Chase

I just realized earlier today that in all my rantings and ravings about our squirrel terrorists (AKA Rufus) and the birds at the feeder, I have failed to share much at all about our actual pets. So, since I am short on material tonight but still feel the desire to post, I will tell you about Chase, our cat and then perhaps later about my fish.

I have mentioned her before in this post around Christmas time so she has not been completely left from my blog but I have not talked about her much...

Let me start by saying that she is one of the sweetest creatures in the world but definitely not the brightest bulb on the tree. I think she must have smoked pot in a previous life (explains her affinity for catnip) because she has no long term memory. If you get on her about something, 10 seconds later, she is back doing exactly the same thing, looking at you like you have never told her no before.

She was abandoned by her previous owners and just started showing up in our yard at our old house about 5 years ago. The reason I know she was abandoned was because she was much too friendly to be feral, and when I did end up having to take her to the cat doctor, she was already fixed. The doctor estimated her age at the time to be about 1 1/2 years. She is at least partially a Maine Coon. The episode at the vet for the first time was before we had actually adopted her. She was injured by a racoon so I took her in but she wasn't ours so they called her "No Name Yet" on her records.

History is that when we adopted her (started feeding her, paying her vet bills and letting her into the house), we already had a cat named Madison that I had had since I was in high school. Maddie was (I had to put her to sleep at 19 years this past summer) a talker. This is because when I got her as a kitten, I always talked to her, so she would talk back. Chase was not a talker, in fact she never meowed at all unless she was scared. Then she would meow this broken meow that only cats that have starved seem to have. Chase was a licker. She licks you to get you to pet her.

Maddie did not like Chase much because Maddie was old and Chase was young but she tolerated her after the initial 6 months of hissing. Maddie was an indoor kitty at this time (used to be outdoor when she was younger). Chase was both. Chase would antagonize Maddie for the fun of it (hang out on the stairs so Maddie couldn't get to the litter box...sneak up on her from behind the couch...etc). Maddie would let Chase have it with claws fully extended.

Chase and Maddie eventually learned to like each other even if they were never close. When one was missing because of the vet or a trip we were on, the other would get very nervous and meow a lot. When Maddie died, Chase became a much more nervous and scared cat (it didn't help that Maddie died only a month or so before we moved across the world).

Now we are settled in our new house, Chase seems to be happy being an indoor cat for the time being, and has become more brave, but she still likes to be in the room with a human as much as possible, and she will howl if we leave the room and she didn't see where we went. Visitors scare her now, when they never did before. She has started talking much more since Maddie died (this might be because I talk to her more too), and she has started bonking her head on things (headbutting) like Maddie used to do. She will sit and headbutt your leg for an hour until you pet her these days. She doesn't lick as much as she used to (which is a good thing) and I am wondering if she doesn't need a friend....hmmm. Thing is, the litter box is so much more managable with only one cat.



Madison










Chase