So you know how you say "never again, no more cats" after the heartbreak of losing one. Well we failed that when we rescued Duncan.
He came to us from the RSPCA, who had saved him from a terrible situation. He was very unsure at first - he's never been socialised, never been outdoors, and had lived by stealing scraps of food. But then he met Stevie cat from next door, who taught him how to be a cat. They became inseparable friends, even though when we took Duncan on the RSPCA had said he needed to be an only cat.
Sadly, Stevie passed over the rainbow bridge a couple of months ago - he was incredibly old, it's just the way of things. But Duncan was inconsolable. He was moping around, kept looking at the fence Stevie used to come over, and was just really sad.
We hoped it would pass, but it didn't. Then my wife's mother (a notoriously non-cat person) mentioned a cat charity someone she knew worked with. One of their cats was a rescue who was listed as needing to be an only cat, because he'd been bullied by the other cat at his house. But reading between the lines, it was because he just wanted to be friendly and the other cat didn't like that.
So we spoke to them; they were understandably cautious, but said they'd let us give it a try.
So here is Chester.
Officially he's a Maine Coon, although he's a small one. We never thought we'd have a pedigree cat, all our others have been moggies but beautiful rescues.
The plan was to introduce the two of them really slowly and carefully, with Chester having his own room, and a child gate in the doorway for a week or so with a towel over it so they could hear and smell each other but not come nose to nose in any kind of confrontation.
Duncan spoiled that plan. Two hours after we put it up, he kicked the gate down. Then he went in, and found that Chester was hiding under the bed (it's what all new cats seem to do....). Without any drama, he just lay down next to the bed and blinked at Chester, making it clear he was just desperate for a friend.
Chester turns out to be a fun mixture of totally soppy and good natured, and rather mischievous.
He'll happily let you stroke him anywhere, and loves turning upside down for tummy strokes. But he's also quite nocturnal, so we get woken up at three in the morning by the two of them playing boisterously.
The strange thing is that a lot of the time, they like to thunder up and down the stairs together like a little herd, rather than doing the normal cat thing of chasing each other.
We've had Chester for about a month now, and he and Duncan have become the best of friends. There hasn't been a single spat between them; that's unusual, normally two cats have one or two arguments to establish who is dominant, but these two seem to accept each other as equals.
The only problem is that they work together to scrounge snacks.....
All photos by my wife and myself
