Sunday, 6/26/05

Finally, as promised, we have pictures of our new little girl.   I'd wanted (and, hopefully, Nora did, too) to get another cat, so we could have the magic "3" again.

We didn't exactly have a timetable, but I started to think that maybe looking for one during "Kitten Season" would be nice.  Plus, there'd be lots of selection.  I was thinking of a calico cat, for lot of color in the house, since most of our cats have been either black, grey or white (or a combination thereof).  But then, I realized that if we wanted the "right cat", it shouldn't matter what color it was.

One way we thought would help our search was to adopt one that came from a foster home.  We'd helped two of Nora's sisters adopt a couple of foatered kittens, and they were so well-behaved that we thought that might be the way to go next time (provided one didn't get presented to us, like Loki, Merlin and Dmitri were).

So, anyway, I started looking at listings at Petfinder.com.  It's a great website that brings animal shelters in your region to you.  Anyway, I saw this one kitten that had apparently only been listed the day before, and asked Nora what she thought about a Flamepoint Siamese-mix.  Since she'd had a Siamese when she was younger, and Merlin is half-Siamese, we thought - what the heck? - let's put in an application.

"Salsa", at around 6 weeks

One of the clinchers for our application (ours was apparently the first) was I sent along links to our pages for our cats on our website, Casa Mai.  In fact, the Placement Coordinator liked what she saw of our "virtual home" so much that she didn't even require a home visit after the kitten was adopted.

So now, after much deliberation, we have decided to re-name her "Kioko", which is Japanese for "happy child" and/or "meets the world with happiness", which pretty much describes her personality.  She's very friendly, loves people, and likes the boys.

Amazingly, Merlin has been very accepting of her so far (much to our relief and hopes!).   As of  Sunday, she was pretty much given free-reign of the house, so long as she doesn't insist on playing with tail.  Loki, on the other hand, we weren't too sure of, at first.  He growled and hissed a lot, and he's still doing it when she comes near him, but I think she's starting to wear him down and he may start getting the idea that she might be fun to play with.  But for now, girls still have "cooties".

We'll keep her sequestered in the basement bathroom for another week.  Then, we'll see whether she can be let out overnight over a weekend, where we don't have to go to work the next day.  That way, if she wakes us up, we'll just put her back in her room for the rest of the night.