The Striped Cat and The Black Cat promptly turned up their noses at each other. They did not actually fight; mostly, they just ignored each other. It was disappointing, but not really a problem.
The Black Cat got older, and more passive, and frail. He needed medication. At first, I put the medication in his food, but then I discovered Striped was eating it. It seemed she was eating all his food, so I started letting him eat first, behind a closed door. He was getting very thin and she was, frankly, porky – so she got to wait.
She waited quite a while he was old and a really, really slow eater.
That gave her plenty of time to express her displeasure. Typically, she would pee on the sofa or something similar. On one occasion, she left a big steaming pile of crap on the sofa. I could smell the reek from upstairs when I came down from my shower. The Departed had walked right by it and not even noticed.
Or so he said. I pointed it out to him and he said, “oh.”
I finally solved that problem by simply feeding the two in different rooms, but at the same time – but there were other problems. She chewed apart all sorts of things, but one of her biggest targets was the type of tulle out of which they make fancy doll clothes and little girl dress up clothes, not to mention those expensive fancy dresses that little girls wear one time for pictures or parties while their mothers follow them around imploring them not to stain it.
Striped would sit on the back of the sofa in the evenings, but no one was allowed to pet her: She would bite.
This was all not really working for me, so I contacted a rescue agency and was told in a judgmental tone: We don’t take declawed cats.
I placed a classified ad on Petfinder and found out that many Nigerians long to have such precious cats as this one and would like to arrange to have her shipped around the world.
I gave up. I coped.
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