Princes and Princesses of the Household

If you follow me on social media, you may realize I have several felines.  A couple months ago, I had to make the difficult care decision for one of of my cats – my only female, who I had from kittenhood.  She was diagnosed with Lymphoma. The time of diagnosis to the day I had to make the hard decision due to her rapidly deteriorating quality of life was less than two weeks.  During that time, we focused on making her as comfortable as possible, as the location of her tumor was pretty much inoperable – that combined with the average short lifespan remaining for cats with her diagnosis made us decide to just try to enjoy our remaining time together.

Madam M, you will be very much missed.

With the loss of Madam M, the household dynamics have been in flux, with not much sign of calming down.

The wee Princelings (not so wee at 14 lbs apiece) have been tormenting the old man of the house, though in fairness, the old man sometimes instigated the tussles.

I have been really missing my evening snuggling companion. While affectionate, the little princes are not terribly snuggly except for during the weekend when I am reading on the couch or catching up on some things on my home computer. T, my handsome british blue, is more my husband’s cat, though most evenings he goes between the two of us looking for attention. Miss M though, was mine. She used to sit at my side most evenings, and I was missing that end-of-day companionship and affection. She was also paired with T, and he no longer had a feline snuggling companion.

I had been eyeing cats at several rescue organizations of late, trying to decide if anyone would fit into the household, while worrying about upsetting the dynamic further.  Usually, I was only exposed to a few cats at a time – and often times, while no adoption staff were present (think Petsmart and Petco during the week).  While M was sick, we tried getting her to eat any and all kinds of foods – so I wound up with a bunch of cans of wet cat food that no one in my household was terribly interested in.  I finally decided I’d run the cans up to the local Humane Society as a donation…this (un)fortunately coordinated with the last weekend in June, which happens to be Adopt a Shelter Cat month and they were running a “special” on cat adoptions.

Foolishly, after dropping off my donation, I went for a walk along the kennels, had a look at who all was there and started reading descriptions.  Several cats caught my eye, literally – looking at me, trying to interact with me through the plexiglass.  After reading their descriptions (both owner surrenders), I felt compelled to meet them…and the rest was history.  We’re now working on family introductions – hopefully it all goes smoothly.  I’m excited to introduce two new princesses to the household:  Sophie and Sasha:

So far, there has been some hissing going on.  Sophie’s personality seems to be rather bold – she escaped out of the bathroom and wandered the house as if she owned the place.  Sasha, on the other hand, was quite bold and secure in the bathroom, but has been very timid about scouting the house.  Neither is terribly impressed with the other cats in the household, but so far there has just been some hissing and no signs of aggression.  I’m hoping the rest of the integration into the household goes relatively smoothly. Both ladies have shown signs of great affection, though I’m not entirely sure how much lapcat either of them are…I guess we’ll see as the household settles back down into its new configuration!

Have you any tips or tricks for introducing new cats into the family?