The Family Grows

Perhaps it was getting tossed from a car, perhaps it was the return to the shelter for a few days, but it soon became apparent that I had a cat with separation anxiety. No matter where I was, she followed. If I left the couch to change a CD on the other side of the room, she joined me. Without fail, 15 minutes before I had to leave the house, Squeak would crawl into my lap and comfortably doze off, causing me endless guilt when I had to move her.

I was renovating the house back then, and preparing to wallpaper a wall above the stairwell. I'd built a scaffold to hold my weight, but fearing my little one might fall off the deepest end, I covered the lot with plywood. I'd left a small hole at the top of the stairs so that I could still get to the basement. It became a game for her. She was nowhere to be found as I squeezed through the gap, wrapping my body carefully around the scaffolding so as not to dislodge any of it. She would wait until my arms disappeared and I was completely defenceless with just my head exposed, then leap at me, gleefully batting me from all angles. I think she loved to hear me scream.

Squeak helped with everything. Painting the kitchen cabinets resulted in a few new colours added to her tail. Ladders were always a curiosity. The air vent had to be explored - much to my horror. She screeched like a banshee when I hauled her out by her tail which was just about to disappear into the bowels of the house with the rest of her!

The following Spring, the routine in our lives changed. The house was renovated, and Betty was about to move in with her six cats. Belle, Minute, Josephine, Lucky, Zoe, and Bunnies each had their own issues. Lucky and Minute were sisters who had been born in the wild. Lucky preferred to hide from most of humanity. Her sister, Minute, was mentally challenged. Belle, a foster kitten, wanted absolutely nothing to do with humans, and little to do with other cats. She did, however, idolize Minute. Zoe, a beautiful Calico foster, was what we called our paranoid schizophrenic. She had her reasons, having been locked in a closet for the first year of her life. Josephine's head had been stepped on by a cow when she was a kitten, and she too was mentally challenged. The evening before she was due to return to the shelter, she had an epileptic seizure, making her virtually unadoptable. Bunnies, the most normal of all, had recently become diabetic.

First came Belle, who was about a year old. Betty brought her over alone, to explore the new digs. What a horrible error in judgement that turned out to be. Squeak's two toned purring had nothing on the wailing that began almost immediately Belle searched for Minute. Unable to do anything to placate her, I had no choice but to listen to her cries. All. Night. Long. The next morning Squeak & I both looked like we'd been on benders. Minute was immediately shipped over.

The rest followed in the days to come. Bunnies, the oldest, immediately took to the new surroundings, and thought the back of the couch was wonderful. Unfortunately her joy was soon dampened by a trip to the vet when Betty accidentally gave her an overdose of insulin. Having spent the night hooked up to an IV at the clinic, Bunnies was not amused.

Squeak was not amused either. Suddenly having to share her house with unwanted cousins really upset her apple cart. Despite the fact that she wasn't the oldest, she did claim the number one spot though. She also grew much larger than we expected. To this day we figure that there must be a touch of Main Coon in her.

Along with the 6 cats, came Betty's dog, Lane. So we were now up to 8 critters, and ready to foster.