New Friends

[c9]

- we went to a fun party last night, and we're starting to make friends -- yay!
- we're talking about adopting cats!

I would like these two cats:

	Neo
	Trinity

They're siblings, so adopting them together is of course best. Unfortunately there are two problems: they're not declawed, which is leapfish's preference to protect our couches (since a spray bottle is not quite as effective). Also (ssshhh, don't tell Vinny) they're named after characters from the Matrix.

Maybe we could rename them (to avoid the geekiness factor for Vinny) to slightly different names (to avoid confusion for them). Nemo? El Nino? Divinity? Salinity? I'd better stop now.

Comments

[nihilicious.livejournal.com]

I had to declaw my pet cactus once. Its screams of terror unnerve me to this day.

If I had it to do all over again...

[purplemartini.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have had Dieter declawed. Sure he has his Bizarre Love ritual with me but if I wasn't so selfish at the time and of course If I'd known then what they had to do to my precious boy to disarm him. Well I do regret it. I think my neck probably doesn't regret it tho.

As for caps. They actually do stay on quite a while once you have the hang of getting them on. It takes a bit to get used to just how much glue you will need for your specific cat. And they come in such cute colors. I mean the fact alone that your cats will be able to accessorise should totally sell you on the idea of caps. We got tired of the expense of caps and near the end it seemed like we were replacing one cap here one cap there. So now we just trim about once a week, or whenever I notice that the girls seem to stick to the scratching post like velcro.

Honestly, your furniture may take a bit of a beating during the intial training periond (I won't lie to you on that ) cats are stubborn animals and don't pick up on that stuff right away. And they like what they like. So if you get a crapy scratching post they will prefer your furniture anyway. So my advice. Firm reinforcement of use of the scratching post (we still praise our girls when they use it) and a squirt bottle for negative reinforcement of all bad behaviour (including getting on the counter) . On the upside, you guys have ikea furniture, and ikea makes replacement covers. So if the cats destroy your sofa during the training period you can replace the covers and no one will be the wiser.

On the other hand, having cats leaves you open to all sorts of criticsm when you have a baby. "cats steal kids breath when they are sleeping!" My attitude is that our cats are going to be to weirded out by the hairless interloper in thier home to bother trying to steal the kids breath LOL.