Happy Birthday Watson and Introducing Raven
Yesterday Watson celebrated his 10th birthday! It was a bittersweet day, as it was his first birthday that he celebrated alone, without Crick here to celebrate too. It makes me sad that Crick didn’t make it to see double digits.
Watson celebrated his big 1-0 with lots of pets and snuggles and crunchy treats, which he loves.
Also, I totally thought I’d written a blog posting to introduce the newest member of our household, who joined us back in June, but it appears that I did not! I posted on Instagram, but not here. So I guess better late than never!
Back in the summer, when I learned that I would be going back to the office in the fall, after a year and a half of working from home, I decided that it was time to get Watson a buddy. He had been meowing for attention a lot since Crick died and I figured it was because he didn’t have her to play with anymore, so he needed me to play with him. And I didn’t want to go back to the office and leave him home alone all day, as he’s never been home alone in his life – he always had Crick around when I was working at the office before. So we set out looking for a new kitty to join us.
It was actually pretty challenging to find a kitty to adopt, as lots of people got pets during the pandemic. We tried going to the Catfé a few times, but many of the cats there are bonded pairs and my building only allows you to have two cats, so we weren’t in the position to adopt a pair. And the lone cats that I met there never seemed interested in me.
And then we found this girl:
She was at the Langley Animal Protection Society (LAPS) shelter, so we went out there to meet her and she was just the most affectionate little cat ever. She’d been found as a stray and was not fixed, not tattooed, and not microchipped. They had taken her to their vet for a check up and had her spayed, microchipped, and gave her dental care (during which they discovered that both her upper canine teeth were broken, so they pulled them). At the shelter, they had given her the name Sweet Pea, which very much describes her personality, but which we didn’t love as a name. After much deliberation, we decided to call her Ravenclaw – Raven for short.
When we first brought her home, she and Watson did not like each other! There was a lot of hissing and running away from each other. At meal time we would put Watson’s dish in the usual cat meal location and Raven’s on the far side of the living room. Over time, we moved the location of Raven’s dish a bit closer to where Watson’s dish is. Eventually they decided that they were OK with each other’s presence and then they even got curious about each other and one would cautiously sniff the other one. Now they are totally fine to be together, eat their meals next to each other, and even cuddle once in a while.
It’s kind of funny that we got Raven thinking it would help Watson be less meowy for attention, because Raven is a super chatty kitty who meows for attention all the time! She’s a million times more meowy than Watson ever was. I was still working from home for the first couple of months that we had her, and she’s a big fan of sitting in my lap when I’m working. She also likes to climb on top of me when I get into bed and meow at me for pets. She’s hugely food focused and will steal Watson’s dinner if he walks away from it for even a second (just like Crick used to). All in all, she’s been a wonderful addition to our household!
Since she was picked up as a stray, they don’t know exactly how old she is, but said she was “around 2 years old”. I decided that since she’s a black cat, her birthday should be October 31! Now I just have to decide if she’s turning 2 or if she’s 2 now and turning 3 next month.