New Addition?

A couple weeks ago the neighbors adopted a couple new kittens. This would have absolutely no bearing on my life whatsoever, save for when I go over there when they're out of town to clean litter boxes and let their two dogs out. Except that they talked Ben into taking one of their cats that wasn't enjoying the loss of space (it's one of six cats and two dogs living under one roof with two humans). Ben's always wanted a Siamese cat so I relented, under the same stipulation that went along with our other inside only cat, i.e., Ben has litter box duty. We took her on a trial basis because we had misgivings about how our cat Dori would react, having been queen of the domicile these past four years. To be honest, we didn't want her going psycho like our first cat, the one we had before Dori.

Yes, for those of you who don't know, Ben and I were the owners of a psycho kitty. It was our first real pet, aside from the goldfish somebody gave us for Christmas one year that died after a few days. Since Ben had never in his whole life gotten to name a pet, I let him name her Smeagol. You, know, after the scary weirdo in Lord of the Rings. Anyway, Smeagol was a perfectly normal cat for a year and a half or so until we moved into our house. Oh, the irony of that name. Just like in the book our innocent cat turned into a creature of evil. Ben took her outside a couple times and one time she got a look at the neighbor's cat and went crazy. After that Smeagol would randomly attack us, turning from a puring lap cat into a squalling ball of fur and claws, lacing right into our feet. Scary and not fun. I took to wearing my shoes all the time. We really loved Smeagol, aside from her evil alter ego, and tried some behavior modification that seemed to work. Whenever she'd get the crazy eye and poof up we'd just ignore her and she'd go back to normal. Then one day she attacked Ben's mom and Ben intervened and got bitten pretty bad and had to go to the doctor. I had just had Henry, so as much as we loved her, we decided that Smeagol and her craziness had to go. It was very sad but pretty much our only option was to have her euthanized because none of the cat rescue places would take surrenders, and she'd just end up getting put to sleep at the pound anyway. Ben was pretty sad, so his mom bought him Dori. It took me a few months to fully trust her and to stop being paranoid when I walked barefoot beside the bed. She's turned out to be a good, laid back cat who's only flaw seems to be occasionally puking up her cat food. So now you see why we were nervous about taking in another cat.

We've had this cat, Coco, a couple weeks now and she still won't willingly venture downstairs. For the first week she hid under the bed in the guest room. She's very affectionate, but she's the biggest chicken of a cat I've ever seen. I tried to take her down to the living room the other day and got a scratch on my arm as a result. Then I wrapped her in a towel and tried again. She stayed for about two seconds and ran back upstairs. It's really annoying beacuse I want her litter box in the basement with Dori's so I never have to see the thing. But if I can't even get her to downstairs there's little chance of her going into the basement. Speaking as the Queen of Laze, if she doesn't conform to my wishes soon, I have a feeling we'll have to give her back to the neighbors.