Today Joy Sellen shares the story of her two adopted cats, Crunch and Google.
In September 2007, our cat died. The children, then aged five and eight, were devastated and wanted to get a new cat (or better still, a kitten) immediately – but I made the decision that we would wait until after Christmas and the summer holidays. They weren’t happy about this, but agreed to wait.
The summer school holidays came and went, and the nagging started again. The SPCA adoption adverts in the newspaper were always pored over avidly, and so I made an appointment to visit the cat run at the SPCA in early February 2008. When we arrived there was another group visiting the kittens, so we decided we would start with the cats. I was quite keen on getting a youngish cat rather than a kitten anyway, so this suited me.
We went into the cat run and met several lovely cats. Then my daughter, who was sitting on the sofa stroking a black cat (Crunch), said “I like this one”.
When Crunch’s microchip was scanned, they said “This one is one of a pair of cats”, and asked if we were still interested. They searched around and found the second cat of the pair (Google) hiding in a box. He was obviously scared, and my heart went out to him. After a brief discussion with the children, it was decided that we would adopt both Crunch and Google. And so we took two not particularly young (six and seven years old) cats home with us. We never did look at any kittens!
For the first two days, both cats hid under a bed, coming out only at night. Crunch was the first to venture out at day time. Google eventually followed. We followed the SPCA’s advice and kept them both inside for two weeks. It took a while, but eventually they seemed quite at home.
Except for one thing – they were both quite clearly terrified of men. Especially Google. He would be sitting on my lap quite happily, but if my husband would entered the room, he would leap off in a panic, leaving me with scratched legs. The reaction was the same with any man. He would take one look and run. Crunch wasn’t quite so bad, but she also obviously didn’t like adult males around and was visibly unsettled if any came near her.
It took a long time for them to get over this. My husband eventually won Google over (by being the one to give him food), and Crunch also started to relax around him. Once they realised he was OK, they eventually began to stop looking stressed and running away whenever a man was around.
Once he’d got over his initial trepidation, Google was quite happy to sit on my lap and snuggle. Crunch, on the other hand, would rub around our legs and occasionally go on beds, but would never ever sit on a lap. It took her over two years to decide that she would sit on my lap – we adopted the cats in February 2008, and Crunch didn’t sit on my lap until April 2010! Now she sits there every night, and Google only rarely gets a turn.
These days they both seem happy. They do still have a few strange foibles that I haven’t encountered with any other cats in my life. Neither of them like loud voices, so if anyone shouts or even just talks loudly, they will come out and meow continuously until the loud voices stop. Crunch has also reacted in this way when I’ve been reading books to the children – obviously she doesn’t like my reading voice!
And although they can occasionally be affectionate towards each other, and work as a team when dealing with other cats, most of the time they don’t actually seem to like each other much. In the warmer months they largely ignore each other. When it starts getting cold and there is competition for the best seat in front of the fire or on a lap, World War III breaks out! They’ll sneak up on each other and pounce, then roll around on the floor fighting until someone has had enough. Or one will saunter up to the other, start licking them, and then – snap, the teeth go in. But mostly it seems to be play fighting, as if they’re still little kittens – they don’t hurt each other.
So that’s the story of our cats (so far). We don’t know much about their life before the SPCA, but we do know that since they’ve lived with us, they’ve changed from nervous, worried pussy cats into confident, content animals who rule the household. It has taken a lot of time and patience, but it’s been worth it. They are important members of our family and we love them both dearly.
