Enter Cato (name chosen! And Fidget Is His Name-o)

Pronounced Kay-toe. His name is Fidget….because that is what he does a lot of!

We went looking for an older female kitty to come share our home with us and ended up with a 4 month old male. Upon the passing of our sweet 20 year old kitties Vinni and Monty – both males, we had to wait a little while to be able to wrap our minds around getting a new kitty. We were thinking just one in residence would be fine as we have always had multiple cats and many greyhounds at our house. We have had females and males in the feline department and decided that for a single cat living here perhaps a female would be the best choice. We wanted an older kitty because we know there are so many older cats out there needing homes, and kittens (we thought) just had a better shot at getting homes than old cats. All the things in mind of what we thought wanted, a few days ago I was looking around on Pet Finder when I spotted a female cat named ‘Pogo’ that so reminded me of the Kilban cats. All she needed were red sneakers on her feet and she’d be the spitting image of his drawings. Pogo was in a shelter that was over 1.5 hours away from our house, quite the drive considering all of the shelters and rescue groups in our area. Still both my husband and I fell in love with Pogo and had a good feeling about her. Saturday mid-morning Mr. Spacial said, ‘let’s go get Pogo’. I hemmed and hawed a bit…was I ready to *do*this yet? Did I really want to drive that far? I had emailed the shelter and also called trying to contact them to see if I could get more information about Pogo and check if she was even still there. (No answer) They are a volunteer group and had very limited adoption hours, if we didn’t just leave and go to where she was, we would miss our chance. So we took off on our quest for Pogo.

We got there in good time, went inside and met with a nice lady who led us to Pogo. Wow – Pogo was a *BIG* girl…but no worries there…maybe a little Light Cat Food would help a little with that and some exercise. We were very excited to go into a little room where the woman left us play with Pogo. Let me say at this point that we are really animal savvy people with both cats and dogs…so Pogo only actually got her teeth into me once…I was faster the rest of the time.

Yep, Pogo did NOT want to be toyed with…that was a girl with an attitude, big time. I won’t go into all of the sorted details…the woman came back in and actually scruffed her and smacked her little nose. Pogo only looked at me with an even more disgusted look – ears completely flattened. I felt awful and was trying to decide if we could get her passed this or not. Finally we just decided due to the fact they didn’t know how she was with dogs (her information said she was good with kids – but I wasn’t buying it at this point), and that we have a 2.5 year old grandson that has 3 kitties and loves them we had to pass on Pogo. I was disheartened as usually my instincts about animals are correct…,that and the fact that we take on and work with any special needs animals all the time. I also couldn’t just let the fact go that she wanted to rip my lips off.

Mr. Spacial said ‘Well are there others like her…but a little more manageable?’ (or something along that line). Of course there were and we ended up seeing a lot of cats here and there, running throughout the place (they were out running free in shifts). We went into this one room to meet a couple of guys (how we ended up looking at males again – the mind boggles), though I do like to say ‘come on boys’ at my house…. ;) Any way, we ended up in a room that had a couple of young males playing and kittens galore. The woman was introducing us to everyone and explaining where every one came from and down in the bottom right crate sat a little squirrely looking guy with sprigs of hair sprouting off him here and there…and even from his ears.

We inquired…his name was Cato. Quiet, bright eyed and the moment you picked him up you could hear him motor purring. ‘Scurrying be damned, scritch me!’ And scritching is what Mr. S did, until he was handed off to me, then I scritched him some more.

The rest is history. Forms all filled out, fees paid the little 4 month old guy road like a champ in his kennel all the way home. He played with his little catnip pillow and chatted with us a little while we drove but couldn’t have been a sweeter little guy the whole way. He spent his night in a large (LARGE) kennel that is used for greyhounds, up in our bedroom sleeping with us (litter box, bed and water enclosed), didn’t hardly make a peep. He is very laid back, but at the same time very curious and loving.

The hounds here are like, whatever, they haven’t paid him a bit of mind, though we are being very cautious of the cat-dog interaction. Been through that a few times successfully. The kitty is a bit leery of the hounds, which is good. Certainly it will take some time for all the adjustments to be made and everyone to be trusted with each other but I think we have a winner! The shelter named this little guy ‘Cato’ but we are not certain yet this will remain his name. We have to make sure it fits him, so a name change *may* occur…or perhaps not. BTW – I was just informed by Mr S that Cato Fidget now owns the lower portion of the house…or so Cato Fidget was telling him. (Update since first posted – we decided on Fidget).

It is a bit curious is the way he took up the very spot where my Monty used to lay on the couch….by or on my head.

He’s such a sweetie, I am not sure how we ended up with him, but he seems to fit in here just fine.