Monday, January 24, 2011

Introducing...Sampson!!

Before Christmas, Sam was sitting at our bar in the kitchen and Workaholic asked her, "Hey Sam, what do you want for Christmas?" And she answered, clear as can be, "Puppy!" We just looked at each other.

As it turns out, all she wanted was the puppy coloring book.

But that two sentence conversation got the wheels turning.

And a couple of weeks later, after spending some time at his cousin's house, Workaholic says, "Maybe we should get a cat."

Oh. My. God. This is coming from the man who does not like cats. At all. He thinks all they do is attack you and pee in your house. And we are talking NOT in the litter box. He and his father have re-done many houses, and whenever there have been feline occupants, they claim that they can smell the cat pee in the carpet when they pull it up. So I sort of blew him off, this is just another one of his hair-brained ideas that he will forget about in a week.

Except he kept bringing it up. And he asked his cousin, who has a Bengel cat, where she got it. At that point, I said that if we get a cat, it will not be some exotic crossbreed, but it will be a RESCUE. You know, so one less cat will die. And then he started looking on petfinder.

Are you kidding me? He isn't forgetting! And he is talking about where to put a litter box, and will we take it to Michigan this summer???

Fast forward to 2 weeks ago. A nice woman from Last Chance Rescue came over and brought Sampson!! He is about 5 months old (apparently it isn't kitten season, so 8 week olds are a little hard to come by) and super playful. He has been in a foster home with a family that had at least one other cat and dog. He is fully vetted, litter-trained, and cute. AND, he comes when called. (Workaholic likes to say that we ordered a cat on the internet and had it delivered to the house.)

Our first night with him went very well. He didn't hide from Sam, or the Fonz, or Workaholic. He definitely wanted to be in the same room as us. When we turned off all the lights and went upstairs, he started to follow us, and then apparently changed his mind. A few minutes later, Workaholic saw him doing circles in the living room, meowing, like, "Hey! Where did everybody go?" One little whistle, he looked up, and sprinted up the stairs to join us.

Sam wouldn't go to bed, she kept saying, "Sampson, what're you doin'?" And, "Cat! Cat!!" Then she'd run up to him, stop and scrunch up her shoulders and giggle, and then run around in circles as he got the zoomies around our bedroom. Then it would be, "Where's the toy?" (Sampson's foster mom sent his favorite toy, along with a nice letter telling us about him.) Or, "Where'd he go?"

This cat has just fit right into our house, right into our lifestyle. And I don't think he has gone to the bathroom (other than the taco meat incident) anywhere except in or near his litterbox. I say near because I let it get pretty dirty and he went on the mat right outside it. He showed me!

To say that Samantha loves this cat is an understatement. The poor dear lets her carry him all over the house, all day. He occasionally gets a break from her by watching TV and batting at the moving people on the screen. He totally entertains himself, and sleeps in between Workaholic and me at night...that is, after I bring him in from Sam's room. She generally calls him CAT or KATKE, occasionally the word Sampson will come out of her mouth. Charlie and him get along really well too, he even lets her share *his* activity mat. (the one that was hers before he came along)

He tries so hard to snuggle up to Fonz, and I must say that Fonz is getting much better about tolerating him. He actually let Sampson rub his face with his back the other day without walking away in bitter disgust!

All in all, except for the litterbox situation, I have to say that it is nice having a kitten around. He is entertaining and I really enjoy being able to have him warm my lap when watching TV or working on the computer. I'd show a picture, but he won't stop moving enough for me to get a good one. That and the fact that he is black makes it impossible to see him when he is sleeping. I'll keep trying though.

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