A few weeks back I shared that I was going to start looking for a new home for Crackers. I thought he needed a friend to play with. I wrote up a flyer, took some adorable photos of him for potential adopters. I talked to the rescue group I work with and they agreed to do a courtesy post on PetFinder for me. I had to fight back tears as I wrote his adoption flyer. He is a wonderful cat and it kills me to think of losing him, even if it is the best thing for him.
Then one day, when I was sitting on the bed, he looked at me. He looked at me the way my co-worker’s dog Rufus looks at her. Rufus, who is an amazing dog, looks at his mom with the utmost love and devotion. Rufus is absolutely in love with his mom and grateful to her for adopting him. Crackers looked at me the way Rufus looks at his mom, the deepest love and gratitude I have ever seen in the eyes of a cat. When I saw that I cursed and knew that Crackers wasn’t going anywhere. (It also made me sad, those eyes. Crash used to look at me with eyes full of love. Now he runs away when he sees me because he gets so many meds). So, we will have to find some other way to keep him busy and happy other than playing with cats.
He now snuggles on the bed with me at night, sometimes sharing the bed with my Crash (which is great, because this used to be Crash’s room and Crash’s bed.) He is growing braver by the day, and the little stinker is growing more attached to me every day too. When I come home from work, or on days when I am home during the day, he follows me around the house and takes every opportunity to rub on me and be as close to me as possible. He makes sure to throw in those sweet, loving, devoted eyes to remind me what a sucker I am for the love of a cat. He is exploring the house more and by all appearances seems more comfortable downstairs. He is slowly trusting my mom and dad, more so my mom because she feeds him.
So, for better or for worse Crackers is staying with me. One day he will have a kitty friend to play with. In the mean time, we will find a way to fulfill his urge to wrestle. Luckily, he appears to have finally realized he needs to leave Muffin alone. For weeks I would wake up at 3 or 4 am to Muffin growling at him. She got up for her drink of water, he came over to say hi, she growled, he looked at her as if to say “ok let’s play” and she growled even more. Then he would follow her trying to get her to play. This has not happened the last two nights, which has been a HUGE relieve to me and to Muffin. I am finally able to sleep through the night, and don’t have to stress that I have negatively impacted Muffin’s quality of life. Now that Crash and Crackers are also sharing the bed to snuggle with me, I don’t have to worry that I took anything away from Crash either. These are all good things. These are all things that bring my stress level down.It looks like we might just make this work.
Now, it I can just him to stop chewing on inappropriate things.
Tails from the Street 