Obi the Cat

On Saturday Janet and I headed off to the Dublin SPCA to go kitty shopping. I wanted to be sure to bring Janet with me since I've never adopted a cat before and thought that I needed some trusted and experienced adult supervision. This was my first visit to the pound and I imagined that it would be a hard, cold place with cement floors and pitiful looking animals. Actually what I was imagining was something along the lines of the prison on Alcatraz. How wrong I was! The kitty area consisted of a number of windowed rooms with clean linoleum floors and kitty beds and toys and food and water and well-tended litter boxes. There were a number of staff visiting with the animals and letting people in and out of the rooms. The cats looked happy, or as happy as cats can look I guess.

Janet spotted Obi first. He was in the first stall, chilling on a kitty condo with a sign outside the door that said he had been there for 5 months. Poor guy! We went in a for a visit, and he let us pet him and talk about him in his presence. Janet said he had a skinny butt and that he was a good kitty, but that I should take a look at some of the other cats, just to be sure. But I knew he was my guy. I knew he was my guy since I started looking at his profile on the internet weeks ago and saw his kind, wise eyes peering out at me. It was love then, but after meeting him I knew I'd be taking him home. So reluctantly I went to go look at some of the other cats. They were all beautiful creatures, and I went in to visit with some. There was a teenage kitty room with a couple of black cats. I always thought I was going to get a black cat, but the one that interested me didn't seem interested in ME. There were big cats, small cats, old cats, happy cats, sleepy cats. But none of them were MY cat. Obi was my cat. So I brought him home.

The adoption process was pretty easy. They had me fill out an application, and as Jenna, Obi's caretaker, was looking over it, I felt a twinge of nervousness. What if I had answered a question wrong? What if she thought I wouldn't make a good kitty companion? What if she knew that I was going to let Obi be king of the house and that I didn't really care if he was going to scratching the furniture or not. But after a minute, she said, "Looks good to me!" and that was that. I signed some papers, promised to be a good Mom to Obi, and paid for him on my credit card. It's weird to buy a friend with a credit card.

Then Jenna got one of those cardboard cat carriers and popped Obi in. Janet and I went to my car and she carried him on her lap for the seemingly, endlessly, long ride home. Obi meowed every once in a while, and Janet responded with kind and gentle words. As soon as I got home, I made sure everything in my room was ready for him, and opened the box and voila! Obi! Of course he was frightened and skittish. He walked around my room for a minute, and then promptly planted himself in the corner between my bed and the wall.By evening he was under the bed, but by the next morning I awoke to find him ON the bed, with me! They said this process takes a while. He has his safe place around the bed, and he makes little trips out into the room, and sometimes, if he wants, out of the room. They said he could spend a week or more holed up and freaked out, but I think his progress is faster. I'm letting him do all this at his own speed and at his own pace. Yesterday he came out and said hi to me as I was eating breakfast, but there was a little bump from next door and he ran back in. Small steps. Every once in a while he'll gaze up at the ceiling in wonder as if he's looking at something and when I told a friend about this she said, Cats see things. And I was like, but there's nothing there! And she said, If it were a problem you would know. Yikes! And the thing is, I believe her.

Well I think we're going to be good pals. Never mind that I may or may not be allergic to him, or that he hasn't meowed once since I let him out of the box, or that I'm already tired of having to clean out his litter box. Obi is my guy.