Back to the shelter.
More than 30 amazingly beautiful adult cats looking at me. Some with hope, some with disdain, some just wanting to get out of their cages and chill for a while.
And I was looking for a less-adoptable pet. To be honest, I had my list of less-adoptables narrowed down to... 12. I went online and browsed through profiles and promised myself I would keep myself to the list. The problem was: with many of them, I didn't click. Not like I did with Alfie. And Alfie - oh, ADORABLE Alfie - had been adopted. (I knew it: I knew that in the span of a week he would be gone because he was so captivating...)
And so I kept looking. Taking pets out of their cages, playing with them, petting them, brushing them. I spent a couple of hours at the shelter. And still... No click. I began to feel disappointed and thought that maybe it just would not happen that day. Which was sad, because I wanted a cat, and I wanted one as soon as possible.
So, about half an hour before I have to leave, I see this little black cat in the back of a cage. She - yes, it was a she - was tiny and had beautiful, big, yellow-and-green eyes. The description in her cage door said that she was affectionate, playful, around 1.5 years old, and that her owners had given her up 6 months before because they were moving. Her name was Meeko.
To tell the truth, Meeko was not on my list. She was younger than what I was looking for, and she was a SHE - let me remind you of the bias I had against female cats based on my roommate's senior cat who hate me.Still, I had not chosen a cat yet and maybe Meeko deserved a chance.
She struck me right away. She didn't appreciate being carried but as soon as we got to the play room she opened up. She played, she weaved around my legs. She let me pet het. Meeko had a bright, very soft medium coat, the kind of coat it feels good to touch. About 3 minutes after we were there, she jumps on my lap, puts her paws in my shoulders, and bumps her head slightly in my forehead.
Click. This was it. Again.
It took me less than 15 minutes to fall in love with her - and less than one minute to fill her adoption form. The Humane Society receptionist told me it should take one or two days until they approved us. I went home excited as I hadn't been in a while and already craving to bring Meeko home.
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Hello - I was so glad to read your posts about deciding to adopt a black cat. My black cat named Canuck was just a three weeks old wild kitten that had lost it's mother and all it's siblings (they were shot or clubbed to death.) I captured her and she was my feline friend until she passed away December 5th, 2009 at the age of 25 years old. I decided to adopt another black cat from a rescue shelter and so near the end of December, I adopted an eight-week old kitten I named Neko (Japanese word for "Cat".) I can tell you that Canuck had become an extremely talkative "sentence forming" a huge variety of different sounds. Over the 25 years of Canuck's life with me, I learned so much about cat communication. After she passed away, I researched online to see if other people had similar experiences with black cats in particular. What I found convinced me that black cats are genetically wired to be more talkative (but not just with "meows" but with all kinds of sounds just like Canuck had done.) I started out wanting to adopt a black cat because they are "less adoptable" and then found that this communication quality is somehow indicated by fur color (not caused by fur color, but indicated by fur color)-- and so I had even another reason to want to adopt a black cat. In just this short time I've had Neko, she is showing she has quite a growing vocabulary that also includes a funny little dance she does on her hind legs when I come home from the studio. I hope you are able to give your cat Meeko the time and attention that will encourage her to develop her communicative skills and abilities to the fullest extent possible. (I also found articles about the black fur color being associated with cats that have greater resistance to certain cat illnesses and having a greater chance at living longer (with proper care and food, of course.) Well, I will end here. I would have emailed you, but couldn't locate an email address for you on your blog. (I, too, have a blog: poppenga.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteAnd you can see a photo of Neko on my blog.)
Cheers!
Carol