Some of you may remember my thread on Rosie, a cat who wandered into our yard.
That didn't end well (or it did, depending on your point of view).
Anyway, after buying our house, one of the first things we did was adopt a dog from the humane society here. We got ourselves a lovely Lab/golden mix. Tille is an old girl (10 years), but she's wonderful. Calm, affectionate, obedient, and a lot of fun.
Of course, while we were waiting around to meet Tille, we wandered into the cat rooms. This was a bad idea, given that my wife and I are softies. The upshot of it all is that over a period of a few weeks we adopted two cats, to join the one cat we already had. So now we have three cats and a dog.
One funny fact: they're all female! Add that to my wife and two daughters, and you have a very isolated male in the house (me).![Biggrin]( "Biggrin")
I wish I could say that the cat adoptions went as seamlessly as the dog. We adopted one older cat and and one young one (under 2 years old). The young one is a little crazy, but otherwise fine. She does get outside the house often, and sometimes wanders over to the neighbour's. Nothing serious.
The older cat seemed to adjust well, and she is really affectionate (somewhat of a lap cat), but she doesn't like any of the other cats. They all have their 'areas' in the house, but this led to her getting very stressed and that led to pooping/peeing around the house. We had to stop this, and we considered returning her to the humane society. We got her vet records and found that this was a problem with her over about a decade. She should never have been adopted into a house with other animals and a small kid.
However, I like her, so I decided to give it one more go. I started with placing her in the basement. She immediately seemed to love it. She calmed down, was less stressed and welcomed my wife and I every time we entered the basement. Of course, she wouldn't ever leave it.....for any reason.
Then I started working on acclimatizing her to the other animals. It took a while, but she's now up the point of voluntarily coming out of the basement for short periods of time during the quiet hours of the day. If she feels threatened, she'll retreat to the basement, but she's certainly opening up a bit.
She tolerates our older cat, but really doesn't like the young one. She hisses and growls at her the moment she sees her.
Anyway, it's been interesting, and I wish we had a 'normal' cat, but they're all nice to have around.
That didn't end well (or it did, depending on your point of view).
Anyway, after buying our house, one of the first things we did was adopt a dog from the humane society here. We got ourselves a lovely Lab/golden mix. Tille is an old girl (10 years), but she's wonderful. Calm, affectionate, obedient, and a lot of fun.
Of course, while we were waiting around to meet Tille, we wandered into the cat rooms. This was a bad idea, given that my wife and I are softies. The upshot of it all is that over a period of a few weeks we adopted two cats, to join the one cat we already had. So now we have three cats and a dog.
One funny fact: they're all female! Add that to my wife and two daughters, and you have a very isolated male in the house (me).
I wish I could say that the cat adoptions went as seamlessly as the dog. We adopted one older cat and and one young one (under 2 years old). The young one is a little crazy, but otherwise fine. She does get outside the house often, and sometimes wanders over to the neighbour's. Nothing serious.
The older cat seemed to adjust well, and she is really affectionate (somewhat of a lap cat), but she doesn't like any of the other cats. They all have their 'areas' in the house, but this led to her getting very stressed and that led to pooping/peeing around the house. We had to stop this, and we considered returning her to the humane society. We got her vet records and found that this was a problem with her over about a decade. She should never have been adopted into a house with other animals and a small kid.
However, I like her, so I decided to give it one more go. I started with placing her in the basement. She immediately seemed to love it. She calmed down, was less stressed and welcomed my wife and I every time we entered the basement. Of course, she wouldn't ever leave it.....for any reason.
Then I started working on acclimatizing her to the other animals. It took a while, but she's now up the point of voluntarily coming out of the basement for short periods of time during the quiet hours of the day. If she feels threatened, she'll retreat to the basement, but she's certainly opening up a bit.
She tolerates our older cat, but really doesn't like the young one. She hisses and growls at her the moment she sees her.
Anyway, it's been interesting, and I wish we had a 'normal' cat, but they're all nice to have around.