Introducing Piper. (Properly this time.)

I haven’t had a chance to blog much because we adopted a kitten. I know I wrote about her a little in my post the other day, but now I can tell you the whole story and how life is coming about so far with two cats in our place. We had talked about another cat for a while. Our current cat is a little bit cray cray. Okay that is a bit mean, but she really has a screw loose. The Ginger Hunk jokes that she is like a pretty girl in a bar you want to buy a drink for! She’s a super smart white rescue cat. She even writes and has her own Instagram page, but she’s super sketchy around new humans. Always playful with us though, and singing the song of her people at five am, tapping our arms to go for walks and meowing for the laser pointer. When we get home from work, we can hear her HOWLING at the car in desperation for us. It is so cute. So we thought, we just have to try to see how she goes with a mate. With The Ginger Hunk at home and getting bored, it was a somewhat sporadic decision, but we started talking about it more and more.

Then The Ginger Hunk went to Pet Barn who had some RSPCA kitties, and fell in love.

With this.

What we thought at the time, was it was a boy cat. To go with our girl cat. But when they did the scan, she is actually a she, Sally, the 5 month old GIRL rescue cat. If you’re not a cat person, most Ginger cats are boy cats. And by then it was too late. The Ginger Hunk was in love. He’s been going through a rough patch waiting for claims and health and all sorts. So while he is at home, we thought why not. And so Sally (now called Piper) came home with us on Sunday. Originally for a two-week trial, but The Ginger Hunk has decided she is ours. They are madly in love as I said it before. Like I’m madly in love with Sasha.

Apparently to introduce two cats, the slower you go the better things are. They might not end up being best friends (or they might). They have to learn first that they are not in competition for food or love, and eventually they can learn to co-habitat. As Sasha has been queen of the house (and very doted on) this is hard for her to handle. But better than expected. We haven’t had any swipes, just a lot of hissing. (As she does with anyone who comes in to the house actually, we joke that she is our guard cat.) You start to introduce two cats by confining the kitten to a room, and then swapping items between rooms, bedding, pillows and all that, so the cats can smell each other. So we have been going from room to room for the first few days while Sasha get’s used to the smell. At first, Sasha was hissing at the scent of another cat. She seemed a little afraid at first, hissing at the door when she heard the kitten meowing. Once this turns to complacency, then you can let them see each other a little through a gap in the door then occasional supervised visits. Once aggression starts, then you go back a step.

We are at the stage now when we have a little interaction in the day, and through a gap in the door for more lengthy periods. It seems to be going well so far, besides when Piper screams the most long pathetic meows in the land when you lock her in the office for the night. WHERE DO THEY LEARN THIS IN KITTEN SCHOOL? In the morning Piper comes into the bedroom as she is howling her head off then Sasha is howling to get into the bedroom, so I find myself on the couch at 5am sleeping with Sasha while James is inside with the kitten. Aside from that we are trying to keep Sasha’s routine as her usual. At first she was a bit upset, but the last few days she has been waking us up and singing the song of her people as usual.