Max Goes to Live With My Brother and His Family

Friday night last week, I packed up all Max's things. To help him get settled in, I put all his favorite stuffed toys into the carrier along with the two towels: the one he'd been sitting on all week and the one I'd been sitting on all week. Scent is very important to a cat's comfort level, so this gave him both his person's scent and his own, since he was going to a place where he had neither established.

This meant he was rather crammed in his carrier, as it was too small to begin with. However, he made no sound on the way up (my brother lives on the side of what we call here a mountain but what someone in the West would call, with derision, a foothill) to my brother's house.

I also brought his favorite cat tree, since it was the smallest one and I could actually move it. Why that became his favorite cat tree I shall never know, because he dripped off of all four corners of the perch, and made it rock something alarming when he launched off it or landed on it. But that was the favored perch, not the big tree which also had a window to look out of and at least didn't act like it was going to fall over every time he jumped on it.

And his treats, and his food, and his food dispenser (since Max has a slight problem with bolting his food and then unbolting it onto the floor if you give him lots all at once). And his horizontal scratcher as all Chuck & Dawn's cats are vertical scratchers so they didn't have any horizontal ones.

Never let it be said that I sent Max off destitute! I felt like I was packing for moving house. Which in a way, I guess I was.

First we took all the stuff inside. They have a sunroom, windows all around, that is cat central. Well, that was going to be Max central for a while, and the other cats were locked out of it. Then we took Max in the carrier into the house and put him (still in the carrier) on the kitchen floor so the resident cats could come see.

On the way into the house, Circle-Tail (the brindle boxidor mix dog) escorted Max and I very enthusiastically. Max was not enthusiastic about this large four-legged sniffy creature and hissed very indignantly at him. Circle-Tail is used to be hissed at when he gets too close to the cats, so it didn't phase him at all. He's a very happy dog and nothing much phases him, quite honestly. He was shut out of the kitchen for the feline inspection parade, however. Let's not add too much complication to this mess.

Fat Mama (who if she sits down in boat mode and you look at her from above, is quite literally square, thus the nickname) is a very laid back cat. Not much bothers her for long. She gave the carrier a sniff and a perfunctory hiss, backed off, and simply watched the proceedings.

Nubbins is the elderly kitty of the family. Nubbins would love to be an only cat with only Chuck. She puts up with the other cats (who were introduced to her when they first came into the family--she's the original). So it wasn't with much surprise that we watched her come up to the carrier, ascertain a cat inside and a stranger at that, growl violently at the carrier and then stalk off into the recesses of the house. Basically if Max lets her alone she will let him alone. Nubbins is a Manx mix and as such, is far more likely to growl where most cats hiss.

It's Nixie Cat that we all anticipated being the problem. She's the youngest, the most active, and the most territorial of the three. She did not disappoint. Not only was there much hissing, but she had to go be soothed by Fat Mama (who is also her biological mother, and no, no more kittens will come from Fat Mama--my brother and sister-in-law know better and had her spayed after she had her kittens since she was already pregnant when they rescued her). And after the soothing there came more hissing. Nixie Cat is Dawn's cat, and so Dawn came in for her share of accusatory looks from Nixie Cat.

Then we took the carrier into the sunroom (leaving all the other cats behind) and opened the end.

Max emerges and instantly begins to investigate

Max was allowed to investigate to his heart's content. This mainly meant a brief round of the room, finding the things that were "his" from before (see the plastic bag on the floor? He likes to sit on plastic bags. That's the one that was his to sit on in my kitchen. I brought that and the cardboard slice, too.)

He was a very brave cat, but he discovered the litter box enclosure Chuck built, where it's a wooden box that's bi-level, with the litterbox on the second level, and the cat has to go around and up to get there. The around part gave Max a place to hide, which, after all he'd been through, he decided was not a bad thing.

So we left him hiding and I went home. I missed the way he'd greet me when I'd come in my door, all happy and wanting to be petted--but I didn't miss the part where five minutes into the happy petting and ear scratching session he'd remember I'd been gone all day and he was irritated with me for being gone all day, and would promptly bite me.

Next post: Saturday