Big news to share this week — we have a new addition to the family! We adopted a new cat! Meet Ilsa, pictured above, an adorable 3-year-old black kitty.
(I’m not doing this as my typical Sunday Salon post mainly because I don’t have any updates on books this week. Still reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders and Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, and I added Hell and Other Destinations by Madeleine Albright, may she rest in peace, on audio. And it’s snowing AGAIN for the upteenth time this winter and it’s super cold and I hate it because I just want warm weather RIGHT. NOW.)
Anyway. New cat. This was somewhat unexpected and a bit of a surprise. I mean, if you told me last Sunday that we would once again have a cat in the house this week…well, I would have been quite skeptical. As regular readers may recall, our former cat Mrs. Douglas died February 20, 2020, mere weeks before the world as we all knew it ended. Lockdown felt lonely without our feline friend and seeing everyone’s “coworkers” on Zoom was kinda sad. College Girl was especially grief-struck; Douglas’s photo is by her dorm-room bed and at home, her ashes are at her bedside, too.
Last summer she started talking about the possibility of adopting a new cat. We reminded her that she wasn’t living at home and that the care of said cat would fall to her empty-nester parents — particularly me, given The Husband’s health issues. Since our office went back to work full time (in June 2021), College Girl has felt that The Husband could benefit emotionally from a companion at home with him. (One of the benefits of having a psychology major for a daughter is that you get free psychoanalysis whenever you wish.) We went to Black Cat Market in July 2021 — after College Girl gave me the play-by-play of a livestream while I drove us to Philly for what would be the most emotionally wrenching 36 hours of my life since the kids’ birth — and again this January, “just to look.” Through all of this, it was clear that she was drawn to the black cats and we had several a conversation about that, too.
On Tuesday morning, I was greeted by a text sent by College Girl at 12:47 a.m.
I KNOW IT’S ALMOST 1 AM BUT SOMEONE IN THE [BUY NOTHING] GROUP IS GIVING AWAY A BLACK CAT THEIR KID IS ALLERGIC TO
followed by:
MOM IT’S A SIGN
After being grateful that said text didn’t wake me up, I went to our local Buy Nothing group’s page and sure enough, there’s an adorable black cat who looks identical to our Douglas. (The photo above is from the Buy Nothing posting.) This cannot be an emotionally healthy thing, I thought. I also noticed that College Girl asked the cat’s name (oh, God, now we KNOW HER NAME, we’re probably getting in too deep here). I showed The Husband, who commented the same. I responded to College Girl saying that “maybe” we could meet her. A coworker advised we should probably act quickly if we were interested because she could be gone soon.
So, we met Ilsa and her family on Tuesday evening and they were all delightful. Ilsa was a bit shy, but friendly enough. We talked some more and yesterday was the big day — Ilsa came to live with us! Her first family very graciously gave us all of her food, litter, toys, scratching posts, etc. Not only did we get a cat out of this, we acquired two friends.
She’s been in hiding ever since, as is typical for a cat getting adjusted to a new home. She spent all of last evening in her (open) carrier in the bathroom. Sometime during the night she came out, ate a few treats we placed nearby, and now she’s currently under the living room sofa. We know she’ll settle in soon. (Breaking News! She just poked her head out oh-so-briefly and looked at me — then scooted back.)
Oh, and right now there’s a cardinal outside, too.
The post Meeting Ilsa first appeared on melissa firman.
