2 weeks ago on Tuesday my fiancée and I adopted a cat. Angela the cat is about 10 years old, and moved from one previous owner, into a 6-month stint with an RSPCA foster, and now with us. She had to leave the previous owner because their mental health issues meant they weren't able to properly provide vet care: Angela had had a road accident which had gone untreated and now has permanent ligament damage in her rear legs giving her a strange walk and making it hard for her jump.
This is just some reflections on living with her for the first two and a half weeks. But no cat post would be complete without a cat pic to start us off!
The cat adoption books and information we found on the internet said that she would be scared at moving into a new place and wouldn't want to leave a single room for at least 2 weeks, maybe even months since she's an old cat. But actually, after one night of wailing she's been totally fine with the new house.
We live on a busy road so she has to be an indoors cat—even with access to the back garden we're worried that she'd sloop around and get into traffic. Her adoption profile said this was what she'd prefer anyway, and that she's shown no interest in going outside. This is not true; see the previous picture. She wouldn't be able to handle it very well with her legs, but she still seems intrinsically interested in what's going on out there.
The previous foster also told us that she preferred to keep herself to herself, and didn't really leave her sanctuary room. But now she's settled in she's all over the house and loves to follow us around. We think this might be because she was sharing with two other cats and a dog that she'd didn't get on with before, and now she has the place to herself.
She will absolutely try to persuade each of us that the other has cruelly neglected to feed her. She's constantly telling us her bowl is empty, and trying to walk us towards the treat box. She has an infinite supply of dry cat kibble but doesn't like it very much.
The RSPCA and vet clinics have their own internal bureaucracy that we didn't know how to navigate. We've recently learned that to avoid the staff getting confused and being unable to help us we have to including internal system routing instructions in her name whenever we're asked for it.
Clumping cat litter is much easier to handle than non-clumping.
She doesn't naturally like blankets or huts, preferring to sleep on the bare floor near the radiator. But we're making some progress teaching her that blankets can be warm and cozy too.
She takes quite a lot of attention. Although she's pretty good at letting us work without interrupting, she really wants to play in the evening and will meow until we interact with her.
We love having her in the house 😻. It's incredible how quickly we've bonded with her!
She has decided that, if she's not allowed to eat Kiri the hamster, then she's a bit freaked out by hamsters in general and would rather leave the hamster to her own devices.
