Because We Don't Have Enough Fur-Bearing Creatures Around Here...

So now we have another cat.

Ever since Tria wandered off in the middle of the night last September, we have been a one-cat household. Not that this has really meant much in terms of the number of fuzzy creatures floating about the house, with Hazel and Milo lopping about leaving rabbit poop throughout the downstairs all winter. We are up to our eyeballs in fur, which isn't as glamorous as it sounds.

But Mithra has been pretty much on her own for nearly six months now, without feline companionship, and it was causing her to lose what few marbles she started out with. Our previously quiet cat had gotten yappy and rattly, forever searching for – what? Who knows. Maybe just bacon, in which case wasn’t she in for a surprise this weekend?

The girls convinced us to go to the pound on Saturday to see if there were any suitable cats we could take home. The problem with pounds is that there are ALWAYS suitable cats – mounds of them, piles of them, stacked one on top of the other and mewing piteously – and the people who run those places know it.

They were even having a sale.

So we wandered through the place, making faces at the cats and playing with them as much as we dared without incurring the wrath of the staff (“No fingers in the cages!”). One of the cats, a small tabby named Midgie, struck me as particularly friendly, and I called the girls over to see her. They agreed we should give her a try in one of the “greeting rooms” the place has stashed about for people to see if animals will be nice to them before adoption.

Midgie climbed right onto our laps, one after the other, and purred so hard she actually gave herself hiccups. She’s a desperately friendly cat, one who likes nothing so much as to be held and scratched while sitting on you.

We were done.

Kim filed the paperwork while I went home to get the small cat carrier – an antique bamboo shopping basket with “Made In Occupied Japan” stamped on the bottom. After a suitable exchange of cash, Midgie was ours.

She’s been locked in Kim’s office ever since, while Mithra adjusts to the fact that there is another cat in the house again. For all that she liked to play with Tria and really needs companionship during the day when we’re all at work or school, she’s not really a cat for other cats unless she knows them well. So we’re introducing them gradually.

That’s why when Lauren announced this morning that Midgie had gotten out, we were worried. Midgie is about half the size of Mithra. Fortunately she was smart enough to hide in the basement, and Mithra may or may not have even known she was out.

We’re still debating whether to change Midgie’s name – cats don’t come when you call them anyway, so what you name them is a personal preference more than anything utilitarian. Mithra was “Smokey” when we got her from the pound, but that changed when Tabitha – then 5 – began calling her Smokes. We’ll see how it goes this time around.

In the meantime, welcome to the family, Midgie.