Introducing Lily

Here's the latest addition to the family - Lily, a 10 week old kitten we adopted from the shelter. The poor little baby ended up at the shelter after she rode about 40k's in the undercarriage of a car before the people driving the car parked and discovered her! She was quite dehydrated and absolutely terrified.

Stumpy had been driving me nuts last week when I start working - trying to play at all hours when I was trying to sleep. And play involves attacking my legs, putting her paws under the sheets and trying to claw my back... Not very pleasant! So I was exhausted from working again, and spending all evening studying, then getting barely any sleep - certainly not much quality sleep! I mean, Stumpy is an awesome cat, she's a simply wonderful companion, she walks on a leash, plays fetch and generally is just a lovely cat, but this was too much. She's in her "terrible two's" stage, and has lots of energy to burn!

So we adopted a little friend for her on the weekend :) There was a couple of kittens who'd been there for a while who I really liked, but they'd all been adopted (even the ones that weren't at the top of my adoption list!), and there was barely any kittens there.

I was thinking that maybe we would have to wait and endure more sleepless nights, but they mentioned a really shy kitten who couldn't come out of her cage since she was so shy. I looked in her cage and saw this little face staring out at me with big eyes. I put my hand in, and she immediately rolled over so I could rub her belly, and started purring. I pulled my hand back, and she stood up and walked toward me while purring and rubbing up against my hand. She did the same for Andrew, and I knew this was our girl!

So the introductions have gone really well. We've had Lily for only 5 days, and while Lily often sleeps in her safe place in the spare room where she was confined for the first couple of days, she comes downstairs or we bring her downstairs, she spends ages going nuts playing with toys and running around and being chased by Stumpy :)

They've started wrestling, and we were a bit worried that Stumpy was being too rough, but today Lily was kicking Stumpy in the head back, and batting out at Stumpy's legs as she walks by :) And Lily walks up to Stumpy and rubs against her, and Stumpy licks her in return.

So they certainly seem pretty happy with each other, and I think Stumpy is enjoying having a new little sister! I haven't been woken up to her attacking me the last couple of nights, so that's excellent!! I do wake to her chasing Lily around, but that's just my mothering instinct :) My sleep is improving dramatically!