Olive plays like a kitten still.
We opted for a younger boy cat, a little smaller than our Olive to help smooth things over. I've seen some places say that this whole opposite gender getting along better thing is a myth, but whatever we are trying to stack the deck in our favor. Ozy comes from a 'found outside' litter so we expect he will be bouncy and scrappy, but after everything settles down, we think his initial go-with-the-flow attitude will prevail. He had several siblings, but out of the boys we liked his chill attitude, he didn't seem anxious being handled or pet, not too excited and not running away and hiding. Since Olive is kind of a prima donna, alternately annoying and demanding, mixed with pets on 'her terms' we thought the relaxed attitude of this particular kitty would be good- not too demanding and not too competitive, hopefully a little more affectionate (Steve had mentioned he wanted an affectionate kitty when we were driving down since olive is really not much of a lap cat).
Kitteh Hunt:
First we met my friend J who works at Mid Hudson Animal Aid in Beacon NY, ate lunch at the cool Doctor Who themed restaurant down there (falafel was good) and dove into the kitty meeting.
J has known we've been considering getting another since December and looking since at least May, and knows what we are looking for, so she had some good prospects lined up. First was a little all black kitty named Obsidian, who Steve immediately fell in love with. Obsidian is silky and gorgeous, unfortunately he still needed a lot of work, as he was still fairly afraid of people and was stressed out by us trying to approach him to get a good look; he would however with a kind and patient owner probably be an incredible cat. I brought up the fact that we had already worked hard to rehab our current cat from shyness and he realized this may not be the right match for us. I'm really not up for domesticating a cat right now- too much going on, and it isn't fair to take home a project when we don't have room for one.
The next contender was Gizmo, a really sweet white with black spots cat. He was very confident and sweet, but much bigger than our Olive, and I thought that might be threatening to her. We did play with him for a long time and he had great cat manners. He was probably my favorite personality wise- he looked like he would be a hoot to watch bounce around the house, and seemed like a really cuddly guy. If we didn't already have Olive I would have walked out with him ASAP.
We checked out a few others and played with all the cats for a while, then headed into a staff only section where the new cats are being kept- and in there we were showed some little black males that were being overlooked. Ozy the one we picked turned out to -we hope- have the best match personality wise to our current kitty. Apparently when it's kitten season and you're just not a kitten any more nobody really looks at you too hard. So we were happy to take one of these guys off their hands. Since we've been there my aunt was also able to snap up two adorable Maine coon kittens I sent her pictures of, so that's three cats out the door to my family :)
We have spent the week since cleaning and organizing, and keeping Ollie happy. We are trying to do stuff gradually since she's very about routine and we have a very small apartment. Lots of spaces to jump and climb and get up high, but still small by human standards. Wish us luck next week as our foray into having two kittehs continues.
No comments:
Post a Comment