In the last post I said that the dog was fine with the cat. This is an understatement. Sebastian loves cats and has virtually raised three of them himself. Ajax is a four and a half month old male kitten from the Humane Society. We went just to look yesterday and while we were there Ajax’s foster mother TJ brought him in. I heard her say his name and immediately thought he deserved a look. He’s a black domestic longhair with tufted ears. He loves to be held, he has lived well with two dogs; he is playful and is a people cat. He is also second only to Achilles in prowess on the battlefield.

Since the loss of Jake when R moved on and Bozo with M.B.’s departure Bastian has lost two good cat friends and playmates. I guess Gretchen and Juniper were his other cats, but they were not dog fans and generally clawed his nose up. I shouldn’t forget Gracie, Joey and Kitty Third Try; all of whom lived around Sebastian for varying lengths of time and exhibited a range of tolerance, indifference and fear. Jake and Bozo both treated Sebastian as a playmate and would engage in all manner of grooming and play with him.

Jes and I had noticed in just the few short weeks that we’d been here that with nothing to chase and play with and no stairs to climb up and down Bastian had been moving both more slowly and more stiffly. He is twelve after all. The cat has only been here one day and already Bastian is ten times more active. With both of us resuming work next week we still have time to supervise the development of their companionship before we descend into our respective schedules. They will have each other, the mailman, and the fish when we aren’t around.

The story of getting the cat is something of an epic. We ran into a bureaucratic snag as we are renters and couldn’t get in contact with our landlord. Kathy, the landlord, had already approved the cat and we got her mother to call and say so. Kathy works in a call center and so could not be reached for final approval. The word of the mother was not good enough for the adoption supervisor, nor was a copy of the lease outlining the policy. She decided for whatever reason that she did not want us to have this cat.

We spent several hours there, first trying to get in contact with the landlord and then simply attempting to stake our claim to the cat through the adoption window by simply keeping it with us. At one point it looked like we were just going to have to stay there until they closed and get the landlord to call in when she got off work later that night. They do not hold pets for any reason and this is the sort of cat that would not stay long. They wouldn’t let us pay the fee, they wouldn’t let us speak to a supervisor, they wouldn’t let us have Jes mom adopt the cat. It was a panorama of festive no.

Eventually TJ, the foster mom who met us when she first brought in the cat, discovered what was happening and got a big boss involved – who apologized profusely for the behavior of the petty tyrant and adopted Ajax to us quite speedily. To give you a sense of the drama, at one point our obstructionist took the cat from us and locked it up so she could go clean rabbit cages in another part of the building. None of the other cats were locked up. She was afraid we were going to try and steal him. She was something of a Nazi. It’s odd behavior when your mission is to adopt pets to good homes. She tried several times to get rid of us. Perhaps she wanted the cat herself or her bizarre cult frowns on longhaired intellectuals. In any case her plans were foiled and we have a lovely, crazy, snuggly cat to bless you with sneezes when you come over.

Vanessa: you do not warm mouse babies in the microwave. You just let them thaw overnight. The snake is very small and will not bother you at all.