I wanted to introduce you to our new pal. See, the most ridiculous thing happened the other day - Some people were coming to look at our house (did I mention we're selling it? Apparently we are, since people are looking at it), and they came to me and asked "What's with the noisy cat?" I thought they meant Bonsai, since he's obnoxious, but I went to look, and lo and behold, there was a kitten outside our window just yelling and yelling like he wanted to come in. But we didn't know him. I kinda chased him away a little, but all throughout the day he'd come and yell in our windows.
Later, when more people were looking at the house, I went out in the backyard with them, and the kitten came over and started snuggling up on my legs and wouldn't leave me alone for a second. Eventually, you know how it went. He got to come in (which he was desperate to do), and he absolutely scarfed food faster than I've ever seen a cat do it - he was practically unhinging his jaw to shovel it in. I'm so glad he didn't throw up. We put him out later, but during the night, he yelled some more, and we let him in, and he curled up on our bed. So that was that.
We put up some signs, called the local vet to see if anybody knew anything, but we were okay with his owners not being found (with how starved he was, I have no idea when the last time he saw them was). So now he's our Oliver (get it?). And we have FOUR cats. That's ridiculous. But he needed us. It's funny how much he adopted us - he was never the least bit nervous about us, he just hopped right in. For the first few days, he spent all day in my lap as I worked. Those days he was sleeping almost all the time and eating the rest of the time, so he was obviously doing some heavy recovering. Now he's a lot more like a normal cat, but he still always sleeps on our bed and likes to be around us. You'd think he'd been with us for years. Several times we let him outside to see if he'd run off to wherever he belongs, and he did disappear the first time. Then 10 minutes later, he was yelling at a window on the other side of the house. So he wasn't ready to go anywhere.
The really nice thing is that the other cats don't mind him like they did Bonsai when he arrived. And best of all, he's a playmate/victim for Bonsai to wrestle with, which has really saved the other two. Hard to imagine, but adding another cat has made things more peaceful and made all our cats happier (despite some initial hissing... but not much!).
