Everybody say hello to our new cat, Octavia.
I know this is not a very good picture, but it's the only one I have because immediately after this, she made a break for the guest room and has been hiding under the bed ever since. That was Sunday evening and today is Friday, so you do the math. And actually, she is only a new cat int he sense that we are only recently acquainted. She is 12 years old, to be mathematically exact. So she is an old lady cat, but I'm an old lady man, so that seems like an OK match.
I understand the poor thing being freaked out. She was leading a pretty sweet life in Cat Jail when I swooped in and dragged her off to my evil, if attractively decorated, lair. For all she knows I am a monster. So I'm trying to be patient and let her acclimate at her own time.
Diane von Austinburg, who knows all about kitties, offered the very sensible suggestion that I should hang out in the same room as Octavia but without forcing myself on her. So that's what I'm doing, I hope in this way she gets more accustomed to me and will eventually be my little friend.
Her life before Cat Jail does not seem to have been all roses. The Cat Jailers report that when she came in, she had such bad flea infestation she had wound up with anemia and she had a urinary tract infection, which is fairly common among old female kitties. In fact, it's not rare among old females, period. Apparently, her owners decided to surrender her (for euthanasia!) rather than pay for the antibiotics for the infection. I am honestly not judging them, times are tough and vet bills can fall pretty far down on the list of expenses a family has to deal with. I'm just glad the San Francisco Animal Care and Control, which is Cat Jail's real name, saved her and cleaned up all her medical issues in time to hand her over to me.
So here we are, Octavia and me, hangin in the guest room. I have to say, it's not a bad place to wind up. I almost never spend time in here to the point that I think of it as "Diane's room." Apparently so does Diane, but we may now have to adjust that to "Octavia's room." Sorry Diane.
Scenes from a guest room:
Speaking of pussies: