Introducing Apricot Marmalade (Part I)

June 9, 2014

It all started last Monday. I got this weird feeling that I should go to the local humane society and volunteer. But I was afraid that if I did so, I'd fall for a totally unsuitable cat, like Max, and end up with all kinds of issues again. Like with Max.

So I resisted. Tuesday the urge was still there. Fine. Every time I'd looked at Petfinder and done a search on male cats with my zip code, the only cats had shown up were from the local humane society and the county shelter (which is where I'd found Max). I decided to just look at Petfinder again. That would show me the cats at the humane society and I could decide from the safety of my house that none of them were suitable and if I still wanted to volunteer, then I'd have some armor, so to speak.

Petfinder somehow, despite my filling out the search fields the same way as before, produced cats from as far away as North Carolina and Georgia shelters, and one of the very first was a cat named Apricot.

Apricot's glamor Petfinder photo

A Maine Coon / domestic long hair mix cat, who is shy and reclusive and doesn't like a lot of noise or activity.

Um. Right. Looks a lot like Pippin, only without the ear tufts and with a funny white stripe up his nose (see it?) And green eyes instead of golden. And sounds a lot like Pippin was when I first got him; a shy, retiring cat who doesn't like a lot of bustle. Except Apricot gets on well with other cats and Pippin never quite knew how he was supposed to react to them.

I resisted sending an inquiry email for about a day. And then I sent it, asking for more details about him. Everything I got in return sounded exactly what I was looking for in a cat. A gamma personality, who isn't going to knock everything over and get into everything and climb on the counters and bite me constantly. 

Pippin had trained me well to respond a certain way to certain overtures, and cats like Max just get confused. Perhaps this cat would be different?

He was small, between 7 and 10 pounds, and older, between 2 and 3 years best guess. He'd been living in the Foothills Humane Society shelter for the last 10 months, save a 3 week period where a family with teenagers had tried to adopt him and then brought him back because he "hid too much." Yes, exactly. I'd probably hide too. 

The adoption coordinator sent me the phone number of the volunteer who had spent the most time with Apricot, even getting him to come down and be on her lap. Her name was Lynn (she agreed to the contact before the coordinator gave me her number) and I talked to her about him Friday night.

I was going to be patient and wait until I could discuss this with my therapist. I didn't tell anybody in my family or friends because there was a lot of other stuff going on and (1) I didn't want to "steal center stage" from the more serious stuff they had, and (2) I didn't want to be overly influenced by what other people thought I should do.

But Saturday I drove the hour to the shelter to at least meet Apricot (and Lynn) and see what Apricot was like in person.