Kitty News

We’ve been a two-cat household for more than a month now and things have settled into a routine. Our new adoptee Sugar, or Miss Sugar, is a delight. Spice is making sure she knows she’s #2 and he’s #1. There have been some incidents of hissing and chasing but no actual fights. They even get affectionate sometimes. 

Spice is polite at mealtimes. He will sit patiently while she eats her fill and then attack her bowl once she walks away. There’s no such thing as saving food for later, anymore. Those bowls are licked clean and the kitties are looking for their next meal within a few hours. Sugar’s presence has brought out Spice’s competitive nature. But they also nuzzle each other and lick each other’s faces.

Mild trouble comes when Sugar tries to get too close to me, or sit in one of Spice’s favourite spots. He will wake from a deep sleep, shouting a wild cat shout and chase her out of the room. Experts say we need to distract him at these times so we yell, clap or stamp our feet to get him out of his instinctive trance. Sometimes she stops and hisses at him and he gives her a look that seems to say, well, I guess it’s okay then. It’s a grudging respect.

She’s smaller than he is, and this photo doesn’t show it but she’s extremely overweight. But she moves quickly when she wants to. Sometimes she runs around the house on her own in a blur. And every morning I ask her when she had time to get up early and put on eyeliner. Every morning she just purrs.

A second cat isn’t much more trouble than the first. But it stops here. We are not cat people – we are our cat people, and our cat colony is capped at two!