The New Cats

When our old cat Sadie Pearl died last year at almost 18 years of age, our 10-year-old, Rowan, was lonely and bored. My husband wanted to get another lady cat so we asked our handyman to be on the lookout for likely candidates at his farm, where most of our cats were born. Sometime in May, he started describing a litter of three kittens that were living there with their mother. Even though they were very young, he urged us to take one right away because he was afraid they might be killed by a predator. (Our cat Rowan was orphaned when his family disappeared under mysterious circumstances. He was adopted by the kind people at the farm, later by us.)

We arrived at the vet with a beautiful little tiger and white kitten and the vet’s assistant, a cat expert, said, “It’s a boy.” However, she just happened to have a female kitten, a feral cat one week older than ours, that might be a suitable friend for him. So we ended up with Max and Bella. The picture of the cats when they were small illustrates their personalities: Max looks straight at you, ready to take on any challenge; Bella tilts her chin up dreamily, like a medieval saint awaiting guidance from Heaven.

During the first few days, I wasn’t sure that we should keep Bella. She seemed slow, almost lethargic, and her hygiene left something to be desired; her little face was often smudged with food. The vet’s assistant then explained that she was a litter of one (very rare) and had been living alone with her mother in a garage, essentially a sensory deprivation capsule. Max was born into the rich environment of a farm with other cats, horses, and cows, along with plants and farm buildings to explore. 

Max is not only masculine but a super-male: full of muscle and bravado. Smart and athletic, he is constantly seeking out new challenges for himself. All of our kittens have had to learn about gravity the hard way, by venturing under the railing around the second floor stairwell and falling to the landing about 10 feet below. For the others, once was enough, but Max has repeated the experience because he wanted to learn how to walk along the railing, a skill that none of our other cats ever mastered. 

For the first months of her life, Bella remained a kind of slow, dreamy moonchild of a cat but sometime after she was spayed she seemed to become more energetic and more focused. She and Max have always play-wrestled but now she sometimes chased him. Sometimes she tries to get Rowan to play with her, by rolling on her back in front of him and making little chirping noises. Usually, he considers this beneath him and walks away, though he sometimes play-wrestles with Max.

When the kittens first came, Rowan was horrified. He seemed to feel that these were not cats but alien beings introduced into his home. Over the next weeks, though, he came to enjoy watching their antics and gradually to interact with them directly. Sadie Pearl, his previous companion, had not been much of a role model in this respect. Like many lady cats, she was rather a diva. The new cats, though, are both friendly, playful, and easy-going, a welcome diversion for an older gentleman cat.