Kitten Shopping

I know it's only been a few weeks, but Dr J has been an empty shell without a furry animal in her life, so yesterday I managed to bundle her in the car and take her out to Windsor, which is about 50km away on the fringe of Sydney, to visit a cat rescue shelter. It was an idea with noble intent... in that we could rescue a little pussy cat that otherwise wouldn't have had a great life.

The trouble is, the cats at the shelter were all fully grown, and part of the bonding process between humans and their animal friends is being there through the formative years so they can properly take on all of your neuroses.

Sadly, the cats at the shelter, beautiful as they were, were a bit too grown up. I'd actually expected that, and the purpose of the drive wasn't necessarily to find some new friends (Dr J had decided she wanted two), but more to try to ease her into the idea that a new animal is never going to replace Sooty, but will, nevertheless provide companionship and a whole new personality to boss her around, as cats do.

We set off for home, but decided that the 500m we spent on the new tollway wasn't worth the toll so we'd take the alternate route.

...which is where the plan seriously came off the rails.

About a kilometre down Windsor Road past for fork where it joins Old Windsor Road and the freeway, we passed a pet megastore.

We'd just had the discussion about kittens v adolescents, so we thought "let's just wander in and see if they have any kittens. That way we'll have something to compare the cats we've just seen with."

I should have understood how dangerous that might be. Kittens, you see, are irresistable. They're tiny, fluffy, and extremely cute, with huge round eyes and tiny little squeaks when they're trying to meow. And, of course, the very first thing we saw, right at the entrance to the store, was the giant cage with about a dozen of the fluffy buggers in it, climbing all over each other vying for either our attention or the food and water bowls.

"Aaaawww, look! Kittens", we both said.

"They're Bermans, or Berman crosses", said the young shop assistant. "Except for that one." She pointed to a kitten slightly larger than the others, with light in her eyes, an over abundance of legendary feline curiosity, and an athletic ability of Olympic standard. "Just a domestic", she said with classist disdain, as though the lack of one or other parent with the right 'papers' somehow made her inferior. That probably sealed it there and then, and it's just a shame the store assistant didn't understand the psychological manipulation.

Ah well... I guess that's how Dr J eneded up adopting (which is a nice way of saying we paid what seemed like way too much money) the domestic, Scooter, and one of the Berman crosses, Mini, a tiny little thing who seemed the most curious of the other kittens in the enclosure.

And then we got them home.

Oh dear!

Scooter has ADHD. Really. She does... actual, real, attention defitic hyperactivity disorder... which is how she got her name... every few seconds she'd scoot across the loungeroom, or up the stairs, or back down the stairs, or in and out of any one of the dozens of little hidey holes modern decorating can create. Her attention on any one thing in the loungeroom could not be sustained for more than about 5 seconds before something else caught her eye. She approached the task of soaking up the her new surroundings with more enthusiasm than is possible for any human without the assistance of very powerful recreational drugs.

Mini tried ever so hard to keep up, but she's a couple of weeks younger, in cat terms, a very long time, and after an hour or so she was content to just curl up on Dr J and go to sleep, waking every fifteen minutes or so to have another crack at tagging Scooter.

Scooter, in return, would give Mini hell, probably because dear little Min is that week or two younger, and just a little smaller than Miss Scooter, so she's fairly easy pickings. Dr J's Idea was to have this 'happy family', but I suspect she's forgotten that she didn't actually get on much with her brothers and sisters either.

For a few hours last night, the place was chaos. Mini would hide, not hide, attack, roll over in submission, or curl up. Scooter would just do what, we suspect, Scooter will always do, which is to explore, chase, run about, jump on Mini, tackle Mini, stalk Mini, and generally go beserk. Later in the night, she couldn't decide whether to keep running around or curl up and have a sleep, so she draped herself over the arm of the lounge, positioned just right so that she could observe the room, yet comfy enough to doze off every now and then. She only settled when I dimmed the lights, which was a beautiful thing because by bedtime, Dr J could just plonk her in her igloo bed in the laundry with Mini (who'd retired at a much more civilised hour).

This morning, they were curled up together, oblivious to the routine of mornings, but once they were up, the chaos started all over again, only this time, it was daylight outside so they could actually see what was on the other side of the glass. Birds. Given Scooter's hunting practice, I suspect their days of leisurely flying into the courtyard are numbered. That's Ok. They're African Minor Birds, not welcome in our country at all.

I'm not going to get obsessive about writing up their formitive years, but I will post a pic or two of Scooter and Mini in the next couple of days.