Our Christmas Cat

We have a new cat and our boss cat is going through a severe reality adjustment.

Closer Fat Boy

Our cat quartet was broken when up our alpha cat Sherman bit the dust after contracting some sort of quick-acting wasting disease.

We found a replacement cat named Chester living on a neighboring farm. I had featured Chester in a blog post after I discovered that he looked after small animals on the farm. He would make regular rounds to visit the chickens in the Chicken coop and the rabbit in its pen. He was great with visitors too. He was a stray who became one of our neighbors farm cats. Unlike the other farm cats, he was as socialized as they were feral.

Chester and I struck it off immediately and I had always planned to make off with him if I found an opportunity to do so. Unfortunately he was loved by his owners and it didn't seem fair to break up a happy family.

I bided my time and avoided recruiting him for our house with tales of good food, a private bed, personal play toys and on-demand feedings. However, I did let him know that he had other options if he ever wanted to expand his horizons.

Time went by and it came to pass that one of his family members was quite allergic to Chester…

We were properly sympathetic and offered to take Chester under our wing where he would be available for visits. We did a killer presentation on how he would be treated well and it would be a win-win situation for everyone. Chester would be able to be inside during cold weather without kicking off allergy attacks, his former family would have unlimited visiting rights, and we would have a new player in our cat quartet.

It was a tough sell, but we persevered.

I think that Chester must have already decided that we were an opportunity to expand his horizons. When we brought over a cat carrier and opened the carrier door, Chester immediately walked inside. He wasn't even upset when we shut him in the carrier although he moaned quietly all the way to our house.

We gave him his own room for the first day so he could get acclimated. He checked it all out and even figured out how to use the litter box although he had never seen one before. Barn cats use the great outdoors, but Chester liked the convenience of an indoor privy. Don't we all, especially in cold weather…

By the second day, Chester had taken over one of the prime lounging areas and was making himself at home.

Christmas Cat-5-web

He has not attacked any of the other cats and he does not encourage the others to invade his space. He has a whole repertoire of blood curdling moans and growls and uses them to good effect to keep others from bugging him. You can see from his expression that he is no wuss cat.

Christmas Cat-2-web

He is social with people and he is adjusting the feline pecking order to his liking. Some of the other cats are already making friendly overtures as they see that he will probably become the top cat in short order.

I expect that they will all be sleeping together in a few more weeks. I only heard one hiss all day.

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