Except it's not "all". I haven't written in here since November, I'm not going to just leave it at "Ugh".
Let's see...the last time I wrote in here, we had just brought the horses home. Nothing else major to report there. Everything has gone fine. I believe the last line of that blog was something like, "...and I didn't even get to tell you about the new cat!" so that sounds like a good place to start.
We have a new cat!
Ha, ha, ha. I crack me up.
Alright, alright. Well, if you're friends with me on FB, you've already "met" Sierra. The Monday night before Saturday we had scheduled to move the horses, I was at Monday Night Bible Study (which is 100% online) and one of the other participants -- whom I didn't know very well at the time -- asked if anyone needed a cat. What timing! I still don't have the tabby twins here (which is another long story) (not really but...well at least you haven't missed anything there) and I just had it in my head that I had to have horses and cats here at the same time. So I said -- Sure, we can rehome a barn cat that needs a new barn to call home!
Because that's what she was at the time. A young cat that someone had apparently dropped off and had found her way to my friend's barn, and was trying to be friendly with the resident barn cats, who wanted absolutely nothing to do with her. So my friend wanted her to find a new home, because she couldn't stay there. And that's how we got a Sierra.
Sierra was a very friendly little cat at first. She loved everyone, especially Maxwell, and the horses. She had no fear of anything. She'd rub all upon the horses and around their legs and she'd follow Max around the yard like his shadow, and every chance she'd get she'd try to get into the house, but we were adamant that she was a BARN cat. She had to stay outside.
Most of the time.
Except that sometimes during the day, if I was home, I'd let her inside for a little bit. She was fine, she just followed Max around, and when he curled up to sleep, she'd curl up next to him. And when he wanted to go outside, she'd go outside with him, and they'd both do their thing out there, and come back in.
One Saturday, Sierra was up by the house, trying to follow us into the truck as we were getting ready to leave. I don't remember where we were going. I had to actually kick her out of the truck and close the door quickly before she could jump back in, and I watched her in the rear view mirror as we drove away. She looked so forlorn and abandoned. Goofy cat, I thought. Just go back to the barn with the horses, you'll be fine.
However, I didn't see her for about three days after that. Which was very strange, because as soon as you even touched the door handle, she would be on the other side to greet you. If she somehow missed that cue, you only needed to say her name or "kitten!" or the like, and she'd come bounding out of the shadows of the barn to rub up against your legs and beg for pets and scritches. So for there to be no sign of her at all after we got home, it made me sick to my stomach. I didn't know if she got carried off by a hawk or an eagle or an owl or a dog or something, or what. I just knew that the more time that went by, the more I missed her.
You'd think I'd know better than to get attached to barn cats by now. But nope. If I feed you, and name you, and you purr at me, that's it. It's done.
So...imagine how I felt a few days later when I was scrolling through FB, and on the local town group, there's a picture of a cute little grey tabby cat with a caption that said, "FOUND: Very friendly female cat. Gets along with other cats and dogs. Found at [name of our road] in [name of our town]." It was like 10 o'clock at night and I'm all, THAT'S MY CAT! THAT'S SIERRA! THAT'S MY CAT!! So of course I messaged the person, and it turns out to be the girlfriend of one of my next-door neighbor's sons. And poor Sierra, I forgot to mention that she'd had a yucky upper respiratory infection at the time that she was on antibiotics for, so she was also all sneezy and wheezy and goopy and she showed up on our neighbor's deck looking all cold and pitiful, and they took her in thinking she had been dumped by someone, or something, because they didn't know us very well yet and didn't know we had just adopted this cat not even a week prior. She was literally next door the whole time. And I hadn't even met the neighbors yet because we're all introverts, but my need to get this cat back overtook my social anxiety and I actually went over there (the next day after work...) all by myself to collect my kitten, and chatted with the neighbors for a while, like we exchanged phone numbers and everything, and it all turned out really well.
And then I went home with Sierra in my arms, and walked in the house and set her down in the living room. And my hubby said, "So you're putting her back out in the barn now?" and I said, "Nope!" and that's how Sierra became a house cat. :D
Max has adjusted. He's been an Only Dog and the Only Inside Pet since September 2020. He's coexisted with the barn cats just fine -- that is, without Luger. (Luger was our other dog, who died in September 2020. Luger H-A-T-E-D cats. When Max was with Luger, Max would also hate cats. But without Luger, Max is fine with them. Go figure.) As I mentioned before, Miss Sierra has loooooved Max since day one. He wasn't quite sure what to make of that, especially once she stayed in the house all the time. It's been a few months now, so he's pretty much used to her. She seems to think the world of him and he's like -- meh, okay. Whatever.
It's weird, though. We haven't had a house cat for a while. Not since shortly after we got Luger, anyway! She's a good little cat. She just got spayed last Friday (today's Monday) which is awesome because she was going into heat like every other week. She seems to have allergies or something because she's still kind of sneezy and wheezy, but we'll work on that now that she's spayed.
Alright, that's all I have time for now. I'll get to the rest later. TTFN
