Day 132: Meet Greyson
Isn’t he cute? His name is Greyson and we adopted him from a Toronto Cat Rescue foster mother last Friday. Let me explain how this adoption came about.
On December 4, 2017 Mickey, our 13 year old tuxedo cat crossed Rainbow Bridge quite expectantly. He had trouble breathing, we took him to the vet thinking he had a cold, but he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. To ease his suffering we had him put down right there and then.
I visited the Toronto Cat Rescue website and found Ella, a beautiful white kitten with grey patches and a grey tail. We adopted her on January 4th from Jackie, her foster mom. Ella was renamed Halley and Jackie, her foster mom and I stayed in touch with emails and photos.
When I introduced Greyson to Charlotte, Gabriel, Holly and Halley things went more or less as expected … Charlotte was terrified of the newcomer and ran to my bedroom; Gabriel took one whiff of the little one and decided he wasn’t worth bothering with; Holly hissed and turned her back on him, while Halley looked like she’d seen a ghost.
From what I read online, a new pet should be kept in a separate room and introduced to resident pets gradually. This is probably good advice, but I couldn’t find it in my heart to lock the little one in the bedroom and leave him all alone. I would just have to chance it. I wasn’t worried, I knew I had to give Charlotte, Gabriel, Holly and Halley time to get used to this new addition to the family, but I was confident that everything would be alright.
After just 24 hours, Charlotte, Gabriel and Holly started to warm up to Greyson. They were still weary of him, but their curiosity got the better of them. Halley on the other hand wanted nothing to do with this newcomer, she didn’t even want to stay in the same room as him. Practically the whole of Saturday she spent on the balcony, only venturing inside to eat and use her litter box.
Oh dear, I thought, this is not going well. I had expected that Halley would embrace little Greyson as a friend, since they are both kittens. Admittedly, Halley is 10 months old and Greyson is 8 weeks old, but technically they are both kittens.
Then suddenly on Sunday Halley had a change of heart. Not only did she come inside, she actually sought out Greyson and started keeping an eye on him.
Today, a week later, Halley and Greyson are inseparable. Don’t ask me what happened but as from last Monday those two are the best of friends. Where you see Greyson, you see Halley, where you see Halley you see Greyson and on the rare occasion that Greyson makes a dash for freedom, Halley goes looking for him.
Just goes to show, I didn’t follow the new pet introduction rules, but as predicted, everything turned out to be okay.