DUM DUM DUMMMMM….
Oh, the terror!!
When I first got Gus, I was a little unsure. I’m not the sort of person who takes a pet home on a whim, and I wasn’t sure if I had entertained the idea of being a cat owner long enough before getting him. But when my sister offered to buy me a kitty as a Christmas present, it seemed like a great idea.
So we went shelter hopping (if you can call visiting two different shelters hopping), and after finding only adult cats at the Atlanta Humane Society, we moved on to Fulton County Animal Services around the corner.
While the facilities at AHS were clean and newly rennovated, Fulton County’s shelter was along the lines of what you would expect from a government-run facility…old, dimly lit, and rather smelly. But their adoptions were $20 cheaper than AHS, and more importantly, they had kittens. A LOT of kittens. I wanted to take them all home, it was so sad to see them all shut up in cages without anyone to love them, and housed in the same huge room as a ton of very loud dogs. Anyways. There were a lot of kittens, most of them black or dark brown…silly as it may sound, my sister has a black cat, and I didn’t want my kitten to match. I mean, I wouldn’t have based my final decision off of color, but for that reason, I had my eyes open for something different. And there was little orange Gus, sitting calmly at the front of his cage, watching us with a mellow, contented expression. I got him out of the cage and held him for a minute, and he just hung out. He had pretty coloring and seemed very sweet-tempered. But he was a little bigger and older than I had envisioned, so I put him back in the cage and held some of the little kittens again. My sister and I walked up and down the cages again, looking at all the kittens and trying to decide. Then I came back to Gus. He was sitting at the front of his cage as before, observing everything going on around him. I took him out again. This time he played with my hair. Maybe it was a whim, but I thought he was cute. I won’t say it was love at first sight, but he was the cutest kitten at the shelter, and his personality seemed similar to mine. We filled out all the paperwork, and were instructed to return in a few days to pick him up after he had been “altered.”
On the way home, I had doubts. Was I even sure I wanted a cat? Did I want to clean out a litter box? Did I want to share the bed with a fuzzy little monster? Happily, I did not heed my doubts, and brought home a beautiful, bouncing, altered baby boy cat a few days before Christmas. He wasn’t perfect…we found out after the first day that he had troubling coughing fits that made him sound like he was dying. His eyes were runny, and he slept pretty much all day. We took him back to the shelter, where they told us he had an upper respiratory infection and gave me some antibiotics which, both to his delight and mine, I got to shove down his throat every twelve hours for almost two weeks. I got back to school and the antibiotics still hadn’t cleared up the coughing fits, and now he was sneezing and had eye boogies all the time. I took him to a local vet, who informed me my cat had cat herpes. Yes, herpes. I hated to laugh at him, but admit it, it’s a little funny. Apparently cat herpes manifests as upper respiratory problems, and is not an STD, lol. The vet assured me it’s not serious, and that little Gus would lead a relatively normal life. Except the awful coughing fits he still has…those are no fun. Hopefully they’ll go away after a while.
So we’re settling into a bit of a routine now. He still sleeps a lot, except at night, when once and a while he likes to lick my face, which is usually accompanied by a sneeze or two. Then there are those times when he decides the best place to sleep will be directly ON my face. Otherwise follows me around, hisses at my roommate’s dog, tries to sneak sips of whatever I’m drinking, and attacks anything that moves. My knitting, I believe, is his favorite target. I have to do it when he’s sleeping, otherwise he literally goes mad trying to kill my ball of yarn.
His interest in knitting is not limited to the yarn, either. I was blocking a scarf the other day, and almost as soon as I had it firmly pinned to the carpet, along comes Gus, pulling them out with his teeth. Every time I turned around he had another pin out of it! This, certainly, makes things slightly more difficult, but I don’t mind. It’s nice to have a little fuzzball waiting for you when you come home, and cuddling up with you in bed, and yes, even ripping pins out of your blocked knitting.
He always has to be in the middle of what I’m doing:
He does have his own bed (see? off to the right?), but he’s just as often out of it as in it:
It does make me feel like a little old lady when I’m knitting with the cat in my lap…kind of like Aunt Polly in Tom Sawyer. But I’ve found that I don’t mind so much. It’s nice having a furry little companion, even if he does make life (and knitting) a little more complicated. I had doubts before, but no longer…I’m so much better off with Gus in my life! I’m sure lots of you feel the same about your own pets. I always used to laugh at people who treated their pets like their children, but I think I’m beginning to understand.
I love him bunches. I never considered myself a cat person…I’m all for dogs. Dogs and Gus. I guess that just makes me a Gus person. 
