Here's my CSB/TLDR/A2M/Murder Suicide tale.
One or two of you may remember my thread from the old HCAF talking about my cat Sandy being hit by a car. Since then, her sister Sage was acting all lonely - staring out of windows, going completely crazy with excitement when we (me and Hannah) got back from work as if she'd been totally bored at being on her own etc. She'd stopped going outside too. So after about 4 weeks we decided she needed a friend - a roll of the dice considering how hard it is to predict whether cats will actually get on.
But we did it anyway because we're callous, idiotic fools. We went to a Cats Protection place and I fell in love with about a thousand cats and kittens. So 2 weeks ago we brought a 9 month old kitten called Nina home. She was quite timid and obviously hated being in the cat place. She missed her mother and sister who had both been adopted already. We thought there'd be more of a chance of her getting on with Sage than if we brought a confident, full on cat back.
To start with it didn't make a difference. We kept Nina in the spare room to keep them apart, and any time we opened the door and accidentally let them make eye contact Sage would hiss and growl like a revving moped (Americans call them scooters iirc?). Sage would even hiss and run away if she smelled Nina on our hands!
Meanwhile, Nina started out totally terrified. The drive from the cat place spooked her and she stayed in her cage for hours after we got home. Any time we went in the room she'd just stare at us with unblinking eyes.Eventually, I pretended to fall asleep on the floor with my hand resting at the open front of the cage. After 45 minutes, she started to sniff and I stroked the back of her neck softly. No, this isn't turning into pron.
The transformation was insane. Within 2 minutes I had a little purring monster on my hands who was falling over herself to lick me. Cutest fucking thing ever. BUT - any time I left the room and came back she'd go into fear mode until I'd coaxed her out of her shell. After a week, once Sage had stopped reacting badly to Nina's scent and Nina got more confident around us, we started letting her out of the room. Much hissing, growling and fleeing in terror/ hiding behind the sofa followed. After a few days of that I was beginning to think we'd made a terrible mistake. Then one morning we woke up to find this:
Both of them, chilling on the bed and purring (Sage left, Nina right). That was Friday morning and since then we've still had a bit of growling when Sage gets possessive over a toy/ place/ person but other than that they've been playing together, sleeping in the same room, chasing each other about and having fun.
We've had Nina two weeks today and I can't believe she's the same cat we brought home. When we go to bed she jumps up onto us and rolls about purring - even if we're not paying her any attention, she's obviously just so happy to have a family again. Makes me feel pretty damn good.
And she's a fucking boss at catching things - a toy mouse-seeking missile. Hopefully she'll take up Sandy's task of catching flies in the summer.I'm sure there's all kinds of things waiting to go wrong but for now I'm gonna declare this to be a Flawless Victory.
Just for completeness here's a picture of our ghost cat Sandy who we still miss lots. She's soaking wet here and had just had a little fight judging by the scratch on her nose but that's how she liked it.
I missed that one totally!
