time.
That's when the other shelter emailed about the Grey Kitten. OK, I had left a couple of messages about looking for a gray short-hair, in the days before the White Cats. A tactical error, I admit. The Grey Kitten looks so much like my little cat who died that it was a foregone conclusion before I even met her. Tiny, with huge paws and a tail like a lemur's. In fact she looks and acts a good deal like a lemur, except grey. At the moment she is climbing an 8-foot bookcase, and doing a good job of it, too.
Old Cat is giving me the sort of dirty looks I give people with George Bush campaign buttons. White Mommacat is camped permanently behind the ferns, looking picturesque and lonely.
I do love cats. If I lived in a house, I'd get a dog too.
I need to find another home for one of them. She's a sweet, all-white short-hair with pale yellow eyes and a beautiful heart-shaped face. She's about one year old. She's been spayed and has all her shots and is litter-trained. No adoption fee. She would prefer to be in a home with no other cats. (Or even with just one other cat.)
Folks in the New York area: anyone in the market for a young adult white cat? Gentle, shy, elegant. Sits by the ferns and looks absolutely gorgeous. If I can borrow a digital camera, I will try to post some pix.
After my little 15-year-old cat died a couple of weeks ago, I still had her sibling, well-known by reputation in Malsperanza circles as The Invisible Kitty. She is by nature a creeper-behind-chairs and a lurker-under-couches. For 15 years she has jumped when I pet her. No one except my boyfriend and one other friend has ever seen her, including people who have stayed in the apartment for weeks. She's a sweet creature, but not exactly a cuddly companion. Most people believe that I've made her up and that this is one more sign that I have cracked.
So I wanted another cat. I held out for a whole week before I caved and began trawling www.petfinder.com to scan the pictures of the shelter rescue animals. I settled on a small white kitten. When I got to the shelter, there was the kitten and her mother, both pretty as a picture. In a moment of classic muddled thinking, I decided that the kitten would be too hard on my old cat, and needed a younger playmate. And then I decided that an adult cat would be easier than two kittens. And adult cats (even very pretty ones) are harder to place. So I took them both. I thought: 3 is a lot, but I can manage it. 3 does not make me one of those insane people who collect dozens of cats. Plenty of perfectly normal people have 3 cats.
I got them from a rescue shelter in the suburbs and brought them home on the train. So, I get on the train at 8 pm at night with cat carrier with 2 frightened small white cats cowering in it. Train is fairly crowded so I sit next to an older guy who smells strongly of beer.
Beer guy peers into the case and says, "My wife and I have 13 of them at our house in Florida."
"Thirteen cats?" I say.
"Thirteen white cats," he says. "My wife is an animal lover," he explains.
"Thirteen white cats," I say. "That's gotta be a lot of good luck," I say.
"Yes," he says. He looks thoughtfully at my paltry two, who suddenly seem to be scarcely any cats at all. "We have four dogs," he says. "Two Rottweilers and two red-nosed pit bulls."
My apartment is seeming less and less like a future menagerie by the moment.
He says, "I met a white guy in Brunswick, Georgia, who raises wolves. I stopped for breakfast at a diner and saw one in the back seat of his pickup. I wanted to buy one, but he wasn't selling."
"The dogs might not have liked it, though," I say.
"Maybe not," he says. "But it's a five-bedroom house. And there's a big yard. You have a good evening, now." He is getting off at Fordham Road, in the Bronx.
"Say hello to the thirteen cats," I say. "Goodnight."
Nevertheless, when I got them home, I suddenly noticed that I do not live in a five-bedroom house with a big yard. Even without Rottweilers and wolves, 3 cats is quite a few cats.
My old cat is Not Pleased, but has been coping fairly well. I am doing all the usual things: keeping them separated, letting them mingle for short periods when I'm home, giving Old Cat lots of extra attention and the bigger space. To my great surprise, Old Cat and White Kitten found a sort of detente quite quickly, but White Mommacat is miserable and she and Old Cat terrify each other. And worse, White Cat and White Kitten do not get along either. White Cat has made it clear that while I might be able to manage a 3-cat home, she cannot.
Still, 2 weeks isn't long and I thought I should give it more time.
That's when the other shelter emailed about the Grey Kitten. OK, I had left a couple of messages about looking for a gray short-hair, in the days before the White Cats. A tactical error, I admit. The Grey Kitten looks so much like my little cat who died that it was a foregone conclusion before I even met her. Tiny, with huge paws and a tail like a lemur's. In fact she looks and acts a good deal like a lemur, except grey. At the moment she is climbing an 8-foot bookcase, and doing a good job of it, too.
Old Cat is giving me the sort of dirty looks I give people with George Bush campaign buttons. White Mommacat is camped permanently behind the ferns, looking picturesque and lonely.
I do love cats. If I lived in a house, I'd get a dog too.
