A cat enters the scene

We adopted a cat this week, somewhat impulsively. While Paul and I were strolling in the neighborhood on Thursday, I spotted a sign with a photo of a cute tabby cat. I paused and read the sign, which was not the usual Lost Cat poster:

Rehoming our cat

We are moving and Shinjuku is in need of a new home. Our amazing 11 year old old lady loves snuggles.

It had a number to call if you were interested. I took a photo and a day later, after thinking how awkward it would feel to actually call a stranger, I texted instead. To my surprise, the cat had not yet found a home, and Paul and I arranged to meet her on Sunday morning. The people who were giving her away lived a short walk from us. She seemed healthy, and very sweet, and on our walk home we immediately decided to adopt her. However, we waited a few hours to text back to help the other people feel that we weren't just agreeing because we felt pressured or something.

While Paul and I had been idly talking about adopting a cat ever since we moved into our house, we never quite got organized to actually do it. It seemed like there was so much homework and prerequisites and frankly, an unstated assumption in most cat adoption processes that you have a car and will use it to pick up the cat. Here was a cat, right in the neighborhood, cute as heck, and it needed a home just like ours. So yeah, of course, we said yes.

Getting comfortable #

Shinjuku was pretty shy when we met her, though she did let me pet her just once. Her people warned us multiple times that she was shy, and it might take a while for her to warm up, like maybe weeks, and if it really didn't work out the original shelter (which is no-kill) would be willing to take her back and so forth. So we expect she might be hiding under things for several weeks, and who knew how much longer before she'd sit on a lap or allow a pet. We were ready for an aloof cat roommate who might eventually warm up to us, given time, patience, and lots of bribes.

She spent the first afternoon and evening in the cat carrier she traveled in. Overnight, she found a new place to hide and spent all day there. Throughout the day, I came by and said hello. I started to cook dinner and put on the book I was reading on text-to-speech, which seemed to arouse her curiosity enough to stick her head out a little bit.

Shinjuku begins her campaign of finding the most embarrassingly dusty corners of our house and wedging herself in them.

In the evening, I got her to come out with the lure of some food and a big paper bag. One of her first actions was to head-butt my hand repeatedly and seemingly demand pets. So I did that. She didn't stay out for long, but after that she began making little forays, retreating into her wedge hiding place any time something startled her.

As the evening wore on, she started going out further until finally she came out to the living room and walked by the couch a few times.

Shinjuku emerges from her hiding place for the first time.

Finally, she hopped onto the couch, and then onto my lap, where she walked in circles a bit and then proceeded to lovingly knead my legs with her unsheathed claws until I was sufficiently tenderized, when she finally sat down. I didn't want to break up the magical moment of developing trust and held in my gasps of pain. Paul, learning from my mistake, got a thick blanket and invited the cat to his lap, and that was more comfortable for everyone.

Just over 24 hours since we first got her, and she was already a lap cat. A lap cat that needs to get her nails properly trimmed and maybe some kind of training about keeping her claws in while on the human, if that's a thing you can train cats to do.

Life with cat #

I've never had my own cat so I suppose I was expecting the level of aloofness you get when you visit a friend's cat. That, and the warnings about how extra shy this cat was had me ready for weeks of slow acclimation. Instead, I'm diving directly into cat owner life.

Shinjuku is still getting comfortable and spends a lot of time hiding in her favorite dusty gap, as well as under several other objects she's discovered. I suppose I'll have to get serious about dusting, or she'll do it for me with her body. She's been coming out every evening to hang out and explore, and every morning there are signs she's been active: toys and objects moved about, food eaten, litter box in need of changing. She already jumped onto the highest possible shelf and then cried about it when she neither had the courage to get off nor the willingness to be picked up and taken down. She wants to hang out with people even if she doesn't want anything specific. She meows at us when something is wrong, like that we want to go to sleep before she does or there are coyotes yipping outside. She's an indoor cat mostly because we want to protect birds from her, but also because we want to protect her. But I don't think she understands the coyotes she hears from far off can't come in.

We're figuring it all out, both the humans and the cat. Having a pet cat is wonderful, and I'm glad I decided to text that number.

A cat is the perfect accessory to an overflowing bookshelf.