Surprise! There is another segment to my “Kittens” story and
I promise this one has a better ending.
We knew we wanted to get Shadow a new friend but we weren’t
sure how long we were supposed to wait… how long do you grieve for a cat? How
long do cats grieve? How soon is too soon to get a new one? Why does it feel
like I’m replacing Storm? How do we know they will even be friends? All of
these questions were going through my head, but Jim assured me it was the right
thing to do.
About a week after we buried Storm, we went to the shelter
and told them our story, hoping they would be able to help us somehow. They agreed to give us a new kitten for free,
but at the time there were no kittens available for adoption. Apparently there is a “kitten season” at
adoption shelters, and this wasn’t it. They promised they’d contact us when new
kittens arrived, so we went home and waited patiently. Meanwhile, Shadow was
starting to show symptoms of only child syndrome. We bought him some solo-play
toys, but he preferred to follow me everywhere, and meow (very loudly) when he
was bored or lonely, often at six o’clock in the morning.
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Shadow also started sleeping extremely close to my face
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February came with more snow but no contact from the
shelter. Jim and I were out running errands one morning and stopped for lunch
at a restaurant down the street from the shelter. After lunch, Jim suggested
that we stop in and see what’s happening, maybe they had heard some chatter
about a new shipment of kittens.
When we arrived, I snuck into the cat room and saw a little
kitten in the first crate, but there was a sign on the crate saying someone was
interested in him, so I moved down the line. I started playing with another
little kitten but before long a volunteer came by and told me that one had
already been adopted and was getting picked up later that day. I continued to
look around and saw another kitten with a “someone’s interested in me” sign. At
this point, I was a little irritated. We never been contacted, but here were
all these kittens—that we should have had first dibs on—that had already been
adopted. I found a few other kittens, one a tuxedo cat that I wasn’t too fond
of, and another that was so shy she wouldn’t play with a toy through the crate.
Jim found me around then and I gave him a look to indicate
that I was furious. At least five kittens had come in while we were at home
twiddling our thumbs waiting for an email. Shadow was bored out of his mind and
driving us crazy, and nobody had bothered to contact us. We went to the lobby
and Jim talked to the staff because I was afraid I would yell at someone. They
apologized profusely and I calmed down why I remembered how many office-space
communication errors I had seen or been involved in.
They had three kittens still available for adoption, the
tuxedo, the shy kitten, and a calico kitten. We went back into the cat room,
and the woman who worked there told us about the calico kitten, picked him up
and let me hold him for a bit. During this time, there was a young woman
sitting there, obviously interested in the cat. The employee explained to us
that the woman was interested in the kitten, but basically, they weren’t going
to give the cat to the woman because she said she would be moving to a new
house soon. She told us all of this in front of the woman, while I was holding
the cat that she had obviously already grown attached to. At one point, the
young woman tried to explain that she wasn’t moving for another few months, but
to her that seemed “soon.” It got a little heated for a minute, all the while I
was holding this kitten that all the controversy was about. We said we’d have to think about it, but Jim
was more interested in the shy tabby kitten. Jim followed the employee back to
the lobby, and I put down the calico and told the woman I really had zero
interest in stealing her cat.
Back in the lobby they told us about the shy tabby. A few
days before they had tried to take her out of the crate so someone could play
with her, and she was so skittish that she had ran under a file cabinet and the
couldn’t get her out for hours. Finally, they had to take out the bottom drawer
from the file cabinet and pick her up out from above. We said we would think
about it and they gave us a letter from the former foster parent and we were on
our way.
Jim read the letter to me as we drove home. It said that
although she was very shy, once she got used to a new home, this kitten was
very playful. In her foster home she had played with the other kittens, even
though she was skittish around humans. Jim had already had his mind set on
taking her home, and the fact that she was playful with other kittens made the
decision for us. We agreed that we’d give her a couple more days to get used to
humans in the shelter, and then we’d go back for her.
That weekend the power went out and we had a fire going for
hours just to make sure the pipes didn’t freeze. Why not get out of the house
for a bit? We headed back out to the shelter and got to know our new kitten.
The shelter put her in a fluffy swaddle type bag so we could hold her without
her running away. We pet her for a little while, just long enough to confirm we
were going to fall in love with her. Jim did the paperwork while I did some
cuddling, and then Jim got to cuddle on the drive home while we brainstormed
some new names.
One day and 200 possible names later, we had electricity, a
name, and a decent picture. Our newest member of the family, Sequoia.
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