Things we do for love...

New cat

A few months ago, Kelly and I had much discussion about getting another cat.

I was pretty sure that I didn't want one, and Kelly agreed that we could wait until the end of the year and then talk about it. This didn't stop her from looking at Petfinder.com every few weeks to see what kind of cats were out there and telling me that she really thought we ought to get a cat. It was impractical to get one while we were planning The Thing, so I said "no" and she said "you're right" and then I waited for the cycle to repeat itself.

Last Friday, we went out for dinner in Arlington and Kelly met a cat wandering around on the sidewalk. It wasn't a stray and it was very friendly, so they hung out while we waited for a table. Earlier this week, Kelly came home and said she really wanted a cat again. Because I am pretty much a total doormat in my relationship, I said that if she still felt that way at the end of the week we'd go look at cats.

Today, we drove up to New Hampshire, to the shelter where my in-laws got Rocky (their most recent boxer). We checked out the cats, but didn't see any we really liked. We got lunch and then I asked Kelly if she wanted to swing through Amesbury and go to the place where she had found Maura and Morgan ten years ago. She said okay, so we went. They didn't have all that many short-haired older cats, but they did have a 7-10 year old male cat named Brandon who had been one of about 3 dozen cats they rescued from the home of a crazy cat lady. He was totally overwhelmed by the shelter and had taken to hiding under the sink in the bathroom.

We went into the bathroom and I was able to coax him out of the cabinet. He had curled up in between a whole bunch of cleaning products and didn't really want to come out, so it took a few minutes. Once he got out, he was really cute and friendly and after a few minutes I said "okay, you can have this one" and Kelly said that worked for her.

We had not planned to bring home a cat today. We had figured that if we found one then we'd fill out the paperwork and come back in a few days to pick it up (they call your vet to check up on you and stuff). The shelter was pretty insistent that we take him today if we could so he wouldn't get sick. I went to take another look at him and he was back in the cabinet under the bathroom sink and I said "Kelly, we can't let him stay in that cabinet for a week, it's cruel." The shelter sold cat carriers for only $5, so we bought one and loaded him up and stopped by Petsmart on the way home to get him some basic stuff. He's hiding out in the den now, in a new kitty condo (a real one, not a ghetto condo), and hopefully we can start introducing him to Maura in a few days.

The shelter had named him Brandon. Neither of us thinks that's a great name, so we're debating what to call him. I think we should shorten it to "Brando" and Kelly thinks we may have to name him "Buddy" since that's what I call most male cats (and dogs and small children) anyway. More news on that later.