Gabriella Joy

Look who's finally coming around! My rotten little semi-feral baby is starting to act like a normal cat. I've seen her play with her kitty siblings, she runs to eat when she hears a can opening, and she's actually been letting me full-body pet her. She used to occasionally let me pet her head (as long as I didn't touch her ear-tipped ear - and I swear, there's a special place in hell for the people who did that to her), but now she's graduated to letting me start at her head and pet all the way down to the tip of her tail. She doesn't want to be picked up, and she doesn't want me to touch her belly - or her tipped ear - but my goodness, she's progressed by leaps and bounds. She's come so far from the kitten who'd cower behind the toilet in the bathroom when I first brought her home, or who'd hide in the corner of my bedroom closet.

It's quite a feat to introduce any new animal into my already-full house of pets. Even a super-friendly kitten or dog would be a chore. There's new personalities, and old personalities, and trying to find a balance between the attention you spend on the new pet and the existing pets in the household. I've never really had a pet come in that doesn't cause some sort of chaos - either because of themselves or because of the existing pets becoming overly excited or curious about their existence. It's always work. It's always rewarding, though. That first time you see the dog snuggled up with the newest cat, or see two of the cats playing together. The first time the new dog and the old dog play together without snapping at one another.

Somehow, there's always something even more rewarding when the new pet is a difficult transition. A terrified semi-feral kitten coming around is a huge deal in this house. She's surrounded by three kittens her age and younger who just want to play constantly (and thankfully one that's calmer that ended up being her best friend when she first came her), plus a dog that just want to play with her all of the time (the other two are calm and used to new cats coming in - but Tucker just wants to play all of the time. And well, if you had a ball of fur four times your size bounding at you excitedly, you'd be a little bit freaked out, too). 

Welcome to our family, Gabriella Joy! You've been in the house for a while now (it's probably bad that I never remember my pets' "gotcha dates," but when so many have transitioned in, it's hard to keep track of), but you're really a part of the family now.