In my last post, I may have casually mentioned that we have a new buddy. Her name is Zelda, and she is the most awesome little tortie-point Siamese buddy in the world. No, really.
Zelda truly is kind of awesome. She's loving and playful and seems to really like Sean and me. And I think she would like the other buddies, if they could ever get close enough to meet her. It's been the strangest cat-introduction situation I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them.
First of all, she's living in the guest room by herself right now. Well, not really by herself, since Sean and I are taking turns sleeping with her every night, and I spend every waking moment away from work with her and Sean is visiting her multiple times during the day. When I say that she's by herself, what I mean is that she, by design, is not at liberty to commingle with the other buddies yet. You see, there's this whole thing you do when you introduce cats. First, you keep the new kitty to herself in a room. Then you introduce her, after about a week, usually inside a carrier. Then, theoretically, she can come out of the carrier with supervision, then finally she should be okay without supervision. All the while, you rub things on her face (where the scent glands are) and put them with the other buddies, and rub things on their faces and put them where she is. This way, they can learn each others' scents without the extra stress of seeing and hearing each other. This is really to protect the new kitty, because current kitties can get very territorial. And territorial can sometimes mean aggressive.
So we thought it was a little strange when nobody even seemed to notice she was there. There's a closed door, odd sounds and smells emanating from it, and the Big Buddies are spending an awful lot of time in that room, but still nobody seems interested. Everyone is just walking right by. Nothing to see here. Weird.
Until we tried, perhaps misguidedly, to try to speed things up a little. First we tried to introduce her to Otto (Sean's idea). Otto was very interested...in her food. I kept having to redirect him and finally put up the food, and when he actually made eye-contact with Zelda, she promptly hissed at him. We sent him back out.
So then we tried Wanda. Wanda came in (looking concerned, as usual), took one look at the new kitty under the bed, and slunk towards the door. We picked her up, cooing and talking to her, and re-situated her nearer the bed, and this time...she slunk towards the door. We let her out.
So, Wanda, who we've seen take on two of the males at one time and bested them handily, is scared of the new little kitty? This can't be a good sign.
Then today, I tried to get Reggie to meet her, because of the five, he's definitely seemed the most interested. Also, he's the Welcome Wagon. I picked him up, carried him upstairs, and put him outside the door. He started trotting away. I picked him back up and put him in front of the door again, thinking I'm going to open it and let him mosey in. He moseys, all right. Right back down the hallway. When I try to get him again, he starts loping, then galloping down the hall. Honestly, I'm not sure I've ever seen Reggie move so fast. When he gets to our bedroom, he dives under the bed. I peek under there and he's got company: Wanda, Mister and Elroy are all there, too.
This is pretty much the only scenario I didn't envision. I imagined everyone getting all territorial and making the new kitty's life difficult. I imagined Mister and Wanda (in particular) fighting hard for their place in the heart of Big Buddy Girl and taking their frustrations out on the new girl. Instead, there's a monster in the guest bedroom, and the buddies don't like it much. Obviously, because the real-estate under the bed is getting a little scarce, and it's actually a pretty big bed. And everybody looks just the tiniest bit shell-shocked, except for Zelda, who's playing with her ball-in-a-track toy, tossing around toy mice and foil crinkly balls, and diving headfirst onto a blanket on the floor so she can coast across the hardwood floors. Just a moment ago, she was kind enough to try to help me with some of my email correspondence. Zelda is having a grand ole time, all by her own self, while everyone else stews and frets and cowers.
New alpha kitty in the house? I hope not, for Wanda's sake. But this little gal seems even more fearless than Wanda, and you could cut the trepidation in the house with a knife. I think I can stop worrying about Zelda now. She seems to be able to take care of herself just fine.
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