We just brought home a new cat from Give Me Shelter! His name (unless we decide to change it) is Marshall, and he’s a rescue originating from Stockton, California. It’s time to embrace mommy blogging.
Marsh will be quarantined from Gus until they’re ready to meet. There’s a long “introduction” process; the safer you do it, the better their chance of living without conflict. We adopted a second cat because we think Gus would like a friend — so aside from not wanting to cause unnecessary thrash in a cat’s life, we’d really like them to live together better than just “without conflict”!
Day 0 — Fri, Dec 27th
We brought Marsh home and got him in the den. He’s super confident and chatty. He went about exploring his quarantine room right away. He wasn’t eating treats yet, but he did eat his wet food super hungrily. At this point, he’s doing super well! He and Gus are already curious about each other through the smells under the doors. Gus hissed a couple of times, but he’s been doing all the essential things — eating, eliminating, and playing. Marsh let me tuck him into his bed with a blanket.
Marsh took the N Judah back home — this makes him a train guy and Gus a bus guy.
Already receiving affection.
Day 1
You can see Marsh through the window in the other room — across the quarantine boundary.
Gus has always liked climbing under the couch and tearing at the fabric. It turns out Marsh does too, and he ripped a large enough tear to create a little pocket to be in. So he’s been spending a lot of time sleeping in the couch. He usually comes out and greets us when we go into the quarantine room. He was spending quite a while in the couch but was super affectionate with Kat when she came in for the final time of the day. It is really cute to look under the couch and see him.
Gus was hardly doing poorly yesterday but is doing quite well today. He wouldn’t eat his breakfast by the doors (this was a bit too fast to try anyway, tbh), but he did eat tube food by the doors. He also played with his favorite cat dancer toy, and some of that play happened to be near the door.
They did spend some time chirping at each other through the door.
Day 2
Really hard to keep the boys separate — they really wanna see each other! Gus hesitated hard on his breakfast. I had to put him in the bedroom for a minute to be able to feed Marsh because he kept following me around and wanted to sneak into the quarantine room.
At one point Marsh was lying right against the pocket doors listening to the resident cat.
Marsh is thriving today, though! Big comeback from yesterday’s time in the cave. He does still sleep in the couch cave and makes little snoozle sounds.
Pretty boy.
We started doing “scent exchange” today. We took a blanket that Marsh likes and his scratcher and gave them to Gus with lots of treats on them. Then we gave Gus’ scratcher to Marsh with lots of treats. This went super well! They were both curious and relaxed about it. Gus even sat on Marsh’s scratcher with his back to the quarantine room door.
Gus abandons his meal every time Marsh starts eating, it’s really distracting for him. He wants to be let into the den.
So far so good!
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