Tag: patches

Kitty Bed

Patches has been less than overwhelmed by out attempts to spoil her rotten. The cat tree has been investigated, but mostly ignored. She’s tried playing with most of the toys but she usually runs away like she’s in terror.

The cat bed though… Success! Partly because she likes to sleep on piles of laundry and I made sure there weren’t any around tonight. Still… Success!

20140427-211343.jpg

Feline Guilt

Jen and I feel like we screwed up our cat, Patches, by trying to bring a second cat into the house. These feelings are irrational, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t real. We both said that we have the urge to try to make it up to Ms Patches by spoiling the holy hell out of her.

Today we bought:
A big cat tree.
A kitty bed.
A shelf thing to attach to a windowsill so she can perch on it.
Three different kinds of cat toys.
Two new types of treats.

The cat tree is up. She hasn’t climbed on it yet, but she did put her paws onto the lowest level. I tried two of the toys. They definitely caught her interest, but she ended up running away from both of them.

Patches is just crazy.

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.

Saddest Thing Ever

My beautiful wife Jennifer walked out of the living room and went into her daughter’s bedroom. That’s where our new cat, Sabrina, is staying until she and our first cat, Patches, get used to being in the house together.

As soon as she opened the door, Patches ran to the corner of the living room furthest away and literally hid behind a box. She looked so sad. I called her over to me. It took a few minutes but eventually she came. I pet her across the back once and then she took a couple of slow steps toward the door.

She hissed. She wasn’t even in the same room as Sabrina, and she couldn’t see her, but she looked in that direction and let out a long, loud hiss. I yelled out, stop and then Patches ran and hid under the couch for a couple of minutes before hiding in the corner again. This time I couldn’t coax her out. When I walked over to her she ran away.

I’m pretty sure it was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. I really hope that adopting Sabrina wasn’t a mistake. I feel like we broke Patches’ heart.

Hiss

We aren’t having much luck with the whole integrating the new cat into the house thing. As I was writing the first new cat post, Jen opened up the door to leave Sabrina’s temporary room, and Patches snuck up on her. The two cats stood about three feet apart, looking each other in the eye. Sabrina started to hiss. Patches backed off a few feet and then she started hissing too. We got the door closed without further incident.

Later, we had Ms Patches locked in a bedroom so we let Ms Sabrina wander around. Where was pretty much the first place she went? Patches’ litter box. Oh good. Eventually she did a lap around the house and we got her locked up again. We were feeling confident after that.

Our luck more or less ran out though. Jen took a shift sitting with Sabrina. When she tried to leave the room, Sabrina bolted for the door. I caught her before she got out, picked her up, and placed her back on the bed. Safe. Until she bolted again and slipped out the still opened door. Again, the two kitties faced off. This time Patches didn’t back off and the two of them hissed at each other again. I had to yell to get Patches to break off. This time I managed to pick up Sabrina and get her locked away again.

I’m a little worried about how things will go tomorrow while we are at work. Will they tear through the door to get at each other?

Calm down, ladies!