Tag: Kitty

Sabrina

Here are the dirty details.

Patches was hissing and growling.  Sabrina was nervous and clearly scared.  We did what people suggested.  We put their food bowls on either side of Sabrina’s safe room’s door.  The idea is to associate the smell of the other cat with something positive, ie food.  Jen rubbed a clean sock on Sabrina and gave it to Patches.  When Patches didn’t freak out she got a treat.

All of that was going well, but today Patches started throwing herself into the safe room’s door, all while hissing and growling.  The fear of the two cats fighting and possibly hurting each other was compounded by the fear of Patches hurting herself.

Add to that, the kids were at their dad’s house through all of this.  Tonight was the first night they would have been home with Sabrina.  If we didn’t do it tonight, we would never be able to do it.  At least not without breaking the kids’ hearts along with mine and Jen’s.

So I took Sabrina back to the shelter today.  The staff at the shelter told me that we were doing the right thing.

I shall now drown my sadness in my Les Paul.

New Addition

On October 17, 2010 we went to the MSPCA at Nevins Farm in Methuen and adopted a cat.

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Her name was Panache. Not long after getting her home we changed her name to Patches. She has been the single best cat in the universe, both known and undiscovered. She’s the best.

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However, pretty much since the day we adopted Patches, my beloved wife has been saying she wanted a second cat too. After over three years of saying no, today I stopped fighting it. We went back to the MSPCA at Nevins farm and met a five year old cat named Sabrina.

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From the first moment we saw her she was super friendly. She practically tried to squeeze herself through the door of her cage to let us pet her. We asked to take her into one of the get-to-know-you rooms and she instantly started rubbing up against us and being all affectionate. She even let Jen pick her up.

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After 10 minutes or so of being showered with love by this cat, Jen asked the kids’ father if we could borrow them for a few minutes so that they could meet Sabrina too, and if they liked her as much as we did we would adopt her. I drove up to their house and got them. Needless to say, they were more than happy to have Sabrina come home with us.

She’s hiding now. We’re going to take the whole integration thing slowly, as Patches can be a little skittish around new people, never mind new cats. Once the two of them are comfortable together I will (of course) blitzkrieg you all with pictures. Until then, here is a little Spark video I took in the get-to-know-you room.

Post script: Jen was in the room with Sabrina. She opened the door to come out and Patches tried to get in. The two cats stood eye to eye and started hissing at each other. No one said it was going to be a quick transition.