You don’t own a cat – you become their employee!

12 days ago I adopted 2 (not 1) 7 month old cats from a shelter.  I would love to tell you that we became one big happy purring family, and that they still reside here, but that would be a big lie!

Why did I adopt 2 cats you ask?  GOOD QUESTION!  Ya see – I normally travel A LOT for work but decided for 2014 that I would try to take a break to avoid getting sick so much.  I work from home + having one child in college and the other one almost out of high school – I may be at fault at having “Peri-Empty Nest Syndrome”.  Whatever it was, I obviously made a mistake because what happened next was surely a testament to that.

12 days ago my lovely daughter Julia was home from college and I “threw out” the idea of adopting kittens…Within 15 minutes we were in the car and in route to become cat parents.  While at the shelter shopping for our new family members, one of the shelter’s “friendliest cats” bit me!  Yup – should have been a red flag that the cat thing was not for me – but I forged ahead and packed up 2 cats to call my own.

When we got them home we put them in the laundry room with all the necessary items that cats need. I may have gone a little overboard and bought every toy, treat, bed, etc. I wish I could say they shared the same excitement as being with us as we did with them – but the feeling was NOT mutual.  They hid every chance they got and hissed when we got close.  I began to take it personal, but was willing to give it time. 

On day 3 of 12 one of the kittens “Charlie” somehow found his way into the central air duct.  He resided there for 3 days during a large search and rescue mission which included Easter Sunday where I had 25 guests for dinner.  After putting out many bowls of tuna to lure him out – we ended up having to cut the duct work to get him out. My Husband…St. Jimmy was hoping to keep the duct work intact, but at 3:00 am I woke him up to cut the pipe and cut he did.

Days 6-11 of the cat’s residence continued in a similar “fun” fashion – hiding, digging up the dirt in my plants, hissing, pushing glass vases off the counter, scratching up the furniture, knocking over everything that wasn’t nailed down, walking on the counter tops, and drinking out of the fish tank. All of this was done at night, so sleep for us was nowhere to be found.   That’s when I realized – we didn’t have cats – we had mice that used the litter box!

I consider myself a strong woman and was not about to let 2 cats take me down, but at 4:00 am on day 12 – one of the cats was walking around on my new kitchen countertop and someone found the “phone locator” button on the phone base. He hit it, which alerted all 10 phones in the house and woke everyone up.  Everyone has their breaking point and that was mine!

That morning – bleary eyed, I placed a call to the shelter to explain the dilemma.  The woman was shocked with my story and told me that I did my due diligence to make it work, and that I should return them.

I packed up the car with every cat toy, bed, treat, litter, and bowl, made a nice donation and left with mixed emotions.

I wish I could say that I didn’t feel defeated, because I do.  I realized a few things about myself in the last 12 days – 1) I can’t save everyone, but at least I try.  2) My husband is either really patient or just too tired to leave me.  3) At 45 ½ years old, I am past the point of starting over with cats and being their employee…I’ll stick to dogs.