shopping for love

[magicicada]

**begin background material***
several months ago, we lost rajah. he was one in a million and cannot be replaced. however, his loss left a big hole in my life. our other cat is wonderful in his own ways, but spends much of his time outdoors and is not as much of a people cat as rajah was. a recent near stray adoption caused me to realize that not only was it time for me to get another cat, but it was well past time.
***end background material***

jeff and sylvia and i have had quite a weekend. on saturday, we headed out to the spca to see what kind of prospects we could find there. we met a sweet dilute calico named melanie. she walked right up to sylvia and jeff was getting along very well with her. however, she has asthma and will need to be on medication for the rest of her life. after dealing with rajah's medical problems, we did not feel up to the challenge.

then we met an exceptionally friendly cat who might have been jester, i'm not sure. however, he was front declawed and with another cat and the possibility of going outside, this would not work.

finally, i kept returning to the convalescent ward with the cats recovering from minor illnesses. i met two fairly snuggly white kitties named snowball and ice who seemed basically good with the idea of coming home with me, but we could not test their reaction to a toddler. we left with the idea that we would check the wake county animal shelter and either find a cat there or return tuesday when snowball and ice would be adoptable again and let them meet sylvia.

saturday night, we went to see _the producers_. now this is broadway series south, so no nathan lane and matthew broderick, but a damn fine cast nonetheless. in fact, checking imdb just to make sure, the part of leo bloom was played by alan ruck who was matthew broderick's co-star in _ferris bueller's day off_. what a small world. anyways, in order to attend this fine, but not child-appropriate entertainment, we left sylvia with a coworker of mine. she volunteered. she has a daughter only six months older than sylvia and we've had a lot of time to talk over our various parenting styles. it was still a bit nervewracking, but sylvia did great and jeff and i had a blast. did i mention the tickets were free? i love my job. i do find it somewhat ironic that it will be terribly important to not start singing the songs at work.

sunday morning i went grocery shopping with sylvia. this gave jeff some downtime as an apology for completely turning his planned schedule upside down this weekend. after an endless interlude of fussing and rescuing groceries thrown from the cart, we were done. ok, it wasn't that awful, but it was exhausting. sylvia agreed as she crashed shortly after we got home. the animal shelter was only open from 1-4, so at 2:30, i peeked in her door to see if she was close to waking. she seemed to be stirring a little so i went into the computer room to ask jeff if i should just go ahead and rouse her. while i'm doing this, she awakens and we are on to cat hunt part deux.

i'm so excited when we arrive at the animal shelter, that i asked jeff if he minded if i run ahead while he's unstrapping sylvia from the car. the layout of the shelter is familiar to me from adopting rumble. so i went right on in to the kitty room. now, we have several parameters that we have been using in our cat selection process:

-not a kitten. in general, it's a good idea to keep kittens away from toddlers. also, rumble is ginormous and while he's not too agressive, we're thinking of cat b's safety here.
-not elderly or with serious medical problems. this is not as selfish as it sounds, as we simply don't have the money for large vet bills. also, i really do not want to lose another cat for a very long time.
-toddler resistent. notice i did not say toddler proof. this needs to be a cat that doesn't freak at the very sight of a small one.
-able to cope in a multi-cat household.
-not part of a pair or pack. yes, we saw many pods of kittens which i just wanted to scoop up and hug and wub but our credit card would never survive the vet bills. that and you get into a whole 'nother order of litter issues with 3 or more cats. sidenote, if you are looking for two drop dead gorgeous orange and white cats that are bonded for life, head straight to the spca. their names are rachel and aldo. one is short hair and one is long hair, but their markings are nearly identical.

so, i've run ahead to the cat room and i'm going past the cages, too young, too young, too young (but damn cute), too young, awwww, still too young and too many. eh, eh, sickly looking and ... hello, you don't look too small. can i take you out of your cage, hmm? the cat in question accepted this move and went into my arms where she stayed. i think i was picking her up as jeff and sylvia came in the door. she purrs, she snuggles and she's not scared of sylvia. jeff was not impressed with her 'play-testing' as she was scared of the toy. that is not too important to me. the 'kittenish' playing cycle only lasts so long and is often paired with a bit of destructiveness. i don't think she's so skittish that she'll be an under-the-bed cat, but she may not have much interest in going outside. i'm telling you, she did not want to be put down. she also enjoyed being held by jeff and climbed on his shoulders the same way 'melanie' did. that was a good strategic move on her part and won her many points. she's the right age, six months old. she's friendly too all and appears to be at least potentially compatible with rumble. she's definitely compatible with sylvia. there is enough hair in our house from rumble that the only possible justification for bringing home another longhair is love.

the only downside? she's not spayed yet and the vet students who do the operations are on vacation leaving the next available slot nov 19th. this is cosmic injustice, but yet-to-be-named kitty is worth it. the lady at the shelter said that we could not take her to our vet as they don't allow cats to leave until they're fixed. i can understand that on one level as it's really easy to say, 'yea we'll fix her' and never bother. however, i'll probably check with our vet just in case he's manage to get kitties out of hock early. she's already got what seems to be the typical kennel cold and i'm not eager to have her catch anything worse. i am trying very hard not to think of the possibility that she may already has something worse that their screening hasn't detected.

after all of this high drama, jeff went off to the workplace to do some catching up that he's been trying to get to all weekend. sylvia and i played outside with the neighbor kids and that in itself would probably make a great story in itself. there were a total of 3 other kids and sylvia was running after all of them, laughing, playing and having a great time. i am so proud of her. after it got darker and cooler we went into make dinner and then i watched tv with her. ok, i know i don't do it often, but it was only a half hr and i was exhausted. jeff came home, we ate dinner, did the bath routine and began vegging in front of our computers.

my new icon is as big a snip as lj will allow. if you want the full image, let me know and i'll email it to you. it's not a great picture as it was taken with a camera phone and she doesn't look very happy. the lighting isn't great and she's in a metal cage at the pound :(. however, not captured by the picture is the little green sticker saying 'application pending'.