Meet Astrid

We decided to add a new furry child to our household just after the holidays:

We adopted her from the Wisconsin Humane Society. She is two years old, a domestic long hair calico.

I don't know much about her background; she was a transfer from another shelter and though tame and socialized and very friendly, she was apparently brought in as a stray and was unclaimed. She was not declawed or spayed, but the WHS spayed her.

We have named her Astrid.

Right now she is in her "isolation" room ( our guest bedroom) with her own food, litter, toys, bedding etc. Because we did not know what kind of environment she came from, we don't know if she lived in a home with other companion pets, so we wanted to introuduce her to Olive and E.B. slowly. She is a little more shy and less gregarious than Olive, who is a total social butterfly and adjusted so quickly to our home that it was quite amazing, but we know that Astrid's personality is little more cautious and that she would need more time and much slower approach than Olive.

The folks at WHS have different personality categories that they use to determine how easy it will be for a cat to adjust to a new home and how they will interact with people, based on their own personality. Astrid was placed in a category that was in the middle; the "Sidekick". She's very friendly and social, and loves to sit in laps, but she needs to be comfortable with that person first. She won't just walk up to anybody and be their instant best friend, like Olive does, but she's not fearful, like E.B., who is very shy and will only come out from hiding if there are no strange people in the house.

Both Olive and E.B. know there's a new cat in the "secret" room; they often sit outside the door hoping for a glimpse when we go in and out. Olive's curiosity is much more rapacious and she'll sit outside the door for hours on end. After Astrid had been with us about three or four days, we started opening the door a few inches and held it in place with rubber doorstops on either side so that she could look out through the crack at Olive and E.B. and they could smell each other and look at each other without being able to touch. Olive is, of course, totally unfazed. E.B. gets a little weirded out. Astrid seems to be pretty unruffled so far.

I had hoped to continue the slow introductions with letting Astrid out for short, supervised durations to let her explore the rest of the house and see the other cats, but she started sneezing on Thursday night and had a little bit of a cough. Because we had only brought her home five days earlier, it sounded like feline upper respiratory infection, which is very prevalent in shelters. Olive also had it when we adopted her. So now I have to hold off continuing introductions while Astrid gets her antibiotics and gets over her infection. Feline URIs are very contagious, so I don't want Olive and E.B. to get it. I don't know if I can handle giving liquid antibiotics twice a day to three cats!!!

Thanks for stopping by!