Retrospective: Pippin and Tiger

Tiger was a dignified cat. She was the sort of dignified that required several pounds of being overweight and a stately walk to go with it. She was not about to lower herself to spats with any kitten, no matter how indignant she was about his arrival.

Her old bones liked lots of cushioning.

Because, since I didn't know any better, their introduction consisted of me putting Pippin down in the room and letting Tiger deal with the new kitten as she would. I was lucky Tiger was old and stately and dignified, or I probably would have had a cat fight on my hands at some point.

Watching

I wasn't completely ignorant, though. I didn't force the issue, or plop Pippin down right in front of her. I gave her the room to ignore him if she wanted to (and yes, she wanted to very much). But even a crotchety fourteen year old cat couldn't completely quell her curiosity, so she watched him. From around corners, and in this case, over a pillow.

On rare occasion she got closer to him as long as there was a barrier in the way. Here they are on a corner bookshelf that became a regular mediator between them.

Little Mr. Adorable

She has her doubts

A month later they had reached an agreement. It was along the lines of "if you let me alone I'll let you alone." The worst she ever did was hiss at him.

Tiger realizes he's on the shelf above her

Intolerable. She will leave.

Pippin tries to be helpful and leave first

Tiger didn't realize how much she'd gotten used to him until he disappeared. She and I and he all went to the vet one Monday morning. Tiger went because she had a funny solid nodule on her back, and what with Pizza dying of cancer earlier that year, I was freaked out about anything even the slightest bit odd. (It turned out to be an "indoor" pimple, the kind that form under the skin instead of mostly above it.) Pippin went because it was time to have his fatherly ambitions curtailed. I went because neither of them could drive a car.

It's interesting to me that I don't remember how I brought them. I only had one cat carrier because Tiger and Pizza always shared one--they took comfort from each other's presence. I know that a little later I put Pippin and Tiger both in harnesses. I think this time I must have had Tiger in the carrier and Pippin on a harness, because I couldn't put the two of them in the same carrier, and I would have gone with what Tiger was familiar with to help with reassuring her.

When later I put Tiger in a harness, she amazingly went from a cat who meowed every ten seconds in the car on the way to the vet to a cat who rode in the front seat and didn't say a word. I think, although it's not like she could tell me for sure, that she got carsick in the confines of the carrier, and when she could look around at long distances, she didn't feel sick to her stomach. Like a human that doesn't get carsick as long as they can look out the front window. She had never thrown up in the car, so obviously it wasn't that bad, just bad enough she complained about it. She wasn't meowing because she knew she was going to the vet's office: she liked the vet's office because everyone fussed over her and said she looked so pretty.

In any case, this first co-visit to the vet resulted in me taking Tiger home without Pippin, since he had to stay there all day for his surgery. I'd taken the day off work, and during the middle of the day I took my car to get its spare tire fixed.

Mom told me that while I was gone, Tiger went prowling through the house, crying. Mom checked food (always an important thing to Tiger) but there was plenty. Litter wasn't too dirty, water was fine. Mom couldn't figure out what Tiger was upset about. And then she got a strange idea, and she said to Tiger, (not really expecting this to be what was wrong, but she'd tried everything else), "Don't worry, she'll bring him back this afternoon. He'll be back, don't worry about him."

And Tiger immediately shut up and settled down to wait.

When I brought Pippin home that evening, I was amazed at the change in Tiger. She didn't hiss at him. She even slept with him (although not in a pile, but that could simply have been Pippin's preference. He got so hot that he preferred not to sleep against anybody.)

I couldn't believe my eyes!

And she played with him. Not full-contact games, of course. You must keep in mind her dignity. But other games. When I was on my bed, watching tv, the two of them would be with me. Tiger would be on my lap, facing toward my knees, and Pippin would be on his back, against my side, with my arm curled around him. I would be lying mostly flat. Pippin was fascinated by her short little tail. It wasn't short, not really, but to him it was, since his tail was as long as he was. And Tiger would flip her tail over into his lap, under his front paws, and allow him to pat at it with his paws.

When she got tired of having her tail played with, she'd flip it over to the other side where he couldn't reach. Only one time she was lazy, and instead of actually moving her tail, she turned her head and hissed at him to stop playing with it. He froze, his paws right above her tail, and his paws were twitching almost imperceptibly as he tried with all his kitten brain to obey her and not play with it, but he just .... couldn't .... quite .... manage ...

I reached down and flipped her tail to the other side, saying in a mild scolding tone, "Now, Tiger, that was just mean. He's a kitten, how do you expect him to resist a temptation like that?" I never knew how much she understood of English, but I do know she never did that to him again.

Another game they played was King of the Hill. I had a bookshelf and a desk back to back (I was living in a large basement room with enough furniture to furnish a house. I know because when I did buy a house, the furniture I had fit quite nicely into it without a lot of room left over!). The bookshelf had another small bookshelf on it. The desk was a rollback. So Pippin had to learn to climb up the rollback or jump up onto the small bookshelf from the large one.

This meant that for weeks, Tiger could get up on the highest point (the small bookshelf) and mock him. You may remember he wasn't the most coordinated of kittens, and jumping and scrabbling for a hold wasn't exactly in his repertoire at first. 

He learned, quickly, by watching how she did it. And finally, he got to be King of the Hill! Tiger pretended she didn't care. She pretended very dramatically and projected quite a lot of indignant annoyance, in order to make his victory more satisfactory. Tiger did actually have a kind streak to her. You just had to realize she wasn't going to express it in an obvious way!

Finally, Pippin gets to be King of the Hill!

Upstairs they slept as double-decker cats on my mom's chair. Pippin didn't know it, of course, but this was how Tiger and Pizza slept on this chair: Tiger on top, Pizza in the chair. Perhaps Tiger felt that things had come full circle and that life was okay again. Pippin was different, of course, a kitten and annoying as kittens are, but perhaps not so annoying that one couldn't be happy to have him around.

Everything is as it should be