on the integration of the herd

as you all know, we have currently four cats in our house. thankfully our little house comes with a basement, complete with a door. our two little cats are free to roam the main floor and the second floor while the two intruders, aka j's parent's cats, are living in the basement suite. this is working out okay and thankfully isn't a permanent situation.

without central air, our house heats right up. the basement is the coolest place in the house but our cats can't go down there so they're left to melt upstairs while we slink down there after work to hopefully not wake up in the pile of sweat that would be napping on the ground floor or second floor. if both me and j are in the basement our cats sit at the door and howl. it's cute at first but i break down and go back upstairs.

anyways, a minor inconvenience.

but, the bigger problem is that we can't physically spend enough time with each cat. the result? all four are starved for attention and shedding like mad.

it would be awesome if they could all live in harmony, as one big herd, so a couple of nights ago we let our cats into the basement. here's how it went:

- chester (big white male) was on the couch
- sydney (round gray female) was on the floor
- sandy (cute orange female) and rolo (svelt brown male) made their way downstairs

sandy got downstairs, realized something was off and stayed near the stairs, even going back up a couple. rolo made a slow and low to the ground beeline for sydney. a potential mate, we're thinking he's thinking. chester stayed on the couch, not seen by either sandy or rolo. rolo has eyes only for sydney.

rolo makes his way over to syd who is hissing and growling something fierce. rolo just wants to sniff her but she kepps slowly moving away. finally she runs around the couch. rolo chases her and comes face to face with chester who has leapt to the ground.



rolo and chester face off in a screaming match. you should have heard them - they were both emitting this high-pitched growl/howl without opening their mouths. after about 5 minutes of the howl-fest, we scooped up rolo and sandy and brought them back upstairs. seems like the herd mentality will take some time to form. we have just over a week left.