Byron

Kitties are impos­si­ble to resist when you see them in every other viral video doing some­thing hilar­i­ous or clever or just plain cute, and my plan to wait until life set­tled down a bit before adopt­ing another one was as dif­fi­cult as the inten­tions were noble.

I’ve had Byron for about a month now, and he’s already been a great com­pan­ion. He hasn’t warmed up to sleep­ing with me at night, but he fre­quently sleeps in my lap, and fol­lows me around the house, even going so far as to lie on the bath­mat to watch me when­ever I’m mak­ing a nice BM. He also rarely stops mov­ing, which makes him espe­cially dif­fi­cult to pho­to­graph. Like Dolly, he can be quite a vocal cat, and will meow repeat­edly when he knows he’s about to be fed or if I call his name.

 

I can tell he’s already grown in the short time I’ve had him. It’s always fun to see how all the parts of kit­ties develop at dif­fer­ent rates; right now he has big ears and a full tail, though his big mitts are more likely due to his breed. His face is also quite mature, though it isn’t par­tic­u­larly strik­ing or unique.

the kitten formerly known as Bart

It was a bit of process before I finally had Byron in my pos­ses­sion. Since I got back from my trip to Europe, I’d check the Humane Society web­site a few times a day, and when I finally saw a suit­able kit­ten¹, I drove down to the shel­ter, only to find this kit­ten being adopted right in front of me. Seeing as how I’d made the drive across town, I stayed to look for other can­di­dates. There I found myself in rooms filled with adorable lit­tle kit­ties, some of which jumped in my lap and licked my hand and did other things which gen­er­ally made them impos­si­ble to put down. Unfortunately, none of them were exactly what I wanted, and since this was a deci­sion that would poten­tially stay with me for the next 20 years, I knew I should try another time for the right one. I’d never felt more like a respon­si­ble adult than when I walked out of there empty-handed, after hav­ing had my heart set on going home with a new kitty.

Eventually, I saw a mack­erel tabby on the web­site with wild mark­ings and a some­what stocky frame, so I drove down to the Humane Society right away. There they had him in a cage with another kit­ten, asleep at first, but soon anx­ious to be let out when I got his atten­tion. When I took him out, a brief inspec­tion revealed that he had a beau­ti­fully lush coat and an alert demeanor, and I could tell he was the right one not long after a bit of playing.

As part of the adop­tion process, I was asked all sorts of ques­tions. Any cat lover would be able to tell it was actu­ally a screen­ing test, cause some of the ques­tions were traps, like “I am adopt­ing a cat to a) keep my cur­rent cat com­pany b) keep me com­pany”. When review­ing my form, the adop­tion worker said, “You know all the right answers, don’t you?”, and soon I had him in my car, head­ing home in the sum­mer heat.

a new name

I wanted to name this new kit­ten after a hero, but Ulysses or Lermontov or Nabokov didn’t feel neu­tral enough for a cat, likely cause those names have spe­cific con­no­ta­tions for me. I set­tled on Byron after real­iz­ing Lord Byron had influ­enced some of my favourite writ­ers, and I’ve always loved the idea of the Byron hero (even going so far as to fancy myself one in my fool­ish youth).

how's everybody feline

My bat­tle with fleas and upper res­pi­ra­tory infec­tions from the last adop­tion left me para­noid, so I kept Byron in quar­an­tine a full two weeks. Thankfully, Byron hasn’t had any ail­ments, and he’s already adjusted to the rest of the house. I’m only now real­iz­ing how much of a sickly cat Leonard was in comparison.

At first I thought he had asthma cause he would pant within five min­utes of play­ing², but now I think he just pushes him­self when he plays. The fact that he has a hard time keep­ing track of toys with­out bells or jan­gles leads me to believe he doesn’t have very good eye­sight, though he has great hear­ing to make up for this. He fol­lows the bag of treats cause it makes a nice lit­tle rat­tle, but can’t fig­ure out where the actual treat is when it’s in my hand.

there's nothing more dangerous than an intelligent cat

The fact that Byron’s a smart cat means he eas­ily gets into trou­ble. It’s hard to stop him from going on the for­bid­den coun­ter­tops or play­ing with things that are too valu­able to be kitty toys. Luckily, that also means he under­stands pun­ish­ment sooner³. He’s also good at learn­ing the paths of where I like to run his toys, and knows how to lead his targets.

new siblings

One of Dolly’s favourite spots is on the chaise, so I lay this kitty blan­ket out to pre­vent too much hair from build­ing up on it. She loves sleep­ing on it, even when Byron has stolen her spot.

Dolly hasn’t been her­self since I brought Byron home. She keeps run­ning away when­ever I bring her to bed with me, and she doesn’t purr at all, which is par­tic­u­larly out of char­ac­ter for her, as she used to do so when you only gave her a long enough look. She’s started warm­ing up to me again though, and I hope it’ll get bet­ter over time.

Leonard was too inno­cent to under­stand that Dolly growl­ing meant he should stay away. Byron knows enough to leave her alone, so even though his incli­na­tion is to try to sleep with her, he doesn’t try to very often. Unfortunately, he also has a ten­dency to bite in a play­ful man­ner, which can really annoy her and quickly esca­late into a fight, but it always remains play fight­ing. At first I kept break­ing them up, but real­ized Dolly hasn’t got­ten this much exer­cise in years.

1. He was male, around 3–4 months old, no health issues, with the right face, colours, and pat­tern. [↑]
2. I could rarely get my other cats to pant, and if they did it usu­ally took at least 20 min­utes. [↑]
3. It took Leonard a good two months before he learned not to eat from Dolly’s dish, but with Byron it only took two days [↑]