Cat-Sitting Sprocket

While Joel and his fam­i­ly were on extend­ed vaca­tion, I took care of their cat, Sprocket.

He used to be 25 pounds (from the pre­vi­ous own­er who overfed him) but slimmed down to around 14 or 15, I’d say. You can tell he used to be much big­ger; if you run your hand down the length of his body, you can feel the bones on his frame stick­ing out promi­nent­ly, and there’s a fair amount of extra skin hang­ing from the bel­ly.

Thumbnail: Sprocket the cat lounges
Thumbnail: Sprocket the cat yawns
Thumbnail: Sprocket the cat
Thumbnail: Sprocket stalks Dolly

He nev­er got along with Dolly. For the entire time he was with me, which was just under two months, they got in about two dozen fights. Every now and then, there would be a tremen­dous cacoph­o­ny of hiss­ing, growl­ing, meow­ing, and run­ning from one end of the house to the oth­er. I’d say that Sprocket was more often the aggres­sor, but Dolly start­ed her share of fights. Even though she still has her back claws (Sprocket is com­plete­ly de-clawed), he had a large weight and size advan­tage. His bite is also very strong (which I found out from feed­ing him treats1), I’m guess­ing from all the prac­tice he got from eat­ing.

It made me re-think get­ting a sec­ond cat while Dolly’s still alive. Two cats can fill a house nice­ly, but she did­n’t get along with him at all. Since they don’t know how old Sprocket is, the aggres­sive­ness may sim­ply be due to his age, but I’m not sure I want to take the chance.

In any case, I can tell he enjoyed the change of pace, which was liv­ing in a house with two par­ents, two kids, and two dogs, to just me and a cat. He’s a suck­er for treats, meow­ing qui­et­ly as a “reminder” to give him one. One fun­ny thing I noticed is that he seemed to have hard­er-than-aver­age paws. When pac­ing around on the kitchen tiles before being fed, it would sound like a horse trot.

Sprocket also loves atten­tion. No mat­ter what I was doing — cook­ing break­fast, play­ing games upstairs, writ­ing down­stairs — he would fol­low me around. It did make my Tai Chi prac­tice more dif­fi­cult, as he’d spread out on the open car­pet and roll around under my feet.

He loves to sleep on blan­kets, and would always fall asleep on my sheets when I was under them, most com­mon­ly near the feet. He got along espe­cial­ly well with Bronwen. When she stayed the night, he would keep her up by con­stant­ly walk­ing over her body, look­ing for a warm place to nes­tle.

I’ll cer­tain­ly miss him. Hopefully, he’ll remem­ber me the next time I go over to Joel’s house.

  1. I don’t think he was ever fed by hand; he would always nip my fin­gers when giv­ing him a treat. Dolly is the oppo­site. She very del­i­cate­ly moves towards the treat with her mouth, and snatch­es the treat with her tongue. []

7 comments

  1. If you want a sec­ond cat, hav­ing a kit­ten usu­al­ly is the best way. Also, the SPCA here lets you kind of have a sleep­over with a poten­tial pet you want to adopt so that you can get an idea of how they’d get along. Bringing in a sec­ond pet is hard, you have to deal with the jeal­ousy ;)

  2. Love that purr engine! I tried to record mine, my cat’s that is, but my cam­era could­n’t pick it up. Our cats got along famous­ly, code­pen­dant­ly, at first but they had a falling out and staked out the house into ter­ri­to­ries even­tu­al­ly. We thought ours would be lone­ly being the only cat but she loves hav­ing sole queen rule.

  3. @Sophia — I was think­ing about a kit­ten too. And a male to bal­ance out Dolly being a female. She may still feel threat­ened though; I don’t think it’s so much of an intim­i­da­tion and size issue as it is an atten­tion issue (the jeal­ousy, as you men­tion). That sleep­over idea is amaz­ing, but it must be for dogs main­ly. Cats can get along, but it’s not often that it’s right away, since a grad­ual intro­duc­tion is the most impor­tant part.

    @Pearl — You need a some­what omni-direc­tion­al micro­phone to cap­ture a purr, which isn’t always easy to find. I can’t believe your cats got worse togeth­er as time went on. In my expe­ri­ence, it’s the com­plete oppo­site, and they’re hiss­ing, growl­ing, and stick­ing their backs up in the begin­ning. It would be inter­est­ing to see a social struc­ture such as that in a house­hold.

  4. You should ask, they might do it for cats too because I know that the adop­tion process here is SO hard and such a pain that peo­ple end up get­ting pets else­where. They real­ly want to make sure that you’ll be a per­ma­nent own­er. Have you ever thought about fos­ter­ing? I could­n’t do it, I would­n’t be able to let go.

  5. That’s a good point…the ani­mal shel­ters here are pret­ty good about try­ing to match peo­ple up with the right pets. It’s fun­ny cause I just thought about fos­ter­ing the oth­er day, but I think it’d just be too much of a com­mit­ment for me at the moment. It would be awe­some to get tons of new kit­ten pic­tures though!

  6. After bat­tling ubiq­ui­tous fur and pee­ing wars amongst my sis­ter’s 7 cats and two dogs, and after the fur and clam­ber­ing and claw­ing of my moth­ers’ 5 cats, I can truth­ful­ly say I am OD’d on felines.

    However, I know you need to bring over and try out kit­ties togeth­er when decid­ing on a cohab­i­tant cat. Some bond very close­ly and some just get ter­ri­to­r­i­al. Each one is dif­fer­ent, and inex­plic­a­ble.

  7. Blasphemy! One can nev­er OD on felines!

    But yeah, cat’s have as many per­son­al­i­ties as peo­ple. One can nev­er tell which ones will get along, and how.

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