Several weeks ago we adopted a ten year old cat from the animal shelter, her name is Diana. This was in actuality a much longer process than a “day”.
You see it all started a month and a half ago. When we went to the animal shelter to pick out a cat we knew what we wanted, relaxed older cat. Diana was the perfect candidate. She was even tempered and affectionate. And can be very lively when the mood strikes her. There was only one other cat at the animal shelter close to ten. She was very shy though and didn’t want any attention. The rest of the roughly 50 cats that they had there were various ages, some born in the beginning of this year, to those that were a couple of years old.
There was another little cat there that took a liking to me, and followed me around most of the time we were in one of the three houses they had for cats. She was very young, maybe a year at most and she was a Siamese. Her name was Lady and the animal shelter would only let you adopt her if you would also take another cat, her partner named Lord.
Lord was a big cat compared to the tiny Lady and wasn’t interested in any attention. He only patrolled around us while I was petting Lady.
Diana is completely black. Save for a couple of spots where she has some gray hair staring. Mainly around the next where she once wore a collar and the random hair here and there. Still, from the picture they had hanging up along with her description and stats, it was impossible to know which black cat she was. You see out of the roughly 50 or so cats at the shelter 75% of them were black.
There must be some sort of silly superstition about black cats, either that or black has gone out of fashion, which I hardly believe. What ever the reason, if you’re like me and like black cats, the animal shelter has more than enough for everyone. Anyway, black cats aren’t easy to tell apart when they are all together, but I was impressed with the the woman that ran that section of the shelter. Within moments of entering the room she walked right over to one of the cats, lifted a blanket she was laying partially under and said “Here she is.” As I said I was impressed.
After that we went back to the office and got things together so we could pick her up in the next couple of days.
Jump forward and here we are again, all ready to take Diana to her new home. I am not sure how your animal shelter is but ours was busy. They only have visiting hours from two till six in the evening. And when they’re open it is BUSY. The office is situated so that you can go in the front, if you continue straight ahead you will go to the kennels where they have the dogs. But if you skip the office and keep walking you will quickly see the cats. They have it setup pretty nice. And they attract a lot of volunteers to walk the dogs etc. Couple that with the people there to see the animals, and you could say it is a mad house, but only in the nicest way. 
Anyway there we were, standing around waiting in what you could call a line if you were feeling generous. Luckily my wife knew one of the women that worked there and she stopped what she was doing and got the paperwork together. While they were doing that, another woman and I went back to pick up Diana.
This is when things went downhill. As I already mentioned I found it hard picking her out of the rest of the cats. But unlike the first time, where the woman responsible knew in an instant which cat she was, this woman did not. As it turned out, the woman that ran the facility there at the animal shelter had taken a week long vacation. And the one filling in didn’t have the same super human ability.
Not a problem, after about ten minutes looking for her and not finding her, my wife came and helped in the search. Still nothing. Hum. At this point the woman came to the idea of getting the scanner and reading the chip that the animal shelter implants in each of their cats. This seemed like a good idea. Every time you scan a cat and it isn’t Diana that just gets you one step closer finding her right? That was the idea at least, process of elimination. Now, after you scan every cat in the house she was located in and you don’t find her you have to stop and wonder.
I felt sorry for the woman on vacation because the woman helping us must have called her five times in the course of two hours. Needless to say we searched through all of the three houses. Some of the cats were more than happy to be scanned, in fact they would have much rather been petted. But they would take what they could get. Others would rather take your hand off. One of these was an impressive male that would have made most dogs cringe in the corner. He had a head like a grapefruit, and he knew something else, he was part panther. At least that is how he acted.
I knew it wasn’t Diana just from the size, but the woman was getting desperate and she intended to scan him. Picking up one of the cat’s blankets she tried to get close and at the same time scan him. The chips are implanted on the left side of the neck just above the shoulder. Do you think that he would let he get that close? Of course not. He grabbed the blanket and shook his head, grabbing a hold of it with his claws.
Again I told her that this wasn’t Diana, and she was more than happy to give up.
Now two hours had gone by and still no Diana, I think the cats were more than stirred up and were happy to see us go. This is when it hit the woman. “Oh!” she said. “This morning I took one of the cats into quarantine, she had gotten a cold.” Hurrying off she said “Let me see if that was her.”
Now, which one of the cats do you think she took into quarantine? Was it Garfield, a larger male that doesn’t have much in common with his cartoon cat cousin? No. It was none other than Diana. And that was that.
They weren’t going to let us take her until the veterinarian came later in the week to check her out. This was fine, we felt that it was much more important that she have a clean bill of health that anything else. So we waited to hear back from them.
We we got back that evening there was a message on the machine. The animal shelter had called. As I mentioned before it was a mad house, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. That sort of thing. Calling back they weren’t able to say why somebody had called. My guess is they were calling to see if we were going to come and pick up Diana. That while we were there looking for her. It was funny more than anything else.
The next week rolled around and the veterinarian had been there, she just had a small cold and we could pick her up.
This is honestly how I expected it to be the second time we went there. Within ten minutes we were finished and making our way out of the animal shelter. Diana was nervous and showing it, meowing as I carried her in the travel box. Meowing at every corner, or when the road had a little bump.
We weren’t sure how she would react to her new home, but once we set her down and opened the door she stuck her head out almost immediately. A few moments later she crept a bit further out until she was standing in the room looking around. We just let her be, but that didn’t last long. Within five minutes of coming into her new home she was going from one set of hands to another. She must have done this for about two hours. On the first day her territory was about ten square feet. She didn’t dare explore any of the other rooms, only daring to look down the hallway and peak her head into the kitchen. She has since made a full inventory of the other rooms, but prefers to stay in the living room. Mostly in the original ten feet but also sleeping in one of the chairs that faces the big window.
At first it didn’t seem like she was very interested in playing with any of her toys. But once you warmed her up and rolled the ball around, she was more than happy to play a game of soccer with you.
The only things she scratches are those that you give her, namely the Trixie Scratchy Wave and the scratcher post. She also has a pillow that looks like a black cat, it is practically impossible to see her on it when she lays there, the two become one. We also rubbed a little catnip/cat mint on it so it is also one of her favorite toys.
If this whole experience doesn’t sell you on the idea of adopting an animal from the shelter I don’t know what will. Diana is definitely one in a million, and I can’t imagine why anyone would have wanted to give her up. And while this may sound selfish, I am glad that they did.
I plan to post some pictures in the near future so keep an eye out!
