I forgot to blog about an important even from last week – silly me. On Monday (the 27th) of last week, I went to the vets’ to get cat food since one of our cats eats prescription cat food. Anyway, I came home with the cat food and a cat. Oooops.

When I got to the vets’ there was a cute mostly-white cat that was in a 2′ by 3′ cage and had been there the last time I had needed food, a month before. She was very sweet and very friendly, and so I asked about her. She had been abandoned in a holder at the vets’ one morning, and had been living in the cage for six weeks. Since she was not a kitten, no one was adopting her. The idea of her living in the cage got to me, so I brought her home. Without informing Mer. Heh.

I told Mer I had something cute locked in our bedroom. She was suspicious, and was alarmed when I was looking under the bed and calling to a cat. Then she saw the cardboard cat carrier. She gently berated me on getting a cat without talking to her first, but I explained about the six weeks in a cage, and she just shook her head. I told Mer we would take the cat back if she wanted me to, or if the new cat did not get along with the other cats. Mer said she would not make the cat go back as long as the others were okay with her. As such, we waited over a week to even name the new cat since we were not sure she was going to stay.

It turns out she is a very confident cat, and some hissing and one or two fights aside, the cats seem to at least tolerate each other. So, Mer and I finally got around to discussing names. After a few tries, we both agreed on Octava. An octavo is an early form of book, which was folded eight times to make eight pages. Octava is the feminine form of the word, so that is what we named the new kitty. She is Tava for short.

She is very active. She is only about a year old, as far as the vet could guess. She has been spayed and declawed already, so we have no worries about having to take care of getting her “fixed.” Tava loves to jump, and within two or three days of having access to the whole house she had discovered how to get up on the false wall in our living room (floor to counter to refrigerator to top-of-wall), a feat that none of our other cats has figured out. Tava loves to run, and much to the consternation of the older cats, she loves to chase them if they run from her. She is very friendly, and is happy to curl up with us on the couch. She has a tremendously loud purr. So, even though we never planned on being a three-cat household again, let alone a four-cat household, Tava is here to stay. The jump from three cats to four has made the activity of the house go up. Mer tends to use the word “swarm” a lot now. They are cute, but we really need to stop so that we do not become “those cat people.”

Writing about Tava has reminded me of my other kitty shortcoming – I never blogged about the arrival of Jackson, about a year ago. Jackson was another unplanned kitty. People we know developed allergies to Jackson and had to get rid of him. No one was adopting him, but Mer and I were holding firm against becoming a three-cat household again after Bocca’s death just a month before in July. This went on for over a week, but Mer finally caved to the picture that was posted at CVCA – a pretty-eyed, sweet-looking tiger kitty that, as Mer said, kept looking beseechingly at her. So, we went to see Jackson and found him to be sweet and cute, and Mer really missed her tiger kitty, so he came home with us.

Jackson had a harder time with the two other cats, especially Macska. Macska is male, and oddly (for such a fluffy, effeminate-looking cat) is an alpha-male kitty who needs to be at the top of the pecking order, so Jackson did not like him at all. Even now, Jackson will still growl and hiss at Macska if Macska catches him off guard. Emma and Jackson seem to get along pretty well on the whole, with just a few small hissing fights over the year. Oh, we kept Jackson’s name since he was 12 years old when we adopted him. Mer figured that he had been “Jackson” for so long that we should not change it on him.

Anyway, our family has grown much larger than I ever intended it to be. Tava needs to be the last one, at least as long as we have all four cats, which Mer and I both hope will be for five or more years yet to come.