Day in the Life of an Idiot

When we asked the vet for advice for integrating our cats, we were given a flyer that was written by a behaviorist who had pretty good advice. Some stuff we knew and already were doing and a few other little tricks that might help. However, the funniest part was the suggestion that any time there was a neutral or good interaction between Willow and Rhubarb (formerly known as Clover/Six) we were supposed to give them a treat (make sense) and burble, "Happy Cats!"

So, of course, immediately, Shawn and I started with the somewhat-ironic "Happy Cats!" declaration. 

Mostly, we are being patient. We've had some actual happy cat moments or at least, "I didn't realize you were in my territory because I was sleeping" moments, and continued snapping and hissing. But, the flyer was actually reassuring that integration really can take a long time and that you basically have to go at the pace of the cat who is the most traumatized.

Sometimes that's little loaf:


Image: Rhubarb (a black cat) in a box, being a little loaf.

Sometimes that's big loaf:


Image: Willow (a black cat) in a box, being a big loaf.

This has become our lives. There's been a lot of "Ope! Time for a timeout!" and "Oh, look at you not snarling! Happy Cats!!" around our place, and probably it will continue like this for some time. We want a household where everyone is at least decently tolerating of each other and, as Shawn and I keep reminding ourselves, there's no need to rush since... well, this is basically a lifelong project. There's no deadline. We're in no hurry.

In other news, I adapted a recipe from the Overwatch cookbook to make "bear scat" cookies for my D&D group tonight. For those not reading the D&D/Elf icon posts, basically last adventure we fought a mama bear, so this is just a silly reference to that. There is not bear poop in this recipe, only chocolate, peanut butter, honey, and rice crispies.


Image: round balls of chocolate, peanut butter, rice crispies, and honey.

Happy CATS!!

 
Image: snoozing kitty burrito wrapped up in a green blanket.

I was telling my friend naomikritzer over email today that it's sort of fascinating, the more cats you get to know, how much they differ in all sorts of personality traits, including things that seem very human, like tolerance for pain. Willow, when she had her surgery (and even Ms. Ball, who was also, like Clover, "in a family way" before her spay) all bounced back really quickly. Like, Willow actually pulled some stitches because she really just wanted to zoom around and roughhouse with Buttercup. If Clover wasn't clearly the baby of the family, I'd imagine her saying, "Shhh, just let grandma sleep. Surgery is hard. I am RECOVERING," every time we come into the room to see how she's doing.

She has also convinced me with her sad blinking eyes that I need to bring her breakfast in bed. Mind you, she's been having zero trouble getting up and bouncing around, she just doesn't WANT to. She wants to cuddle into a little ball and sleep a lot. To be fair, that might be the drugs? The vet tech said that they might act as sedatives since she's SO SMALL. (In fact, yesterday, I only gave her half doses, thinking that she was feeling sick and loopy the way she was complaining that first night.) Today, I wasn't able to stop the plunger halfway, so she might be zonked because of the drugs. Still, it seems to fit her personality as we are seeing it develop.

She has earned the nicknames Little Miss Crankypants and Angry Peanut. 

But she really is quite sweet. 

As for the rest of the household, Buttercup spent the first night BESIDE HIMSELF with worry because he could hear her distress and could not come into the room to offer comfort. Willow, meanwhile, has mostly changed her vocalizations near the door. She meows like she's talking to whomever is in the room, rather than growling and hissing possessively. We are not yet trying to do any kind of reintroduction yet, however, since it will still be several days before Clover is even close to considered recovered from the surgery. 

Willow seems generally more relaxed. She still paws at the door, but she no longer seems as unshakably laser focused as she had been. She goes through a lot longer periods of forgetting that other cat is even here.

A good sign?  

We're hopeful.

In other news, I am forced to skip my D&D group tonight in favor of my once  a month writers' group, Pendragons. We have a new member joining tonight so I should probably spend some time today finishing up my "homework" so I don't seem like a doofus in front of her. 



Image: Clover curled up on her favorite green comforter like a big goofy ball. Her little shaved belly is visible.

 
Image: Tiny black cat, Clover, asleep on the bed, buried in the green comforter.

I'm exhausted this morning because last night we decided it might be nice to let Clover have the run of the house for once. We don't want her to be under the impression (no matter how much Willow might like it to be true) that she is forbidden anywhere downstairs.  But, to give Clover free rein meant  that I slept with Willow in the TV room, on the couch. Our couch is... okay, but getting a bit worn in the springs. It's a bit lumpy.

Plus, while Willow mostly tolerated being cooped up with me, Buttercup really wanted in twice in the middle of the night. He scratched at the door insistently, waking me up. I usually fall right back to sleep, but last night I didn't.

We had another good morning with a bit of grumbling, but also some sharing of space. Mostly Clover deals with Willow by trying to be very small and doing a lot of slow blinking. Clover is not all submission, though, because today when Willow decided she was done staring at the new cat and got up to hop off the bed, Clover rushed at her when he back was turned. It surprised the [bleep] out of Willow, who jumped into the hallway and looked shocked. Clover, whose tail had puffed out to six times its size, sat on the edge of the bed looking triumphant. I'm not sure what this all means, but Shawn and I both later confessed to each other during our afternoon walk that we were kind of glad to see Clover stick up for herself a bit. Obviously, we don't WANT cat fights, but at the same time it would also be nice if Clover was not so terrified of Willow that she won't come out from under the bed, you know?

Clover is really starting to show off a somewhat cranky princess personality. 


Image: Blurry because her head was in motion, but I caught the elusive curling tongue cat yawn in progress.

In other news, there are six days until the final arc of the Bleach anime comes out. Yesterday, we (the fandom) found out that Bleach is breaking from Crunchyroll and will be airing on Hulu and Disney+. Luckily, I have access to both, and now all the jokes about various characters now being Disney princesses can begin. I remain of very mixed feelings about this final arc as many of you well know. But, I am hoping for an uptick in activity in my fandom, which has been fairly dead since the manga ended several years ago.

Meanwhile, tomorrow is my weekly D&D group. I'm trying to decide if I should bring the peanut butter chocolate star cookies that I made the other day, or if I should make "Elven Bread" from the official Dungeon & Dragons cookbook, Hero's Feast. Elven Bread is basically a hearty cinnamon swirl. Feel free to cast your votes in the comments. I would do a poll, but I have the worst luck making those. Anyway the only two choices are:


In related news, after watching the zillionth ad for it while watching "Critical Role," I decided to try the D&D Beyond App for character building. I will say, it's kind of slick. Like, once you pick your class it knows what kind of equipment you're allowed and with the click of a button your inventory is filled with the standard "explorer's pack" items, etc. Which is, I have to say, really handy. You can even roll die on the app, which I might use because Jeff's set up does not really have a good table top and I don't own any kind of fancy dice tray. Plus, it's free? You only get six character slots with the free version and if I ever end up running a cleric, however, it will require me to buy some add-ons if I want anything other than Life Path, but for now it's fine. And it actually might make everything easier, because it will mean just holding my iPad and not all the sheets of my character sheet. I am kind of the disorganized player that really can use something like this. I feel pretty good that I have one notebook for all my games, but after that there are so many pieces of paper shoved into various plastic sleeves that's not even funny. I will report after tomorrow how it actually works in game.

In other gaming news, I'm attending ConFABulous next weekend. They're still hammering out their final schedule, but I'm excited to be on some paneling and also dong some gaming. I'm going to be joining the Thieves'' World game as well as the Heart of Wulin, both of which I'm very excited about. 

The person who is potentially taking Clover/Six is not coming until tomorrow afternoon, and, since there is no guarantee that they will want her, we've been continuing to work on introducing Clover to the household.

Today, we had a HUGE breakthrough!

Willow and Clover tolerated each other in the same space for a long time. We are currently in a household where all the doors are open and Willow is asleep on the back of the chair. I am actually very, very hopeful that we might be able to not have to close up Clover in her own room for the evening (which is good, she hates it. She growls at me whenever I have to put her in the TV room for the evening.) 

Of course, this means that Shawn and I are DEEPLY waffling about whether or not we NEED to pass Clover/Six on to anyone. We're keeping our meeting with the interested party on Sunday, but we're not longer worried if, for whatever reason, they decide to pass. The only thing we're worried about now is how much we'll cry to see her go! 

 Last night, the lady who expressed interest in Clover/Six came over for an introduction. 

You know how there are some people out there who make an amazing first impression? Well, this lady, whom I will call C., did NOT. Shawn's impression of her, afterwards, was that she was an aging hippy. I felt that was a bit generous and would have just called her a kook.

But I will get to what gave me that impression in a bit. Let me first lay out the story so far. Shawn had been communicating with C. via Facebook messenger and C. was clearly already feeling a bit uncertain about taking on Clover/Six because she looked into the cost of spays and, yeah, the prices are pretty insane. C. pointed out that for that price you could get three cats, all pre-spayed/neutered, at PetSmart and she is not wrong. We did not want C. to lose out on Clover/Six just because medical care was too expensive, however, so we told her that if she made an appointment we would happily pay half. She had never had to have a cat spayed before and so we gave her a bunch of different leads on places. She seemed very reasonable and grateful that we were willing to do so much to rehome Clover/Six. 

So, we arranged for a meet and greet. 

We got Clover/Six out on the porch and C. came over.  The thing that seemed the most important to C. was that Clover/Six be a perfect match for the cat already at home and then proceeded to tell us that her cat at home as "some kind of eating disorder." According to C. this cat is insanely skinny, seven pounds, maybe, and for the longest time when she first got this cat it wouldn't eat any food she put out for it. She tried everything, even cans of tuna. The vet could find nothing wrong with the cat, except that she continued to lose weight. If I remember her story correctly, the vet offered some expensive solution (this part was not clear, since I was trying to puzzle out how a cat could have an eating disorder that wasn't something like a thyroid problem,) and C. had a flash of intuition and went to Cub and bought a whole chicken. She then simmered it down to soft meat, removed the bones, and the cat "om nom nom!" which she vocalized in such a loud voice that Clover/Six who had been sniffing about, startled and hid under the table. 

This current cat of C's, however, still doesn't gain weight.

End of story. 

ONE RED FLAG.

So, we were like, "Mmm, okay." Then, we tried to finalize ideas about how we might do the spay for Clover/Six. She seemed to want us to keep Clover/Six through the spay and recovery since she's never dealt with any of that before, and then proceeded to tell us another wild story about time she spent in Mexico helping out some free spaying clinic there. I will tell you that I only partly followed this story because I got very hung up by the implication that instead of anesthesia these folks "used some rope." I kept wonder if she meant to tie off the tom's balls, like you do with goats, or like to choke them until they passed out????

TWO RED FLAGS.

At any rate, I lost of details in this story of C.'s because I never got a chance to ask clarifying questions before she was going on to the next story.... which involved how she introduced "some kind of eating disorder" kitty to her DOGS.

First, Shawn and I exchanged glances because C. said when she saw how small Clover/Six was that she was glad because she needs small cats because her house is so tiny. So, now we were readjusting our mental image of this household because why would you need a cat of a certain size when you already have TWO DOGS and a cat in this so-called tiny house.  But, that's not even the story that had us on edge. She listened to Shawn explaining how we have been carefully trying to introduce a new cat into the mix in our house, and then said, well, when I introduced "some kind of eating disorder" cat to my dogs, I just put her in the basement and told her to "come up when she was ready" because the dogs never go to the basement. Wouldn't you know she was up in two minutes. Oh, sure there's a lot of barking and hissing (again, she demonstrated this with loud noises that made Clover/Six jump,) but you know cats and dogs, am I right?

I made a sort of semi-agreeing comment like, "Yes, I guess they all settle out eventually," but I was thinking: SO MANY RED FLAGS.

She left without making any real plans to come back, too. I don't want to be too judge-y, but holy crap am I judge-y.

This is how Clover/Six looked after C. left:


Image: Clover/Six curled up in a tight ball on Shawn's lap. She jumped up and acted the most lovey she ever has.

So... we're back to trying to figure out what to do. Shawn and I spent a huge portion of the night after C. left trying to decide if there was any way we could tell C. that we had a change of heart and was just going to keep her.

To that end, we attempted a bit of interaction, but, like clockwork, Willow came dashing out of the room she'd been in to immediately corner poor Clover/Six under the bed in the bedroom. If anything, Willow's reaction to Clover/Six has been getting more intense. (My going theory is that Willow can tell that Clover/Six is actually pregnant and does not want another cat's kittens in her territory.)  Clover/Six meanwhile is also getting broody and so when she gets scared by Willow, she's been lashing out (not painfully, but definitely unhappily) at Shawn and me. 

Clover/Six has to be rehomed.

Do we let C. have her anyway, despite the red flags? Or, do we turn C. down and keep looking? We do have one other lead, which is Shawn's brother Keven. He's had cats in the past, but hasn't had the gumption to replace the pair (Righty and Lefty) that he loved after they died several years ago.  Keven is also the sort to let cats roam outside, but he would also spay her and can afford the medical bills. She'd also have his whole house to explore and be an only cat. 

Currently, what we have done is contacted Keven to see if he's at all actually interested. He said yes, but who knows. Likewise, if C. comes back all ready and willing, we'll have to see if we feel like we have anything more than "mmm, you seem kind of like a flake" in terms of arguments as to why she shouldn't get the cat we promised her. 

It is a mess and it feels morally ambiguous. 

I still think that we are doing all that we can for this kitty, but I do wish that the path of "what if we just kept her?" was more open to us. It's possible that C. will be a perfectly wonderful cat mom despite all the conversational red flags. Who are we to judge? On the other hand, we're the ones who are going to have to sleep well at night with the decisions we make. 

Advice is welcome. We may not take it, but you should feel free to offer opinions on the matter.

ALSO, still only radio silence from the people who posted about missing Six. 

UPDATE: C. just contacted Shawn and backed out. Her reasons were that she basically needs a cat "ready to go" who doesn't need any care, such as a spay, etc., and because "it" bit her (which, yes, but C. pulled her tail after we told her that Clover did not like butt touches.) 

 
Image: Clover, a black cat, sitting in the yard (from before we took her in.)

I am still waiting for the okay to come retrieve the cat currently known as Clover from our vet in Maplewood. The update I got around noon let me know that she was NOT microchipped. We brought in a fecal sample and the doctor does recommend deworming, so, I'm guessing parasites showed up positive. She got a rabies shot and they are testing for feline leukemia. The doc will do a further exam before I bring her home, so we'll see what she has to say when I get the call to come get her. 

At this point, that probably means I'll be making an appointment to spay her as well. 

We still don't know that we will keep her. Signs are pointing to yes, but it will really depend on how everyone reacts to her. We've reopened the porch today. It's where she's been living for the past couple of days, and so Willow and Buttercup got a chance to sniff around. I'm hoping if we do this slowly and the right way, we will end up with a third cat.

If not, someone else will get a loving, healthy, spayed cat.