I haven’t talked about our cats yet.
We’ve had 14 cats. We started with three of Doc’s—Mel, Opti (Optimus Prime), and Sprocket, AKA Pookie—and two of mine—Rory (Aurora) and Sean II (named as a fast-growing kitten after Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors). Also my Georgie, a Shih Tzu who who taught me everything about love I needed to know to be a dad.
Our typical population was five or six. The most peaceful had seven: Rory, Opti, Sean, Sunny, Pie, Mia, and Ginger.
Now we have three: Ruby, Plato (named after Plato), and Mal (for Mal Reynolds from Firefly). It’s cat matchmaking gone horribly wrong.
It began when I met Plato at the vet. He had no fur around his mouth because he’d lost it chewing through a littermate’s collar. I told Doc I’d met a really spirited little guy, and he joined the crew.
Plato is a berserker. He harasses Ruby. (Doc says Ruby was mean to him when he was little. I dunno.) But that’s not the problem.
After 13 cats we thought we were experts. We decided to adopt another cat to be Plato’s playmate and get him off Ruby’s case. When we met sweet Mal at the local shelter, we had our boy. And Plato had his true victim.
Plato was/is intent on killing Mal. (Mal’s bigger but forgets that when death is raining down on him.) Mal’s been treated several times for bad Plato bites.
He was living in terror until we saw My Cat from Hell with Jackson Galaxy. We site-swapped our bedroom, but there were two or three slip-ups and Plato went for the kill. A chain on the door let us open it a few inches to try co-feeding—nobody ate. We tried other things. We love Galaxy, but reintroduction just wasn’t happening.
And here we are, two years later, still site-swapping. Plato and Mal have settled in, but we’re stuck with a crappy situation indefinitely—they’re both youngish.
So let our hubris serve as a warning: Felines enjoy cat matchmaking just as much as we do. Don’t even think about it.
