introducing...

You'd think I had a kid. Ahh no... but our family did grow by four feet this weekend, when we took in our friend Polly's cat, Stidean. She is divorcing and traveling the country looking for a job. At the moment, this is temporary, since we think she'd like kitty back, but if she finds herself relocated in middle-of-nowhere Alaska or Maine or Arkansas, then I guess we'll be keeping him more permanently.

The biggest concerns were 1) Stidean did not attack Wesley and 2) Stidean and Gabby get along, along with 3) Stidean did not pee all over the place, etc. #1 has been fine... Stidean is quite evasive. Which is hilarious. He is fast and nimble and skinny and all sorts of things that Gabby is not. But #2 has been tougher. At the beginning they both growled and hissed at each other. Now, Gabby is so over it, but Stid is a little more resilient to change and being a meanie still. We've seen him growl her into a corner (a couple times), and he walks by when she's eating then flips out. At one point, Shane was afraid Gabby was afraid to use the litter box because Stidean was in the way. It's kinda been a weird dynamic. #3 has not been a problem, thank goodness.

Plus, he's a crazy cat. He can jump and get into all sorts of stuff Gabby never got in to. He jumps on our furniture and counters (knocking our salt and pepper shakers on the ground and stuff), he chews plastic (like a bag of egg noodles when I left the pantry door open at night), and a combination of the two: he drags bags of cat treats off the countertops and chews through them and eats all the treats. It's really been funny... you know, in ah "oh it's a cat but that does sorta make me mad" way. He also likes doing all these things in the middle of the night, which has been less fun.

Plus, there's more barfing and more litter box poo to clean up.

BUT, today hasn't been so bad. Things are improving. I think he and Gabby are getting along better... here is some photo documentation of how close they've gotten. (I apologize for the weird alien cat eyeball photography.)




Anyway, I like the little guy; I wanna keep him... but Shane really just wants to sleep through the night again. So Polly is staying at a no-cat place in Seattle for the next two weeks, and maybe she'll find a job and she can take him back, or maybe we'll be sick of him and after she's done her time here she can take him with her (although traveling with a cat would be tough), or maybe we're all rainbows and flowers and peace by then and we'll hold on to him. It's all a little fuzzy.

But it's an adventure! He's our new little tenant! Meow!