Jellicle Cat
Saturday, 20 April 2024 09:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtTurns out having little to no executive function available is a bit of a drawback when trying to navigate the surprisingly complicated paths of cat-adoption. It really doesn't help that the adoptions centre of our local SPCA, while animal-friendly and clean and well designed and staffed with lovely, friendly, animal-loving people, is also deeply disorganised.
It took me several weeks to assemble the necessary paperwork - landlord permission, proof of residence (tricky, because I have no utilities bills coming to the house, eventually I used a vet bill) and a form rife with surprisingly personal questions. When I did finally submit everything and actually went out to the cattery and see the available kitties, there were only a handful of cats in the lineup, almost none of them corresponding to the website information. And I spent 20 minutes bonding with two beautiful little tortoiseshells and bounced out to say "them! I'll take them both!", and they'd been claimed by someone else the previous day. There is apparently a system there, but it really isn't administered properly: the website is nicely designed, the cages are lovely, there's a comprehensive info sheet attached to each cage, but half of it isn't filled in, and what is filled in clearly isn't updated with any regularity at all.
I am an extremely good administrator and someone who rejoices in facilitating the harmonious and effective design and implementation of systems. Our local SPCA did violence to my soul.
So in the event, when I'd eliminated the white cats (I cannot do the pink nose/cancer thing again, I honestly can't) and extricated, from three different clueless volunteers, an accurate account of which cats were actually available for adoption, there was only one actual option. The website said she was a year old, the cage sheet said 4 months, and when the SPCA people had uploaded her info to the chip database, it turns out her birthday was 21/09/2023, so she's... (counts on fingers...) nearly seven months old. She had been in the cattery since January and was clearly going stir crazy, and she was affectionate and friendly and playful and there was absolutely no way I was leaving her there.
So, once I'd waited four days for the SPCA to come and do a five-minute home inspection, I brought her home. This is Cirilla.
She has a sort of black cloak-and-hood effect, white legs and feet, black toe-beans (totes adorbs!) and that somewhat piratical white slash across one eye, which caused me to spend three days researching media characters with facial scars. Since I have obsessively played the Witcher video games and read a metric buttload of Witcher fanfic in the last year or two, and she's an amazing character (and doesn't die tragically and early, I learned the Jyn Erso lesson, at least) Ciri was the obvious choice. Bonus: when she's naughty, which is constantly, I can sternly employ the Full Name thing to maximum effect. "Princess Cirilla Fiona Elen Rhiannon, do not climb up the mosquito net!" It's ineffective, but satisfying.
Ciri has settled in very quickly, and has been cuddly and affectionate from the start; she sleeps up next to me at night and is very amenable to being picked up or to sitting on my lap. She's had some sort of mild trauma in early kittenhood because for the first few days any loud noise freaked her completely, I had to stop playing Skyrim because the first time I dragon shouted she hid under the sofa for half an hour. I am breaking her in to the video game thing slowly by playing lots of Stardew Valley, and she seems gradually to be realising that the noises in the TV or tablet are Not Actually Real. She also has a completely weird thing about tissues, or me blowing my nose, just holding a tissue in my hand made her run away at first. We are trying slow, careful introductions: tissue, kitten, kitten, tissue, and then the waiter removes the tissue. Again, she's improving, I can now make tiny elephant trumpeting noises with reasonable impunity.
As I type she's in her favourite morning position, sprawled out on the back of the armchair behind my head. She is a delight, I lucked out completely in the random cat acquisition stakes, and my house is much less empty. All praises to Bast.
It took me several weeks to assemble the necessary paperwork - landlord permission, proof of residence (tricky, because I have no utilities bills coming to the house, eventually I used a vet bill) and a form rife with surprisingly personal questions. When I did finally submit everything and actually went out to the cattery and see the available kitties, there were only a handful of cats in the lineup, almost none of them corresponding to the website information. And I spent 20 minutes bonding with two beautiful little tortoiseshells and bounced out to say "them! I'll take them both!", and they'd been claimed by someone else the previous day. There is apparently a system there, but it really isn't administered properly: the website is nicely designed, the cages are lovely, there's a comprehensive info sheet attached to each cage, but half of it isn't filled in, and what is filled in clearly isn't updated with any regularity at all.
I am an extremely good administrator and someone who rejoices in facilitating the harmonious and effective design and implementation of systems. Our local SPCA did violence to my soul.
So in the event, when I'd eliminated the white cats (I cannot do the pink nose/cancer thing again, I honestly can't) and extricated, from three different clueless volunteers, an accurate account of which cats were actually available for adoption, there was only one actual option. The website said she was a year old, the cage sheet said 4 months, and when the SPCA people had uploaded her info to the chip database, it turns out her birthday was 21/09/2023, so she's... (counts on fingers...) nearly seven months old. She had been in the cattery since January and was clearly going stir crazy, and she was affectionate and friendly and playful and there was absolutely no way I was leaving her there.
So, once I'd waited four days for the SPCA to come and do a five-minute home inspection, I brought her home. This is Cirilla.
She has a sort of black cloak-and-hood effect, white legs and feet, black toe-beans (totes adorbs!) and that somewhat piratical white slash across one eye, which caused me to spend three days researching media characters with facial scars. Since I have obsessively played the Witcher video games and read a metric buttload of Witcher fanfic in the last year or two, and she's an amazing character (and doesn't die tragically and early, I learned the Jyn Erso lesson, at least) Ciri was the obvious choice. Bonus: when she's naughty, which is constantly, I can sternly employ the Full Name thing to maximum effect. "Princess Cirilla Fiona Elen Rhiannon, do not climb up the mosquito net!" It's ineffective, but satisfying.
Ciri has settled in very quickly, and has been cuddly and affectionate from the start; she sleeps up next to me at night and is very amenable to being picked up or to sitting on my lap. She's had some sort of mild trauma in early kittenhood because for the first few days any loud noise freaked her completely, I had to stop playing Skyrim because the first time I dragon shouted she hid under the sofa for half an hour. I am breaking her in to the video game thing slowly by playing lots of Stardew Valley, and she seems gradually to be realising that the noises in the TV or tablet are Not Actually Real. She also has a completely weird thing about tissues, or me blowing my nose, just holding a tissue in my hand made her run away at first. We are trying slow, careful introductions: tissue, kitten, kitten, tissue, and then the waiter removes the tissue. Again, she's improving, I can now make tiny elephant trumpeting noises with reasonable impunity.
As I type she's in her favourite morning position, sprawled out on the back of the armchair behind my head. She is a delight, I lucked out completely in the random cat acquisition stakes, and my house is much less empty. All praises to Bast.
no subject
Date: Sunday, 21 April 2024 12:27 pm (UTC)I have fond memories of having to essentially extort our local shelter to get Pye-dog out. He was a 2 year old hyperactive border collie type who started as an outdoor dog then was trammeled in a series of increasingly restrictive apartments. The shelter didn't want to adopt him to my family because we had a farm and he would have a kennel in the barn, not the house. Any dog that had lived indoors, went their reasoning, was no longer suited to outdoor life and would surely perish. But he was also at the end of an extended grace period, and was about to be declared unadoptable and be perished anyway, so they grudgingly let us have him. He went fifteen years with us.
no subject
Date: Sunday, 21 April 2024 06:07 pm (UTC)I am, I have to say, feeling as though I have Definitely Achieved Things Against The Odds in acquiring her. And I absolutely get the impulse to adopt an animal who wouldn't otherwise have a chance at a home. One of the infuriating things about this SPCA experience was in asking, first off, if they had any older cats who'd been here for a while and weren't likely to be adopted, and getting a blank/confused response, because apparently no-one knew enough about the cats in the cattery to make that determination. Maddening. But at least I rescued Ciri from three months of incarceration. I cannot fathom why no-one had taken her, she's affectionate and adorable. Weird.