It has been an interesting weekend, but also a very productive one. Friday night my wife spent the evening in her office penned up with Josie as we had been doing for the last several nights. Saturday morning we took her to the vet to get a brief checkup and to establish her with the practice. They said that she looks like a very healthy young cat and while there is a bit of a bump where the incision for her surgery was, that this was more or less normal. Young female cats especially are active and stress the muscles around the incision causing some inflammation. We were told to watch it and watch her behavior and if anything strange happened to bring her back in.
Josie was getting bored of being penned up in the office and had become a rather successful escape artist darting out between our legs the moment we opened the office door. On Saturday we more or less just went with it and let her out into the world to roam around and explore. There were some hisses as to be expected but no violent reactions. In fact Josie seemed adorably oblivious to any shade that Kenzie and Mollie were throwing her way. There were a few times where Kenzie was intent on blocking her path and Josie just ran quickly around her like nothing was going on. The one that I have been the most surprised by is Mollie who seems to be having the biggest reaction. All of this time I have attributed the dynamics between Kenzie and Mollie as Kenzie being a bully. However watching Mollie with Josie is making me start to doubt this.
Always in the past Kenzie would try and get close and sniff Mollie… and then Mollie would make the first hostile sounds which would lead to Kenzie reaching over and bopping her on the head. I always sorta took this as Kenzie being the aggressor, but it could just be the Kenzie is big and adorable and doofy and couldn’t figure out why Mollie didn’t want to play. I am not sure if I am ready to attribute all of the malice here to Mollie, but so far Kenzie seems to be relatively chill about this whole thing with occasional bouts of hissing. However there have been long periods where they have both been in near proximity without any sort of violent reaction. The truth is this is going as smoothly as I could possibly hope, because Luna several years back would have horrible clashes with Kenzie and I never knew how much of that was Luna and how much was Kenzie. We eventually had to find her a new home with a lovely lady where she could be part of a single cat home.
Saturday night she went back up to the office for the night, and then after I got breakfast and did the morning tasks I let her out. I fed all three cats in the same room from separate bowls and for the most part that was acceptable. From that point however she was out the entire day, including a period of time when we went out and ran some errands leaving the girls along at home to fend for themselves. For the most part things seem to be smooth, enough so that we opted to leave her out over night. She crawled up with us in bed and slept there the entire night, or at least as entire night as our conscious selves were aware of. I know she tolerated being adjusted several times without getting up as I ran to the restroom around 2 am and she largely ignored that I jostled her. There was a short period of time when I had both Kenzie and Josie side by side on the bed… and while Kenzie hissed and eventually hopped down that was all that came of it.
The major transgression happened Sunday morning however while I was editing AggroChat. Josie had been dragging this cat toy around with her and she drug it into my office because she apparently wanted to be close to me and be able to play with it at the same time. It isn’t like she was trying to bring it to me to play, she just wanted to roll around and attack it while being nearby. Various things happened and it ended up down in the landing along with one of the Kenzie’s hairbands that she loves to play fetch with. My wife decided to toss both up since Kenzie and Josie were sitting a few feet apart near the entrance to our two offices, and Josie completely misread the signal. Both Josie and Kenzie dove for the hairband at roughly the same time… but Josie was a little faster and snagged it running off quickly causing Kenzie to ponder this sequence of events and run away herself. Kenz had this massive “what the hell just happened” look and decided retreat was the best possible course of action.
For now at least I am trying to spend most of my time downstairs on the sofa, so that the other two girls can snuggle in a manner that is “normal” and uninterrupted while Josie roams around and does her thing. While Josie regularly comes to visit, I am trying to choose Kenzie and Mollie time because they are both bonded more closely with me and I don’t want them to view this as some grand betrayal. While they have shown a bit of hissing and minor aggression towards my wife they continue to still be willing to love on me so I am guessing this is working as intended. Tonight I will likely be downstairs on the sofa again playing things remotely through Parsec with my fuzzy blanket and in theory will have Kenzie on my legs and Mollie on my side. At some point Josie will need to learn the joy of the fuzzy blanket, but for now I am trying to remain a sanctuary for our elder girls.
All of that said… things are going as smoothly as possible, and I think we have our cats introduced as well as could be expected. Four days of isolation, two days of partial interaction, 1 day of full interaction and now we are just in seemingly permanent free roam mode.
It sounds like it’s going pretty well despite the random kitty interactions where there may be hostility
I agree with Magi about the soothing aspect. I found myself just staring at the opening picture for ten or fifteen seconds before I scrolled down, my mind in neutral. I think it has something to do with the sheer size of that image, coupled with the way Josie is apparently starign out of the screen right at you.
I’m curious as to why you decided to change her name, particularly when you went with something so similar. Jillian seems like a fair enough name for a cat, certainly comparable to Josie, albeit without the cartoon connection. What was it about “Jillian” that you didn’t like?
I am not sure if I can explain the thought process. Some names feel like they fit the animal and other names don’t. Like Desi, Mac and Toby all were cats we had ages ago that we never changed their name, because it felt like they fit them. Then more recently we had Sasha that I named because I have always loved the name… but then my wife had a student that she hated named that the same year we got her so she never actually got called by that name. She ended up getting the moniker of “Little Shit” because she was into everything constantly as a kitten and it sort stuck. Chloe I am not even sure if she had a name before because we got her as a rescue super young kitten. Allie I know had a name but again we didn’t feel it suited her and neither of us can remember what it used to be. Kenzie didn’t really have a name yet because she was again a found kitten that we rescued. Mollie had a name but it didn’t feel like it fit her so we changed that. Jillian I don’t know… just didn’t seem right and we went back and forth between a bunch of names before we landed on Josie.
To be truthful I am not entirely certain that animals have a clue what their name actually is, but more the way you talk to them which signals the connection.
Kenzie and Molly sound like our George and Milo. There’s only a year between our boys but while George is healthy he’s socially immature and has a slow development compared to a normal cat. He’s 9 years old and still cats like a kitten, taking years to learn how to do something that most cats learn in their first years. Milo is perfectly healthy, normal development and a grumpy old sod. He prefers his solitude and like Kenzie, George doesn’t understand why Milo doesn’t want to play all the time. It leads to some really intense battles and sometimes George is the bully, sometimes Milo is just a grumpy sod who overreacts. We just keep them separated when we’re not around and keep an eye on them when we’re with them.
You might find that once Kenzie warms up to Josie she’ll find her a wonderful play companion and give Molly some space. It’s a good sign that Kenzie chose to retreat in the situation you described rather than cause a fight as it sounds like she doesn’t see her as a threat more just trying to suss out what the new situation is. I look forward to seeing how they all settle in, and of course more pictures of your gorgeous new girl 😉
I don’t know much about cats, but it’s a good sign she wants to sleep on your bed, right? I’m glad things are going well.
You know… there’s something soothing about cat pictures and you blogging about Josie…
Can you rename your blog to “Tales of the Josienaut”? 🙂 At least for April’s Fools? 😀
Jokes aside, lovely post! I really enjoyed this one. I need to dig through your old posts and catch up on the other cats as I’m rather new to your blog, I guess, and as I didn’t know anything about Luna, Chloe, Molly and Kenzie 😀