Petite

First some sad news: my old man cat Big Hairy (the black and white cat in previous posts) was put to sleep several weeks ago. He had a saddle thrombus and I’d really rather not go into the details of that right now (though if someone asked I wouldn’t mind chronicling it in a separate post in the future) but suffice to say putting him to sleep was definitely the humane thing to do. He was 19 years old, which makes him well past being a centenarian in cat years. I had really hoped that he would live to the big 20, but ah well.

I would like to say that out of respect for his memory I waited a decent amount of time before getting another cat, but then my mom took me to the humane society “just to look around” a week later and I ended up coming home with this:

He is a 3-year old siamese mix and yes, he is cross eyed. He is also declawed but I swear that’s coincidental. I don’t advocate declawing cats and didn’t realize he was until after I had already decided to get him. He is also overweight and I am going to be rationing his food for the rest of his life, but eh. I actually had him on a diet cat food for a while but neither I nor Percy were very fond of it, and I’ve since switched him to a holistic cat food that we both are in favor of. I figure if I’m going to ration his food there’s no need to take even more fun out of his life.

I named him Percival, though we mostly call him Percy. My boyfriend calls him Demon Cat from Hell. We hadn’t realized quite how spoiled we were with Big Hairy, who mostly slept and snuggled for the last few years. Percy jumps on stuff and chews things up just for attention. We know this because he tears things up in our presence A LOT but not so much when we aren’t at home. He also can be perfectly sweet one minute and lean over to bite you the next. I think he’s kind of bipolar, but I still love him to pieces.

Anyhow, it occurred to me after a few weeks that Percy could maybe use a friend, and after getting the okay from our landlord I offered to get Mike a cat for Christmas. He has a much longer patience span than me but after a few weeks we ended up coming home with this:

We eventually decided her name was Scout. She is a 6-month old torty/tabby. We also got her from a humane society, albeit a different one than Percy.

If getting Percy was behavioral shock than Scout was almost a panic attack. For the most part she is perfectly sweet and doesn’t have any of the weird personality quirks Percy has. Nevertheless, it had been a really long time since I’d had a kitten. Mike tells me that climbing the curtains and running around for no good reason are perfectly normal behaviors for kittens, but it’s not something I was used to.

Mike had wanted to wait a while before getting a second cat but I’m glad we didn’t. My main reason for pushing it was because I was certain the longer we waited the more difficult it would have been to adapt Percy to having a second cat around. I still think I was right. Percy harrassed her almost non stop in the beginning, though he never drew blood or anything like that. They’ve gotten used to each other since and sometimes I even catch him licking her face.

Also, he stopped maniacally biting our feet shortly after we got her.