I didn't intend to get a third cat. I certainly wasn't out there looking. My two rub along nicely these days, and we've been a happy two cat household for nearly 3 years.
But then a Facebook post landed on my timeline, from Monika's Doggy Rescue, with this amazing photo:
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and, well, I swooned. Can you blame me?
Her name was Molly, she's about 6 months old, and she was rescued from a kill pound. Monika's Doggy Rescue has funded a vet clinic and rescue shelter in Parramatta—The Cottage Animal Hospital—which is where Molly was living (under the very tender loving care of Anneli and Dee).
So I posted about her on Facebook and Twitter, and nearly all my friends kindly acted as enablers, encouraging me to adopt her. I was very cautious, though, not wanting to upset the apple cart with the boys, and I kept hoping that someone else would take her in.
And no-one did!
I visited her after she'd been at the Cottage for a week or so, and was surprised at how feisty she was. Is. I visited her for about an hour, playing with her and generally checking her out. She's got a wild streak, and I came home with two hands full of scratches, a deep admiration for this strong-natured and very intelligent cat, and concern about how the boys—especially Cooper—would cope. Dee (The Cottage's resident vet, who has been taking her home on weekends) assured me she had a sweet side, but I was still really concerned for the boys.
So I kept hoping that someone else would take her home.
And no-one did.
So then, at the day job, I finally got to the point where I could take some much-needed leave (I have 9—count 'em!—9 weeks owing!), and so on Tuesday I went in again to meet her.
This time I saw the sooky side to Ms Molly (as she was—details of name change to come). She had been sleeping before I arrived, and so was relaxed and smooshy, allowed me to rub her cheeks, purring all the while. Of course, she woke up properly pretty quickly, and then it was on again—but I had seen enough to know that she has that other, more relaxed and affectionate side.
So I went back today, filled in the paperwork, and brought her home.
She was a very good girl in the car on the way home— a bit unsettled to begin with, but also very sweet and reaching her paw through the bars of the cage to touch my hand (look Ma, no claws!). I'd already set up my study, with an igloo bed and litter tray and toys, and I taped fly screen around the door into the hallway so that the boys and she could see one another, but not have contact until they got used to one another.
At least, that was the plan.
She escaped in the first two minutes.
In addition to the door into the hallway, there's a door between the study and the spare room (old house has connecting doors between three rooms), and it didn't close behind me after I first let Madam out. She slipped out after me almost immediately. And it took some catching her—she's quick, and determined—but I did get her back into the study, where she happily played with the toys I had bought her, her favourite being the litter tray. Sigh.
The boys were out and about, as is their wont, so we had a couple of hours together in the study where I mostly left her alone to explore while I did some clearing out of the old email in-tray (ermahgerd). For some reason, at one point, I had my back to the window, and turned around just in time to see Louis's little face looking in and then jump down on to the front verandah. I thought there was no way he could have missed seeing her, but apparently he did. So I went out and let him in the front door, picked him up and held him while he peered through the fly screen and spotted her.
And she spotted him.
Lou was pretty calm to begin with—the fur along his spine rose up, and his tail fur fluffed out, but apart from that it was OK. Until I heard growling. And it wasn't Louis—it was Milly.
And that set Louis off, the two of them growling at one another from a distance, but he wasn't overly cranky, and he wasn't at all cranky with me; he let me hold him and pat him and he was rubbing himself around me, but he was on high alert as far as the new arrival was concerned.
I foolishly left them to eyeball each other off with very bad language as the soundtrack, while I popped outside to check on where Cooper was.
And in that brief moment, Louis broke through the fly wire and I came back into the house to hear what I was sure were the sounds of murder.
Aaaaaaahhhhh!
I don't know what happened. I was sure she was going to be badly hurt—she's only 2.3 kilos, and Louis is so much bigger—but he hightailed it out of the room as soon as I got there. It took me a while to catch the little one—she was crazy wild and terrified, and had weed on herself, but she wasn't hurt at all (nor was Louis, and I do believe she could hurt him, she's strong and her teeth and claws are SHARP), but it was a BAD start that I was very unhappy about.
The irony is, before this happened, there was a moment where the two of them were sitting like mirror images of one another—Louis in the doorway to my bedroom, and Little Miss in her room, in line of vision:
Look at them! Twinnies! In fact, when I first met Molly/Milly, it seemed to me that she was something of a cross between Louis and Bridie, mostly in looks, but partly in temperament, although she's wilder than either of them.
I had predicted that Louis would cope quite well with the new addition, easy-going, social chap that he is, and that Cooper, Mr Highly-Strung, would be the one who would freak out.
Turns out, Coop was chill. I left him outside for ages, and when eventually it was time to bring him in, I did what I'd done with Louis, and held him on the other side of the fly screen so he could see her from a distance.
And he couldn't have cared less, the first couple of times he saw her. And because he didn't care, she didn't react either. Must be a pheromone thing (and yes, I have now gone out and spent a small fortune on Feliway).
I took delivery, the same day I collected Milly, of a fabulous cat comb, the beautifully named Furminator, which Cooper LOVES, and so I sat with him and groomed him in the doorway, and he purred and purred and completely ignored the new kitteh. So what do I know. Mr Neurotic was cool as a cucumber, Mr Sociable was freaked. Cats. Who knows.
(Cooper's not so entirely cool about it now, on Day 3, but he's made no attempt to break in and have a go at her, as Louis did. And where Louis keeps popping in during the day to eyeball her, Cooper clearly doesn't want to know—it's only when he's inside at night and is forced to acknowledge her presence that he pays any attention.)
I've let her out to have a run of the house when the boys have been outside, and I think it's a good thing—she's getting used to the place, and hopefully leaving her smell around so they get used to it. But I think it will likely be a good couple of weeks before they can be in the same space. And she's so little, she won't be going outside any time soon. When I got back to work I'll shut the back half of the house off, so the boys can come in the cat door in the back room to eat, and she'll have the rest of the house to herself.
A nice thing I discovered—which was a confirmation of something Dee said about her—is that she's really good with kids. Although she's getting more and more relaxed with me, she can still hiss and spit if she's displeased—this is a cat who clearly carries some fear in her, and I hate to think why. But Dee said that she was really gentle with her kids when she took her home on the weekends, and I've found the same thing with my friend Donna's son, Quinn, who has been to the house yesterday and today.
Quinn has cats at home, and knows how to approach a cat who doesn't know him, and to be quiet and gentle around them. And it was just lovely today to se how relaxed Milly was with him. She clearly felt completely comfortable with him, and would approach him in a way she doesn't with me (yet!). It really seemed like she liked hanging out with him. Here's a photo:
They're playing Angry Birds. Donna took a whole sequence of photos of them together—most of them blurry with Milly chasing the pigs—so lovely. It's kind of curious to me that she's so calm and happy with a child—cats with a wild streak like Milly has often aren't all that keen on kids, so this is a lovely trait in Milly, and one that I hope bodes well for how she'll eventually settle in.
So there's still a lot of work, and patience, ahead, as the boys get used to her being here, and she develops in confidence and calm. I'm giving my lovely boys lots of love and attention, and as I write this, they are both happily curled up in their respective (current) sleeping spots, as if she were never here, and she's happily asleep in her igloo bed. All's well with the world.
Until the next encounter!
As for the name change...
This lovely girl was named Molly by the good people who looked after her at The Cottage, but she never seemed to 'know' it was her name, and Dee let me know it would be OK to rename her. My sister Alison once had a cat called Molly, who was lovely but naughty, and who came to a sad end, and not that I'm superstitious, but I thought a different name might be good. I've always been one for pet names for my pets (Bridie was also known as Brigid McGillicuddy; Louis has a thousand nicknames, including Louis Lamb, Long-Legged Louis and Louis L'Amour, and Cooper is frequently Super Cooper, The Chequerboard Cat and Mr Handsome—OK, that was embarrassing...) and I was already calling Molly Milly Molly Mandy and rather liking the sound of Milly (which is somehow tougher than Molly), and then friends on Facebook suggested all these great book character names including Milly from the Chrestomanci books (favourite books of mine), and then apropos of nothing as far as I know (although there was an Aunt Millie in the family), my dad suggested Milly.
Now, we have a sort of tradition in our family of ignoring our dad's suggestions for naming our pets. They always ended up as the animal's second name—so the cat Dad wanted to call Nick ended up as Sooty Nick, and the next cat, who Dad suggested we call Smudge, ended up as Susie Smudge (even though he was a boy).
So it seemed high time that my lovely dad got naming rights.
And so Milly she is.
Silly Milly. Milly Molly Mandy. Milly Vanilli. Little Mill.
She really is.
