BerthaBlog

She’s feeling a bit less jumpy, although yesterday she suffered a setback when I vacuumed around her litter pan. She didn’t mind when I vacuumed the carpet, but when I brought the noisy horrible thing over into her little sanctuary she had no “safe” place to retreat to. She ran into the basement and hid for hours, until I got worried about her and rousted her out.

I’ve been e-mailing the local shelters. My first choice, Safe Haven for Cats, is completely full and their waiting list is so long that they’re not currently accepting new names for it. I’ve been contacting other no-kill shelters in the area, although naturally they tend to be full because, well, they keep ’em until they’re adopted. I’d like to avoid taking her to the SPCA; I know they do their best to avoid euthanizing the critters, but someone has to take all the animals that the no-kill shelters turn away, and resources are finite. Chances are the cat would be adopted, as she’s young and personable, but I don’t want to take the chance if I don’t have to.

Yesterday I also ran across a page describing the reasons you should never offer a pet as “free to good home.” After that I was rather depressed and didn’t want to contact anyone else about taking her. Man, people can suck sometimes.

On the multi-cat front, this morning when Phurball passed a couple of feet away from the new cat, she didn’t put her ears back or hiss at him. She continues to lurk around in the den; she doesn’t like to come into the living room. Her aversion seems to start at the line between the hardwood floor and the carpeting. I don’t know if she’s just decided the hardwood area is “safe,” or if she’s had bad experiences in the past that she associates with carpeted floors. I wish she’d quit flinching when we go to pet her, it makes me feel like an ogre.

We’ve put up flyers, we’ve notified the SPCA and the animal control agency, we’ve put an ad in the local newspaper. I can’t help but think that anyone who was seriously trying to find this cat would have called us by now. I’m beginning to think it’s the age-old story of the unwed teen mother: she got herself knocked up, and her family kicked her out to fend for herself.

Last night my husband said, “If you want to keep it a secret that she might be pregnant, you shouldn’t post it to your blog.”

At this point Phurball is pretty much trying to go about his daily business and ignore her presence. This isn’t always easy, as whenever they happen to pass within six feet of each other she begins to growl and hiss at him. I suspect he is the first cat she has ever seen who wasn’t a member of her immediate family. This morning Phurball headed into the kitchen for a drink, and was pulled up short by this annoying little upstart growling at him. He looked more exhasperated than anything else.

I said, “Quit it,” and gave her a small squirt from the Bad Kitty bottle. She jumped and trotted back over to the fireplace. I think if cats were capable of rolling their eyes, Phurball would have done so as he continued to his water dish.