She is pretty much completely comfortable here.
And I do mean comfortable.
At Petsmart, I met several older cats that had been brought over from the Humane Society, and even with the choices narrowed down so much, it's still so hard to choose. I mean, it's a big decision! I petted and held and talked to multiple cats, including an absolutely darling pair, brother/sister and devoted to each other, but at only 7 months, younger than I really wanted. Before long, I was focusing on Ms No-Name here, who is six, or six and a half, I guess.
They have a small enclosure with room for a chair and a couple of cat trees, so I could sit in with her and get to know her. She went around and around the space, looking and sniffing, stropping my legs as she passed me, then decided that she was good, and got comfortable there.
Once I had decided that yes, I was going to take her, I asked them to pass in the carrier I brought with me, so she could sniff that. She didn't seem too interested at first, but in a few minutes, there she was.
And she stayed there while all the paperwork was done. Wild.
Mind you, she wasn't too excited when the carrier was closed behind her, and in the car she varied between 'fine' and 'out please' and even 'whirling dervish' for a brief period. But she didn't meow as much as Carlos did in the car, at least.
At home, I took her into my office and closed the door, so she would have a smaller area to explore at first. She did the same thing she had done in the enclosure, clearly interested in everything but not seeming even slightly worried by all the strangeness (I mean, who knows if she had ever been in an elevator before, or seen the view from the sixth floor, or heard the clank of shutters?). She was sniffing everything, including my mother, but was not even slightly jumpy.
They gave me this blanket for her; a volunteer makes them for all the adopted cats. Isn't that nice?
So she was in the office and completely relaxed when a neighbor stopped by, and Mom opened the office to let her see the new addition. Not only wasn't Ms Nameless concerned by yet another stranger, she was highly curious about what was outside the door, so we let her go out to explore the condo. She inspected it pretty thoroughly (it turns out I had quite a bit of dust under my bed, ahem), alert and interested but not afraid, not retreating back to the office at all. Well, okay, let her stay out, then!
She likes the lanai.
Of course, as more than one of my friends pointed out, who doesn't?
(And yes, it's screened, and no, we won't go out and leave her with access to it, at least not at first, just in case.)
She likes laps, some of the time. Both mine and Mom's, in fact.
And she likes being next to laps, other times.
She likes the blanket.
And it turns out that she also likes being
under the blanket. I left her sleeping there last night when the hockey game ended, and she came along to my bedroom at 4-something AM, so she was fine on her own for quite a while.
And this morning, she was more of the same. Relaxed, alert, friendly, sometimes a little mouthy, other times relaxed to the point of coma.
She's next to me right now, purring loudly and making air biscuits, allowing me to pet the kitty. So far, so very good.
Monday:
Wednesday:
Later Wednesday:
Friday:
Later Friday:
And very late Friday:
So you can see that getting to the computer in the evenings is sometimes a challenge. Not that I would change her for a minute! But in a year full of changing routines, this is another change I have to figure out.
