The New Pets, Six Months Down the Line

[akirlu]

Boots


Shoobie (with Boots behind his behind)



One of the more urgent jobs for us after my mother died last August (and particularly after Christina, my parents' live-in caretaker suddenly died less than a month later), was finding new homes for the three dogs and four cats that my parents left behind. Whether the Mariposa house eventually gets sold or turned into a vacation property, without someone living there full time, the animals couldn't stay. For a while Christina's son volunteered to stay in his Mom's place, but it was only a stopgap.

Hal and I decided (well, I decided, and then wheedled Hal into agreeing) to adopt one dog and one cat out of the menagerie to reduce the problem of placement. So when H & I flew down to spend Christmas in Mariposa with my brother, his wife and her sons, we packed a couple of animal carriers with us, and after the holiday we collected Mom's old diesel station wagon and drove home with Shoobie, a grizzled chihuahua mix, and Boots, a cat. (Of the three parental dogs, we took Shoobie because he was oldest and would be (I feared) the hardest to place. Of the cats ... well, even young adult cats are hard to place once they aren't kittens, so we took Boots because he was the boldest, mellowest, and least feral of the lot. If I we were going to add another cat to our existing mix, I was hoping to minimize the trauma of integration.

The drive up from Mariposa was largely uneventful. With Shoobie it wasn't so much of a surprise -- my folks adopted him 11 years ago and he's a veteran of many trips between San Jose and Mariposa. With Boots, it was anybody's guess how he would travel. Mom adopted him and his brother out of a cardboard box in front of the Pioneer Market in Mariposa when he was only small, and the last time he had been in a car was to go get his balls cut off. Could have left traumatic associations. But Boots passed the journey in zen-like silence, so much so that I kept check on him to make sure he was still conscious and breathing. He was fine. He just goes sessile in the carrier. When we stopped for the night at a Redding motel, he did an inspection circuit of the room, calmly ate his supper, played lurking kitty under the bed skirts for a while, and then settled in at the foot of the bed to sleep with us and Shoobie.

And now, half a year down the line, I can safely say that the 'new' beasts are thoroughly integrated into the household, though the road was not without its bumps.


Boots Napping on the Couch

Boots did not love the way Kaylee would frantically charge him whenever she caught sight of him and so he spent the first month and a half in the house down in the basement, lurking in a hole in the ceiling dry wall, above the washing machine. There were several yowling spats while Spike and Tinka worked out their respective relationships with Boots, and for a while I was referring to him as Thunder Kitty because of the amazing booming racket whenever he would leap down onto the washing machine from his bolt hole, which he did pretty frequently since Boots is, by nature, a curious and sociable cat. Typically he would leap down whenever a human came downstairs. Eventually, as he got bolder about his range, I lured Boots into introduction distance of Kaylee by putting down treats on the stair treads until he was near the top of the stair. Kaylee is inexplicably terrified of the basement stairs so she won't go farther down them than she can reach while keeping her hind paws firmly planted on the kitchen linoleum. But once he advanced high enough to nearly reach, Kaylee got to sniff Boots, and Boots got to see that Kaylee was not actually trying to kill him, then it wasn't long before Boots was ranging around the whole of the house and only retreating to the basement to eat or use the litter box.

In the intervening months Boots has become the universal envoy. All he other pets get along with him, and he them. He lets Kaylee wrestle with him, and is benignly cordial with the rest. Tinka seems to have given up trying to intimidate him since he seems largely indifferent to her Doom Kitty browbeating attempts, and now she ignores him except to keep him off her tuna. Even Spike, who is terrorized by nearly everything that moves will let him get near, and will even eat from the same bowl. And while the way Kaylee sometimes plays with him looks horrific -- she'll grab him by the scruff, and pull him along the floor or grab his whole head with her mouth -- he gamely plays along, rolling onto his back and batting her with his claws politely sheathed. When he meeps in protest I generally try to break it up but when it's all over it's often Kaylee that he decides to nap next to. So I infer he's okay with the roughhousing.



Kaylee & Boots in Quieter Moments


Shoobie, Surveying His Domain

Shoobie has been both easier and more difficult than expected. We all thought that Shoobie was the housebroken one of Mom's dogs. He quickly disabused us of that idea by blandly lifting his leg at the reception desk at the vet, and in every other aisle of the Petsmart. And initially, he was pretty casual about leaving puddles and piles around the house if he hadn't been taken out recently enough. There's a box of fanzines down in the basement that I still haven't dared inspect after it was much favored for his ministrations. I'm hoping a liberal soaking with Nature's Miracle was enough. But gradually, as we work on praising the heck out of him whenever he goes out doors, he's gotten back to being a good citizen. He still doesn't signal when he needs to go, but with vigilance and frequent potty breaks he has only very rare lapses any more.

And the other hand, Shoobie's original evaluation said the Humane Society trainer could not get him to sit on command, despite working long with him. I had him doing it in one short session, with treats as incentive, though he's still reluctant on some first requests. I think his build makes it uncomfortable for him to sit; he doesn't really sit so much as curl his back half under and sideways. But he's proved vastly more trainable than we'd been given any reason to expect. And mostly he's just a happy little dude who wants to be loved on all the time and fed snacks. And there is something deeply charming about the little dances he does, and the strange snorking sounds he makes when he's feeling full of piss and vinager: an improbable chortle that vaguely reminds of the pigs' laughter in Angry Birds.

So we're now an integrated household of two dogs and three cats. That's not too many...?

Comments

[frostfox.livejournal.com]

What a lovely pair (I am, you may recall, a sucker for grey tabbies, even man eaters). Love the picture of Shoobie and Boots together.

FF

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

My first pet cat was a Maine Coon tom in a gray tabby, so I'm partial to them, myself.

[threeringedmoon.livejournal.com]

Loved both the photos and the anecdotes about introducing Shoobie and Boots to the others.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Thanks. This post spiraled out of control, a bit, as I kept trying to fit six months worth of animal stories in. Lesson: post less, more often.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

That is a good story! I like the illustrations, too. I think two dogs and three cats is the right ratio and if you are not finding it too many, then it is just right.

I have become fond of chihuahua mixes since I walk one every Friday. She is a little tub o' love, but she's extremely mellow and can be agile when it comes to running back to the door to be let into the warm building. She doesn't hold with the Great Outdoors, it's too breezy and full of other dogs.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, it's too many dogs for one person to walk, because neither of them has very good leash manners. I really need to work on that while the weather is good-ish, probably by taking them out for separate walks at first.

[farmgirl1146.livejournal.com]

Good on you for taking the two of them in. Boots looks well settled in with Kaylee, and Shoobie looks self-satisfied. I have a chihuahua, and they do sit differently than other dogs. She curls her haunches in and arranges herself quite a bit. I can't recall seeing her sit on her own as the other dogs do. She crouches or stands. Of course, she lies down.

I hope the others found good homes.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Huh, I hadn't notice that about Cubette, but maybe that weird crouch is a a chihuahua thing. The dogs I know got placed -- one to my parents handy man, and the other to the jeweler in town. My sister-in-law says they were able to place the cats when Christina's son moved out, so I believe everyone ended happily.

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

Boots is a beautiful cat!!!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he's a looker, for sure. A real athlete, too.

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad they've worked out.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. I really, really, really hate the idea of abandoned animals.

[jry.livejournal.com]

I'm not really a dog person, but Shoobie is quite the handsome lad. He and Boots both are lucky to have found such an agreeable home.

Am I the only one who thought on first seeing the picture of the two of them that Shoobie was sitting completely on top of Boots with only Boots' head sticking out?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Shoobie is quite able to charm the snot out of just about anyone. I should take him out in public more, but I haven't yet gotten him set up with a belly band and I don't trust the little bugger not to mark territory on other people's carpeting.

I know what you mean about the picture -- it's the forced perspective that does it, combined with Shoobie's fondness for lounging slantwise on the pillows like a roue odalisque preening.