He was a scant five weeks old when I met him. I didn’t pay much attention to him at first. I had eyes for his sister. I was drawn to her, that lovely calico colouring. As I reached over to her, he jumped on my arm, ran up and licked at my ear before sitting down on my shoulder to look expectantly toward me.
My attention drawn away from his sister, I looked at this little furball lodged so boldly on my shoulder. I smiled. Seemed I had been chosen rather than me doing the choosing. It would be another week before he was ready to leave his mother. The visit that day was to choose a kitten.
I already had two cats at home. One of them, Cookie, was about 17 at the time and I didn’t expect she would live much longer. Dawn was about 2 and the reason I was considering becoming a three cat household. I wanted her to have a companion closer in age to her.
I brought him home a week later in a cardboard box. As I carried the box into the house Dawn was bouncing around at my heels. After all, it was a box, what cat doesn’t get excited at a new box to play in?
I set the box down and opened it. Dawn placed her paws on the edge getting ready to jump in, looked in, and froze. In an instant her excitement turned to full on angry hissing. There was an intruder in that box and it needed to go. I’d seen reactions like this to new cats before.
I set Fawnya out onto the floor and watched as he started to orient himself to his new surroundings. He tried to approach Dawn but she was having no part of this yet. I moved her back and played gently with the kitten, sending her the signal he was now part of the household.
Meanwhile from my armchair Cookie watched what was going on. She wasn’t yet expressing any opinion. Two years earlier she had been pretty clear about not wanting Dawn in the house. She’d lost that argument.
For the next few days instead of a cat and mouse battle going on, I had a cat and kitten. As Fawnya widened his range in the house Dawn would hiss and swat at him until he ran to me for protection. He’d resume his explorations again and the battle would resume.
At one point on the third day Dawn forgot herself. He woke up in the middle of the bed where he’d crawled under the covers. Disoriented he cried out and Dawn came running. Later that day I caught a moment where the kitten was sitting on the floor and Dawn was grooming him. She was giving in and accepting this new housemate.
Cookie on the other hand bonded with this little upstart. He could curl up against her and she would let him. That actually shocked me, I’d never seen her so willing to cuddle. Her Siamese nature was more aloof and would cuddle on her terms. When he got bigger than her, he’d lay with his paws wrapped around her like he was protecting her.
Cookie would be around for another six years. As she neared the end of her life she spent most of her days laying on a blanket on the back of my couch. At one point I started bringing her food to her in the morning rather than expecting her to come to the dining area beside Fawnya’s food.
A couple of days after I started doing so, Fawnya started walking away from his food. At first I thought he was getting finicky on me. Then something hit me one morning. I brought his bowl out and set it on the couch near Cookie. He jumped up and ate. He apparently wanted to be with his buddy for breakfast.
After she died, the practice continued. By then he just wanted to eat near me. If I moved away from him he would follow and not return to his food until I sat back down.
The relationship between him and Dawn was more resigned acceptance punctuated with moments of affection between them. He grew to a 23lb cat, she was maybe 12 or 13lbs. I knew what his weight was because he would sit on my talking weigh scale in the middle of the night and I would wake to hear “body weight 23lbs”. Dawn was not as obliging.
Cats love routine. As much as possible I have times of routine in the house. I get up in the morning, put on coffee, change their water, refresh the dry food and then prepare their wet food. Dawn always ate in the kitchen, Fawnya beside me on the couch.
Fawnya would finish his food, stroll across my lap, lay down on the couch with his head on my lap for his morning cuddles. At his size I was thankful he didn’t want to lay on my lap. He got his belly rubbed, his chin scratched and the biggest pleasure for him was being scratched between his ears. He would head butt my hand until I would comply and scratch there throughout his life.
Sometimes he would wrap his paws around my arm and start to chew at my hand. I would firmly tell him “Don’t… bite… mom!” and he would start licking it. It was like he knew what I was saying and it was a game with him.
Dawn, feeling the need to assert her Queen status, would eventually come up and lay down on my lap with her butt nudging at Fawnya’s head. He would get up and move away without a sound. He took most of her bossing him around. When he turned..the ensuing howling from her highness often made me laugh.
When Hobo, a barely two month old kitten, arrived at my door last fall Fawnya was the first to just accept her. The two of them were like watching a youngster playing with her benevolent grandpa. He would lay there stoically as she bounced around on him before settling down to cuddle against him and go to sleep.
They became closer after Dawn died unexpectedly in March. Hobo is still a kitten but is starting to settle a bit. She was able to get him up and moving more which was something I was always happy to see.
This past weekend, Fawnya appeared not to be feeling well. He was not off his food but not taking as much. He stuck to a spot he’d not been since he was a kitten. Then yesterday morning in a matter of minutes my boy was gone. All I could do was stroke him as he breathed his last.
It’s heartbreaking to lose a furbaby, more so when two die so close together. In less than six months I’ve gone from a three cat household to a single cat. Hobo arrived unexpectedly last October. I figured someone had dropped her off, I took her in. I’m grateful now that I did.
My quiet house seems even quieter today. As I type this, Hobo lays curled up sleeping on my chest. I may eventually get her a companion but, for now, we’re each others company.
