A New Addition!

I have a new cat! His name is Earl. I mean, Duke.

Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl, Duke, Duke…

Yeah, I keep singing that.

Today we went to the volunteer orientation at the Humane Society. We signed up for the other classes we want–dog handling, to be followed by dog walking, fostering, and cat care. The cat care class was this afternoon. At the end of it we found ourselves in the cat adoption room, looking at all the sweet kitties. On a free adoption weekend. When I’d promised the child last week that if the one-eyed kitten named Loki was still there, we would adopt her. Loki wasn’t, but I’d already opened the door for another cat, silly me, so…

The course of true love never did run smooth! First we picked out a lovely blue-grey tabby, but found he had incontinence issues when stressed by other cats, so we decided to leave him for someone else. Then we were looking at Sassy, but she bit me.† We checked out Rascal, a gorgeous big orange tiger, but again–he tended to not use the litterbox when anxious about too much noise in the area.

You all know my kid is noisy, right?

We asked the cat room expert about her most mellow cat and she directed us to Laila, but Laila had already won someone’s heart and was on her way to her forever home. Woodstock was huge and fluffy and regal, part Maine Coon, but his paperwork said he would allow no other cats, and I did already have two at home.

So we decided to have a look at Duke. He was lying in the most narrow part of his kennel, just hanging out. We opened the door and he just casually scooted over our way a bit so we could pet.

ZOMG, the pets. This cat is a lover. Beautiful and sweet, mellow as all get out…and now he’s mine. He’s spending the night separated from the other cats and mostly hiding under the bed in the kid’s room, but he’s come out a couple times and I got to love on him and even skritch his tummy when he flopped over in demand.

Welcome home, Duke of Earl.

Ravenclaw and Menace didn’t see the cat carrier come in and right into the other bedroom (they were hanging out in mine) but they knew pretty quickly that something was up. At first they were wandering around looking suspicious, but they soon localized the source of the disturbance in their Kitty Force to the next bedroom.

We’ll see if anyone gets any sleep. But in the meantime…

His Highness will now accept his due adoration.

 

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†Totally don’t blame her! Who did I think I was, reaching into her space? But I don’t really want a cat who bites quickly and with no warning. She was loving the pets till I went too far, and it’s not like she warned me!