6 May 2008

Huh?...

A SUDDEN GROWTH SPURT
Our household grew by 8 feet over the weekend. The avowed and card-carrying member of the "I Really, REALLY Hate Cats Society" is responsible for the sudden addition of two more cats into our household. Obviously when she said "After Pixel dies there will not be any more cats", Jennie failed to take into account the provision for what might happen before Pixel died, which is where the faecal finger of fate steps in to mess with my head once more. To summarise the rest of the following blog post, after the weekend passed our complement of cats, from youngest to oldest, now reads as follows:
  • A 5 month old female tabby named "Trudy", which is short for "Intruder";
  • A 15 month old male Burmese named "Koda", which is short for "Takoda" and is supposed to mean "Friendship" or some such, and
  • A 10 year old female tortoise shell named "Pixel", which appears to be short for "Nose permanently out of place and you're all going to pay ... In your sleep."
It began last Tuesday afternoon when I got an email from Jennie saying that she wanted to adopt Koda from a family who couldn't keep him any more (allergies to animal hair). Being more than allergic to rampant insanity, I tried talking her out of it - I thought that the last thing that we needed right now was another animal, and Jennie said flat-out that she was going to use the additional cat as an excuse to get another dog in the not-too-distant future - thereby showing the additional cal to be merely the thin edge of the wedge. We've been having this on again, off again argument about the addition of a second dog to our household since about 3 or 4 minutes after we agreed to get the first dog, and there was no way I was going to leave myself open to losing that particular argument now. So, in my mind, no extra cat, and that was that. (Or so I deluded myself into thinking).

It was only after I had resigned myself to the fact that Koda was moving in that Little Miss Pushy, a.k.a the soon to be named Trudy, propped on our doorstep on Saturday night looking for a feed, a bed for the night and a ludicrously soft touch. Lucky for her she found Mrs Pushy, and made arrangements to move in with us... But only after I had walked to every other occupied house in our estate late at night with that cat in my arms asking if the occupants had managed to lose a cat recently. The easy way out, also known as Plan A, was denied to me. Every single person I spoke to on the estate either had a full complement of cats already or were militantly opposed to the idea of adopting the spare one that I had. Plan B, phoning the council to arrange for a collection of the misplaced cat, turned out to be a bust as the local council doesn't collect cats at all. Time for Plan C! Plan C involved dropping the cat off at the local vet, who would then arrange for the cat to be picked up by the local council later that day (Why we couldn't have the cat collected directly by the council, thereby cutting out the middle-man, is forever a mystery).

When Jennie was informed that Little Miss Pushy's chances of a successful adoption were virtually nil (despite being illegally cute in a built up area), she was adamant that we were going to follow Plan D and adopt Little Miss Pushy, and "suggested" that I start thinking of a suitable name. Luckily for me the 2 hour car trip to adopt the other cat (Remember the email I received on Tuesday?) provided me with ample time to work on something appropriate. The real bummer of that was that I came up with a suitable name after about 15 minutes...

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Now playing: Nightwish - End Of All Hope
via FoxyTunes

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I WANT PICTURES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(and yes i am finding this whole saga incredibly amusing - particularly when i got a call from Jen asking "is it normal for cats to hiss?")