All of the previous being said, Daisy has been in the mindset that it may not be a terrible idea to get a playmate for Hank -- another kitten he can spar with so that he leaves Pete alone.
While I was open on Hank, I am almost vehemently against this idea.
For one, for Pete it's not necessarily that Hank is going after him that's causing his anxiety, though that's part of it -- the largest part of it is that Pete is very territorial and more cats mean less territory for him and less of him being the center of attention. You want to make sure a cat will spray/mark everywhere? Reducing the territory he can claim as his own will dramatically increase those chances.
Mind you, it's not like the house is any bigger or smaller than before. He still has free reign of it. But more cats equal less space for him and more space they're gaining in territory from him as they set up their own domains. Hank does not appear to be territorial at all, as he was fostered and is used to being around many other cats -- but who's to say that another cat wouldn't be, and wouldn't come into the house, see four other cats, and immediately get as territorial as possible? It's all psychological. And Pete is too old for this shit, like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon.
Actually, as an aside, I always imagined Pete's inner monologue to be in Samuel L. Jackson's voice, but you get the idea.
Adding to this is the timeframe problem -- we have a very short window of time to get Hank himself fully acclimated and used to the house (and the others to get fully used to him being around) before we are literally getting on a plane and leaving for a week to visit my parents in North Carolina. Those are hard-and-set dates and that trip was bought and paid for long before Hank was even an idea for us, let alone an actuality. I haven't seen my parents in six years, and for three years in a row we've had to postpone or otherwise cancel trips to see them due to Covid, monetary, or time issues. I'm certainly not going to cancel this one when it's finally been set in stone, the PTO has already been used for it, and when I've been looking forward to it for so long.
Also -- I just don't want another cat right now. I am very happy with Hank and our old farts. Maybe in a year or three when the old farts start dying off will I be open to more cats in the household, but for now, I really don't want even more stress and responsibility. We lucked out with Hank -- his personality is a great match for this household. Who's to say that another cat would be? What if Pete or the girls would go hard on attacking another cat? What if another cat had no interest in the boys but instead wanted to terrorize the girls? I absolutely don't want to risk that. I don't want the equivalent of the L.A. riots in my living room or bedroom every day.
To those ends, however, I've also had to be slightly open to the idea to help appease Daisy. When we got Hank, the humane society said they were doing a "buy one, get one free" deal to where, anytime in the next 30 days, if we wanted to get him a playmate we could go in and do so, for free. While I don't think Hank really needs a playmate (more on this below), Daisy expressed her openness and want to keep looking just in case.
That 30 days expires August 15, by the way.
Anyway.
Over the course of the past few weeks with Hank, we've looked at a few cats that were sweet, but didn't have that same soul connection Hank did. There was one, however, that did have that hit with Daisy -- and we went back to see her that night again and she was already gone/adopted. Since then there have been almost no kittens to speak of on the website on a daily basis. Most of them, as soon as they're posted (even if there are no pictures of them), they're gone same-day. Again, I'm very glad that the humane society has such a great turnaround for cats -- people clamoring for kittens to give them good homes. It warms my heart, honestly. It gives me a little more hope for humanity.
Daisy and I made an agreement that once the 30-day window passed, we'd pretty much be done for the time being for looking for another cat for a while, at least until after we're back from visiting my parents and possibly indefinitely until one of the old farts dies.
As for the past 30 days, however? Our first full month with Hank? Well, we've learned a lot.
Hank has many nicknames, because he won't fully respond to his name yet. He's still very young. Sometimes he halfway acknowledges it or we think he does, only to find that he's distracted by something else. That'll come in time. It probably doesn't help that we call him all sorts of things, such as:
- Little man
- Little dude
- Sweet boy
- Sweet baby
- The child
- The boy
- The smallest son
- Hankerman
- Hankerchief
- Hanky
- Hanky-panky
- Hanky-boy
- And, finally, the goblin.
He is known as the goblin primarily because, well, he acts like a little goblin sometimes. Have you ever seen Gremlins, where all of the little mogwais are getting into shit and being little buttholes because they want to be fed after midnight? Well, that's Hank about 30% of the time. That number used to be about 60%, but as he's gotten older and has gotten used to the house, he has calmed down significantly. The other 30% of goblining has now been focused on us, Pete, and Sadie.
Maggie remains largely indifferent and does not give a single shit that he exists most of the time, as is her personality.
I mentioned that when we first started to give Hank the run of the house and when he and Pete first started interacting on a regular basis, he was bound and determined to be friends with Pete no matter what. And, really, even at his old age, Pete needed a playmate. After so many years of play-wrestling and then outright dominating the girls, who wouldn't really fight back, when they started to, he lost interest. Then he got old, and while he and Sadie/Maggie have the occasional spat, most of the time they're all lovey and cuddly with one another (at least to a vast extent; Sadie will not cuddle with Maggie and hasn't in many years, and I don't exactly know why).
Well, after having the run of the house for the past three weeks or so, Hank will now climb up on Pete to cuddle with him. Sometimes there's some aggression from Hank when he does, like he'll play-pounce on Pete or bite his neck or what have you (which, surprisingly, Pete mostly ignores) and sometimes they'll spar/bat at each other a bit, but I can very much see that they're settling into a pattern of companionship and love. It is very clear that Pete loves this little boy and puts off Big Dad Energy™ when they're together, and Hank adores Pete. Hank will purposely cuddle up to Pete and lay with him, and when he settles down, Pete will wrap his paws around him and wash his face and ears, and will pull him close. Yes, there is video of this. Hank loves it and will purr the entire time, eyes closed. Maybe it's a dominance thing, maybe it's an I-love-you thing, maybe it's both. But about 95% of the time, they're now completely at ease with one another.
This makes me very happy, of course. Pete now has a little teddy bear of his own and he finally gets to have a dad-like role in the household.
Pete, by the way, is fine. He got some checkup work done last week at the vet, and he is not currently in kidney failure. He is also remarkably healthy for his age. The vets said he should likely be on the same kidney food that Maggie is already on though, as the older he gets the more likely he will develop kidney issues in the future. This is fine, because he already likes to eat/steal that food. Sadie should likely be on it too, honestly. Hank has zero interest in it. He's smelled it a few times and walks away without even trying it.
We still give Pete his anxiety medicine on most days. I don't think Daisy gives it to him every day unless he's outwardly anxious every day. I think that's also helping him adjust to Hank wanting to be a little goblin cuddle buddy.
When it comes to the girls, Hank is testing the waters more and more. He tries to play and spar with Sadie, and she has no interest in that whatsoever. Sometimes she'll growl or hiss at him, but most of the time she just ignores him or looks at him with the cat equivalent of the "are you an idiot?" look. I expected him to want to lay and cuddle with Maggie, but when he gets too close to her and tries to smell or lick her, especially when he's goblining about the house, she will hiss/cry at him and he'll get spooked and run away. Lately, he's really enjoyed sleeping in the cat bed on the couch that any/all of them occupy on any daily basis, but Maggie really loves. Maggie has gotten visibly miffed at him when she wants to lay in that bed and finds Hank passed out in it. This is, thankfully, about as territorial as Maggie gets.
Our house is a 3-bedroom house. We have our master bedroom, and then Daisy and I both have our offices. Daisy's office is much larger than my own (I took the smaller one on purpose because the washer/dryer are in it) and hers is also used as a storage room. We keep it closed off now, as there is far too much for Hank to get into and destroy within it if he so chose. Well, Sadie loved that room -- she would go sleep/hide under the bed in there, there's a litter pan in there that only she really ever used, and it was sort of a sanctuary for her. Now that it's closed off so that Hank can't get in, she is somewhat distraught that one of her personal spots in the house isn't just free and open anymore. She will tell us when she wants in, and we'll let her in and close the door behind her. An hour or two later, she'll knock/pound on the door to let us know she wants back out, and she'll come back out. Yesterday, she spent multiple hours in there because she wanted to, and only knocked to get let back out shortly before I started work last night. This in/out sort of arrangement has mostly appeased her.
We'll eventually get the room organized enough to where we can leave it open again full-time, and to where Hank can't get somewhere we couldn't get him out of or eat/destroy something he shouldn't, but until then it's off limits, even when Daisy works from home in there a few days a week.
In the overnights, Hank either sleeps mostly upstairs with Daisy, or will spend the entire night downstairs with me while I work. Aside from the first day or two he did this, when he was hyper the entire night and kept attacking Pete, and I had to catch his ass and toss him on the bed with Daisy while she slept and shut the door behind me, he's been perfectly fine. He knows, mostly, not to bother the other cats when they're sleeping, and will just curl up with them or next to them. Some nights he'll be up and down, usually pretty chill. Some nights I'll come upstairs in the morning to find him in the cat tree, or curled up tight with Daisy. Some days I'll wake up in the afternoon and he'll be sleeping with me, and other days I'll wake up and he's nowhere to be found until I go downstairs and see him passed out in the cat bed or on the couch. Hank keeps his options open.
He has yet to break anything, get into anything he shouldn't, or tear anything up while we've been asleep, either in the daytime when I sleep or the night time/weekends when we both sleep. When we leave the house for any length of time (like if we go visit Daisy's parents, run errands, or go grocery shopping) he remains calm and usually just goes to sleep somewhere.
When we sit down and eat dinner/watch TV, he doesn't really bother us or beg for food or be a bastard because he knows we're preoccupied. He generally will sit with us or go back upstairs to his cat tree.
However, he does get hangry -- as in, if his food bowl is empty, he will be a little terror until it is refilled. We discovered that this is a pattern this past weekend. He does not tell us outright to fill it -- like he won't try to lead us to it by crying or mewing at us and getting under our feet, like the other cats will -- he'll just be a bastard until I go get the food and fill the bowl for him. Then he'll come running and he will eat. He likes it when I watch him eat, or put my hand on his side or back while he eats -- he'll purr really hard, as if I am the food-giver, the life-bringer, the protector. He sometimes gets upset if I'm touching him while he eats and I stop and walk away, so I always try to be the food-soother.
He will use every litter pan in the house but gets really upset when he catches Sadie or Pete using "his," the one we keep in our bedroom for him. Yesterday he actually got in the pan with Sadie while she was using it. I expected Sadie to flip out, but she honestly didn't care.
I can't really describe how much love Hank has brought into the house. I just adore his little orange ass. He's brought so much love, peace, and overall amusement into our lives. He's also growing rapidly. His next vet appointment is tomorrow evening, where he'll get his rabies shot and anything else he needs so that we can fully register him, and I expect that he will have almost doubled in weight as he's almost doubled in size since we got him.
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