Hello! I imagine if you are reading this first post, you probably already know who I am and have come here via
Facebook,
Twitter or my other long-standing children's literature blog,
Misrule. And so you will know that this is a new blog dedicated to the two new cats in my life, Cooper and Louis.
This is the first photo of the cats. I adopted them from the
RSPCA at Yagoona, Sydney, Australia, on Sunday December 27 2009. I lost my beloved old cat,
Bridie, back in June, after 19 and a half years together (you can see her name is on the carry cage the new babies are in in this photo). I always said, after Bridie, I would adopt an adult cat and a kitten together: an adult cat, because they don't get adopted as often as kittens, and a kitten because kittens are fun, and there's something lovely about raising a cat from kittenhood.
But when, where and how? Definitely from a pound of some sort: I would never buy from a pet shop, and I prefer your common or garden (or alley!) moggie over your breed any day (although there are some gorgeous breeds of both cats and dogs)—and anyway, it's the common or garden (or alley!) mog that usually needs rescuing.
I was pretty heart-broken when Bridie died, and I still get upset quite easily about losing her, but it was beginning to feel like time to have a cat (or two!) in my life again. I started looking at pet rescue sites a few weeks ago, and had a couple of near-misses on adoptions. The timing was tricky: when Bridie arrived in my life, I was a teacher and it was the beginning of the Christmas school holidays (height of kitten season!) and I had six weeks to settle her in. I don't get big chunks of leave like that any more, but I do have a bit of time over Christmas/New Year, and I figured if I didn't do it now, it might not be until next kitten season (late spring/early summer 2010) that I was really able to.
And having a cat to be responsible for is, I think, good for a person who lives alone. Having a cat to care for makes you get up in the morning on those days you'd really rather not. It makes you have to keep the flat tidier—lots of regular sweeping when you have an indoors cat shedding fur (and Bridie shed handfuls of fur every day, all year 'round) and digging around in the litter tray. And it gives you someone—apart from your Twitter pals and shouting at the pollies on the telly—to talk to.
But how to choose a new cat? I am a firm believer (although I know it sounds all oogelly-boogelly) that cats more or less choose you, but living in a flat, it wasn't all that likely I'd have a stray turn up on my doorstep. And the other thing was, I guess I had a bit of performance anxiety, in the sense that Bridie was such a great cat—or at least, a great cat-match for for me, and a cat I knew so intimately and was so attached to, that I was a bit apprehensive about starting all over with a new one (or two).
And part of THAT anxiety was to do with the fact that a.) Bridie had the best road sense of any cat ever, in that she simply never went anywhere near traffic. (This was because of where she spent her first few years, in a bedsit in a house at the end of a cul-de-sac in Gladesville, where there was no traffic, and so when she encountered it at her grandparents' house on a pretty busy road, she just stayed well away.)
and b.) because for most of the ten years Bridie lived in this flat with me (also on a busy street with lots of inner west hoons speeding up and down), she simply didn't go outside any more. Too old to climb in and out of the flat's windows into the small garden area I front. I was worried about bringing a new cat in and running the risk of them getting out and getting run over. And what if the cat wasn't as attached as Bridie was, or didn't like cuddles, etc? What then? (Truly, Bridie was a kind of eccentric cat, but I loved her so fiercely, even imagining another cat has been just weird and difficult.)
And you know what? She'd be totally outraged that her home was now host to not one, but two new cats! I was thinking that last night, watching little Louis, the tabby kitten, jumping in and out of the bath Bridie used to (when she could climb in and out) insist on me turning the taps on for her to drink. But Bridie's wonderful, long life is over, and now I have two new little lives to care for.
And so, with all those contingencies in place (time off work, kitten season, knowing a cat would be good for me and knowing I will really always want to live with cats), I took myself off to the RSPCA, more or less as a cold call, on Sunday, two days after Christmas.
And I burst into tears as soon as I walked into the cattery area. All those cats needing home, losing Bridie—all came to a head. Kind of embarrassing! But actually, animal people get that and it was the RSPCA after all.
I'd already looked online to see what cats were available for adoption, so I had some names and faces in my head, but the thing is, you don't know till you've met them. And I went in with no determination about age, colour, gender—just that I wanted two, for company for each other when I am at work. Beyond that—no clue. I walked around the adult cat section for a good while, looking at them, talking to a few through their cages, some of them talking to me first. But I needed to talk to someone who knew them and there weren't any staff about. So then I went and checked out the kitten house, and there weren't all that many kittens there—they had had dozens that week, but apparently, so I was later told, adopted out 40 on Christmas Eve! Golly, I hope they weren't impulse adoptions.
I had a cursory look at the kittens waiting for homes but didn't really pay much attention: my focus was on the older cats, some of them as old as 8 needing new homes. So I went back up and eventually (to cut it short) was able to talk to a lovely young staffer called Eva who took me right into the adult cattery and allowed me to spend as much time as I liked talking to and picking up and holding the adult cats, finding out which ones like to be held and cuddled and which merely "tolerate" it. (I wanted a cuddler, and bless them, the staff and volunteers fill out regular forms on the cats' temperaments and behaviours so you could tell which ones got along with other cats, which ones didn't like to be held. (It put me in mind of those "This toilet was last cleaned" registers in loos in shopping malls and cinemas!)
And I just couldn't decide. I'd have taken every one of them home, or, well, you know what I mean—I wished every one of them would find homes, and so I was relieved to be told that they would be kept at the RSPCA until they DID find homes. The pressure of worrying they'd be put down without my rescue was all a bit much! So I relaxed then, stopped worrying so much about 8 year old Sandy, who was a lovely cat, but perhaps not quite the right girl for me? (Perhaps too like Bridie?) But on what basis could I choose between any of them beyond having decided long ago that I wouldn't ever have a cat with a pink nose or white ears because I couldn't stand having them get skin cancer. So that cut out the lovely Rascal and Pierre and Omo...
I dithered. I cuddled. I asked (mostly unanswerable) questions. Eva and the volunteer were lovely and most accommodating with their time, but they couldn't make the decision for me. There was one cat attracted my eye—a lovely looking black and white cat, Cooper, who they told me was 3 years old, although he looked much younger, who was a very social cat who was allowed free range from his cage as he got on with other cats (although it was noted on his "Cleaner's Log" that he had hissed at someone called Boof a day or two earlier... I now suspect this must have been Boof's fault!). I liked young Cooper very much but actually thought to myself, he may actually be too energetic for me! This is a fresh, energetic young cat (although technically an adult) who might require more attentions and stimulation than I can give him, being a single working gal.
So, no decision taken. So Eva suggested I go back to the Kittery (where the kittens were) and see of one of them took my fancy, and if one did, bring him or her back to the adult cats to see if it got along with any of them. I was at a loss, so it seemed like as good a plan as any, although by now I really wasn't thinking "kitten" at all.
As I said earlier, there just weren't many kittens left. Maybe 8 or so, and two of them were already being cuddled by their almost-new people. So I wasn't all that hopeful—and then I walked up to (all unknowing) a cage with the only kitten left on one side of the long kittery house—and this charming, wicked, lively, wild little lad launched himself at me from the other side of the bars and absolutely BLEATED his insistence that he was the kitten for me and I instantly melted. (OK, doesn't take much!) I don't know how I missed him earlier, but as I said, I wasn't really looking. So, one quick cuddle later, and Eva, unnamed kitten and I were heading back to the adult cattery to see who would become unnamed kittens' new big sibling.
(Going back to my long-term plan of an adult cat + kitten adoption, I kind of always assumed it might be a mother-kitten combo, but these seem harder to come by than you might expect, at least from the rescue shelters. Dunno why! Anyway, back to the saga...)
This has become far longer than I planned, so here's the short version. Cooper, the 3 year old black and white, was the cat with the best reputation as far as getting along with other cats went (Boof notwithstanding), so he was the one we really focused on trialling with Unnamed Kitten. And while I wouldn't say that Cooper embraced UK with open paws, he certainly did not hiss, swipe, growl or otherwise suggest aggressive tendencies towards UK. And Cooper also just LOVED a cuddle—one of those cats that actively hugs you when you hold him. And so then, perversely, I started thinking maybe I should just take Cooper and leave the kitten, as the very daunting task of raising a highly energetic and rather wild-as-in-crazy-energetic-rather-than-feral kitten suddenly began to dawn on me. (After all, it had been 20 years since I had hand-raised a kitten...)
But then every time I would look at the kitten, he made me laugh. And Cooper was clearly a sweetie who would not do the UK any lasting damage and was also, in his own right, simply adorable. And there was another couple in the cattery by then, adopting one of the quieter pink-nosed cats, and hubby was nudging me towards committing to Unnamed Kitten AND Cooper and, well, reader, I adopted them.
It's been just two days and already so many little stories, which I promise I will tell, but for now, here is Cooper and his no longer Unnamed Kitten brother, Louis. The naming of Louis will be the subject of the next blog post.
Oh, but before the photo and the next blog post, what about the naming of this blog? It was suggested by my
Twitter pal Stephen Murray, most likely because a day or two before adopting the Boys, I was tweeting about a personal Reading Challenge I had set myself for 2010, one of which was to finish reading a complete Dickens novel, such as A Tale of Two Cities. And so A Tale of Two Kitties seems entirely apropos of a number of things. And now here is the promised Kitty Pic:
In the meantime, please bookmark
this link to the kittehs on my Flickr site: plan to keep it updated. Cheers for now!
