Kittens, Puppies, And My Terrible Track Record With Animal Buddies

I have some seriously spoiled pets. Unlike children, they can’t grow up to be entitled assholes because I didn’t give them enough boundaries. The pets get to snuggle in our bed and sit on the couch; they have too many toys, and too much attention.

But I have this…thing. I feel like the animals get lonely. For example, we have a 19-year-old turtle named Harry. My husband and his college friends rescued him from the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant. He likes tacos, and who can blame him? He was so tiny at the time he would have fit in a shirt pocket. After that semester, he moved into my husband’s childhood home and then into our house after we graduated. The thing is, he stayed pretty small for a turtle. Maybe 5ish inches. I wanted him to have a friend so badly.

Turns out you can’t buy turtles small enough for them to be friends. At least that’s what all the places I tried said. So I researched what fish he could live with. That went…well. Harry enjoyed the snacks. Turns out he is better off alone. I’m not sure if he’s maladjusted or if it was unwise to suggest he be friends with his favorite foods. We’ll never know.

The same thing happened with my first puppy, Gus. He was about 4 when I decided he needed a friend. Someone to keep him company while we were at work/school. We picked Jules. A lovable mess of inbreeding. She isn’t very bright, often getting wildly confused about what she is doing. We also learned during her sterilization surgery that she is missing a kidney. Like they searched for it. She is technically intersex, but we didn’t find that out until her spay, where they found ovesticals (This is the word my vet used, no matter what my spell check says). The vet asked to keep them for teaching purposes. I think she wanted to flex on the other vets. It was a pretty intense procedure for the whole family and is one of the first things I tell new people about when I meet them because I AM maladjusted.

Jules loves nothing more than stealing whatever toy Gus has and just sitting next to it, growling menacingly while he cries. We go over and take it back from her, but this is a daily occurrence. She doesn’t even like to play fetch, and most of Gus’s toys are balls. I often think Gus is cursing me for bringing her home. I see it in his eyes.

So, you’d think I would have learned my lesson about animal friends. But. Waffles, our cat, is all alone. And once again I thought, how sad. I began the journey to adopt a cat. Since Waffles is a 5-year-old black cat, I wanted to go with a 2-4-year-old, non-solid black cat.

The adoption process has been a ride. I put in an application. This included lists of all the people and animals in the house, which makes sense, two personal references, so much information about our house, and all of our vet records and information. We also had to agree to a home visit. It was all pretty intense, but worth it to bring a new pet into our house. We went through the same process about a year and a half ago when we adopted Waffles.

The day I put the form in, I met the sweetest kitty and planned to come back 2 days later with the rest of the family and bring her home, assuming the application was approved. Both of my references were called the following morning, and so was my vet. Yes! We are moving along. We all headed out Friday to find out that, because of an emergency, the final review by the manager hadn’t been completed, by we were number 2 in line and they’d hopefully call the next day. Everyone played with the kitten for a while anyway but went home a little sad.

We didn’t hear anything during the weekend. I’d been anxiously looking at the kitty pictures online every night, and she disappeared on Sunday. I panicked. This is when my unhealthy obsessions get me in trouble. I called on Monday to find that now we were in the running with several others for the kitten. She had reached the maximum number of applications and had to be removed from the website.

Now I was panicking. I called on Wednesday to check the status and was once again informed that we were second in line. I began to think this was just what they told crazy, emotional cat ladies. This time they were sure I’d be called the next day. I’m sure you can imagine that no one called. By day’s end I was a mess. I checked in again, and was still, you’ll never guess, second in line. And in the running for the kitten! How lucky! I’m not really sure why, but this was an endpoint for me. I started looking at some other nearby shelters and put in a few applications.

The next day, one called, and by evening we were home with our new kitty, Donut. We saw a lot of sweet kitties, but this one stole our hearts. Oh, she’s a three-month-old black cat. So, best-laid plans and all.

Donut is sure that she and Waffles are best friends. Waffles is sure Donut is a menace who will be gone any day now. We introduced them in small amounts at first, but they now share free rein of the house and have a tenuous custody arrangement with the weed house.

This time, I’m 100% sure these animals will be best friends. In the meantime, at least Jules likes to hang out with Donut.