On Sunday, Brian’s parents and sister brought us a new kitten. He had been abandoned at a vet’s office in early August. They agreed to bottle feed him and then Brian & Laura suggested that we should take him when he was older since we had planned to get another cat to keep Ratzi company anyway. Brian’s family named him Igde, an abbreviation of a much longer native american (cherokee I think?) word meaning “Little One” because he was two ounces when they got him. We’ve changed his name to Linus, although I do sometimes call him Igde when he’s being particularly cute & little. Three points to the first person who figures out how we picked his name.
The change from one cat to two has been interesting. On Sunday, Ratzi spent most of the day in the basement, utterly terrified both of the kitten and of all the people who were at our house. Linus was content to play and sleep on laps in the living room. After the people left and we put the two cats in the same room to get acquainted, there was much hissing. Ratzi was less than thrilled with the kitten.
Linus has his own box, food dishes & bed in our bedroom until he’s big enough to safely navigate the stairs (right now we’re afraid he might fall off the side & get hurt). Sunday night, the plan was for Matt to sleep in the guest room so that Ratzi could still find a person in the middle of the night and I could shut the door to our room to keep the kitten contained. Ratzi doesn’t really have a bed… he sleeps where ever he lands. Linus was supposed to sleep in his bed and I was to sleep in mine. Less than 5 minutes after the lights went out, Linus decided his bed was no good for night time and climbed into bed with me. Linus & I woke up at about 2am & it was all down hill from there. Matt even ended up deciding to take a vacation day. Kittens are much more fun than electrical engineering.
Monday morning Ratzi threw a few more hissy fits but as the day went on he started to be almost playful with Linus. They played a chase game around/under our bed. Ratzi ran around the outside edge trying to find where Linus would try to escape from underneath the bed.
Last night, we tried the same sleeping arrangement and Linus still decided my bed was better than his. It looks like we’re definitely co-sleeping. Today he waited ’til 2:30 to wake me up and I tried my best to ignore him but sometimes it’s hard to do – especially when he’s chewing on my nose!
So far today I don’t think Ratzi has hissed at all… maybe a little bit first thing in the morning. Ratzi has been chasing Linus around the house like a maniac, trying to get Linus to chase him back. Linus still hasn’t caught on. They’re much better about being near each other today, too. I had both cats on the bed for a little while – they were within 3ft of each other and nobody looked mad or scared. Soon we should be able to let them interact at night, but I’m still not sure what we’re going to do about the basement. We don’t want Linus down there yet but Ratzi needs to be able to go down because his food and box are there. Unfortunately, we don’t have a space big enough for his box upstairs or we’d just move it & keep both cats out of the basement for a while.
We’ll have many many more pictures of Linus in the next few weeks. Until then, here’s one that Matt’s dad took on Sunday:
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