Dear Constant Reader,
We’ve always been a one-cat household. And assumed we would stay that way. However, Bartholomew had other plans. He’s so smart and gets bored so easily. And when he gets bored he gets destructive. In the mornings he would break into the bedroom (and it took over a year to figure out how to install doors that he couldn’t crack) pre-dawn and start knocking things down. Or he would just sit outside the door and howl like the world was coming to an end.
When one of the sleepy humans would get up we would see that he had brought us one of his favorite toys, like a cat dancer or his mouse on a string. Something he wanted a person on the other end of.
We started talking about getting him a companion and went back and forth about it a lot. We weren’t sure if bringing another cat into the house was a good idea or not. What if they hated each other? What if Bart was miserable?
Scratch found a cat in a foster situation in Florida that the rescue organization would transport to Boston. In October we had a video interview with the cat and his foster family and a virtual home visit by the rescue. All that was left was for us to decide yes or no.
As you might have guessed, dear Reader, we said yes.
Now came the challenge of getting NewerCat (we would wait until he told us his name) to Boston. We were having some major work done on the house at the end of October and then I was going to Stripper’s Holiday in early November, so we wanted him to arrive after that. There was a transport coming up at the right time, but we didn’t want to further stress the little guy with being in a vehicle for over 24 hours. So we had to wait for one of the “Flight Angels” (off-duty flight attendants) to volunteer to escort him. In the mean time, he moved from his original foster home to a different one, and then to a third.
At last, we headed to Logan Airport to meet our Angel, Lisa, and collect NewerCat, who had been a great traveler and was calm for the whole car ride home.
Bartholomew was predictably not thrilled at the tiny interloper (a perfectly normal-sized cat, but next to our massive panther, he’s a wee peanut), but after only three days of controlled visits and some hissing, they achieved détente and after a couple more days, started hanging out together.
Allow me to present Jonathan A. Cat!
We call him Jackie-Boy. He’s a two-or-three-year-old Turkish Van mix and is very playful and affectionate. The belly is not a trap, but he does like to chew on fingers. He and Bart wrestle together and groom each other and birdwatch from the same window.
It’s kind of strange having a white cat again, especially when he sleeps in Albert’s bed (taking up a fraction of the space), but nice.
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This is Hamilton A. Cat. He’s a character in Robert Lay’s books (the Giblet & Belle and Holmes & Watson series), but he’s also a real cat. Hamilton is very sick and his vets don’t have a diagnosis yet. In fact, his family was prepared to say goodbye. However, Hamilton is a fighter. He’s not giving up! Currently, he’s at home with his family with a feeding tube while the vets figure out what’s wrong.
If you have pets with fur, keep a lint brush in your show bag.
Oh, The Glamourous Life! 