Adventures of Apollo the Ill-Mannered Cat: 2012

Sorry about the drastic amount of time since the last posting. I kinda forgot this page existed for a bit... my bad. But anyways, I have exciting news - we have a new kitten! His name is Linus, and he's a dark brown/tan tabby. He's three months old, and has enough energy to power a jet engine, if you could ever figure out the conversion rate for that. It may not have been the ideal companion choice for the giant framed 2 year old Apollo, but little Linus was at the vet's office, was extremely adorable, and needed a home.

Here's the full story. Apollo needed some kitty shots, so we set up an appointment at a random vet's office. His last vet is quite far away, and generally cats do not enjoy 2.5 hour round trip car rides. So I chose the nearest one to the apartment. We loaded him up and brought him in, and were immediately given a cute overload when we realized that in the crate in the waiting room was three bitty kittens staring us down. We had been considering getting another kitty for awhile, and seeing those little poofballs made up our mind right then and there. And to make it even more awesome, the kittens there were brought in by a feral cat rescue group, so without the awesome crew that did this, Linus would be a stray kitten somewhere out in the scary world of the Chicago suburbs.

We brought Apollo home and immediately set about preparing for a munchkin cat. We did our best to hide cords and remove hazardous items, and the cacti found a safe home out on the patio. They were already in rough shape from Apollo's interesting affinity for cacti tackles, so I didn't want to risk killing yet another plant. We rearranged Apollo's modular cat tower, so now we've got the base unit in the living room, and a smaller unit in the bedroom for the kitten to play with when he's locked away (until the cats are absolutely peachy together, Linus will be locked in the bedroom so there aren't any epic cat battles while we are at school/work).

So bright and early the next morning (Ok, more like 10:00. That's early for weekend us), we headed over to find our new kitty. We were given a chance to open the kitty crate and let the kittens run loose while we decided which one. I'm fairly sure we chose the maniac of the crowd, because the one we managed to snag was also the one dive-bombing the other kittens. We grabbed him on one of his mad dashes when he skidded out on the tile floor, and got him into his crate where he promptly started protesting.

Once home, his attitude improved. We let him have free reign over the bedroom. He started out cautiously exploring his food dish and new bed, and within 5 minutes was showing off his bouncing, flailing, and turbo-jumping skills by getting up on the bed, tackling limbs, and tossing every toy he came across into the oblivion of under the bed. Apollo spent a couple hours camped outside the bedroom door, trying to figure out why there was a tiny creature taking over his bed.

The weekend brought all ranges of cat emotions. Apollo went from outrage, to annoyance, to acceptance of the little squirt. They can now sit a foot away from each other without Apollo having a spaz attack, and Linus has learned (mostly) that other cat's tails are not playthings. They even chased a laser pointer without trying to destroy each other. It will still be a few days before they can be for sure trusted together, but they are almost friends. And Linus has proven to be a people kitty. We had several friends over throughout the weekend, and he became best buddies with every one of them.

Apollo is still a bit ticked off. He doesn't always want to share his bountiful piles of cat toys, and he's very territorial of his modular kitty fort. But he's willingly given up the santa crinkle hat and a few of his dozens of mice, so we're definitely making progress.

Only downside of this kitten situation - darn little furball is an early morning riser! We've got him locked in the bedroom at night to make sure there's no epic kitty battles happening before the little guy can defend himself from the whale kitty. His first night, Linus was perfectly peaceful, and didn't bother us until almost 10am. Last night however, he was up at full force at 4:30am and AGAIN 5:30am. We got face trampled and foot grappled, and when Linus got tired of that he wiped his cold wet nose over every inch of exposed skin. Luckily, he's too tiny to shove pillows out of the way, so my face burrowing under some extra pillows protected me for another hour or so of sleep before his kitten yelps finally got me out of bed for good.

Overall, this is an awesome little cat. He's fearless of the Apollo beast, and they're making major playtime progress. I give it a week at most, and they will be perfectly able to tolerate each other. He's extremely playful, an extreme attention seeker, and passes out in adorable spots and positions. And to finish off this post, here's several pictures from their past few days of kitty-sibling life. There's also a video being uploaded, but it's taking its sweet time going through the uploady-thingy, so I'll post it separately soon. Enjoy!