The Ravens Nest

Meet The New Addition To The Family

I’m not going to lie, a friend of mine told me that an animal shelter in a nearby town was adopting cats for $2 because they had a crisis for space.

Aw, dammit…this again.

Ever since Mr. Bub passed, there’s been a gaping black hole in me and in my apartment. I carried on, I slogged through life. Still am in a lot of ways. Losing Bub was like taking a wrecking ball in full swing to the chest with the wall behind me. For most, they’ll never feel it but survive it and you’ll feel every break, every nerve ending on fire, even your name hurts.

I still didn’t think I was ready to home another one.

Let’s side-track for a second here. I promise I’ll bring it back around again.

Let’s talk about things that aren’t smart when I’m altered. First, shopping for body wash because when I’m “cloudtouched” shall we say, I tend to buy things like this. Dragon on the bottle? Check. Lots of Body Wash to where I don’t have to buy it for awhile? Check. Dragon on the bottle! Yes… I have simple tastes, people.

I imagine one of the C-Suite guys at Old Spice went to a convention, smelled the neckbeards and pinched his nose and went “The fuck is this shit? Okay…how the hell do we market our soap to …these?”

“Put a dragon on the bottle sir,” another says

“Promote that guy and get me the hell outta here.”

…that’s just my theory of how it came about.

Fast forward to several nights ago. I’ve been listening to a lot of Siouxsie And The Banshees. I had no idea they did a song I’d heard in my childhood called Peek-A-Boo. Cool song, catchy hook. listen to it, you’ll love it. You’ll thank me later and you’re welcome.

Anyway, this friend of mine is going on…and on…and on…about how it’s time I moved on and re-homed a new cat. The logic was sound but I still refused until that one time, she just wouldn’t shut up.

I have a sarcastic sense of humor at times. I got tired of it, turned to her and went, “Maybe I’ll just adopt a female kitten and name her Peekaboo.”

Apparently, that was the sign she needed so the day after my birthday, we load up in her car go go look. No harm in having a look, right?

Off we go. Takes us about half an hour to get there and the staff gives us the rundown. We go in, we look around, if we find one, we fill out some paperwork and it’s all done.

We go in, we look around. One cage with grease marker read “Louisiana. 1yr Old. Male. Black.”

I didn’t see him but, being a Louisiana native, I thought the choice of names was a little odd. As we’re discussing Louisiana (the cat) one of the staff goes, “Oh he’s in there. He hasn’t been adopted. Here, let me get him.”

She opened the cage and pulled this pure black cat out. Upon first glance, Louisiana was just a black cat but then, I noticed his tail corkscrewed, the tip of his left ear was gone. He has a head that his body hadn’t quite grown into but he was muscled up. Holding this cat, I felt really strong muscle under the fur which was smooth and soft. Someone had taken care of him.

Remember when I said I’d bring it back around? Yep, here it is. My friend was all kind of happy. She kept grinning seeing me hanging with Louisiana. He loved the head pets, the chin skritches, the cheek skritches…I half-expected that, at any minute, he’d get overstimulated and possibly bite but…he never did. He didn’t care for being held much and had a tendency to walk around cautiously.

I just couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Despite the scars he carried at only a year old, I only had two words:

“He’s perfect.”

That was all I said. Next thing I know, adoption paperwork is being filled out. My friend “conveniently” remembered to bring the cat carrier with us. He was loaded up, checked out and coming with us.

Immediately upon getting him home, he hides. I pulled him out of a couple of hiding spots but to no avail, he’d run right back. Never once meowed.

Monday came and I had to work so didn’t get to spend much time with him at all but then, yesterday happened.

Keep in mind, Louisiana, Louis for short if you like, has only been in the home for less than three days but yesterday, milestones were reached.

I’d already noticed differences between Louis and Bub. Bub had a “Baby Head and a Squatty Body” meaning he was bigger in the body than in the head. As mentioned before, Louis is the opposite. I don’t think his body has grown into his head yet. Something told me to pick up a collar for him at the shelter and I did. I took away his stealth for a bit. He now wears a bell around his neck. Bub never could stand collars of any kind. Louis doesn’t seem to mind at all. Bub also immediately took to the place and me. Louis is still kinda figuring things out but coming into his own quickly. Yesterday, he ate, he drank, he hung out with me, wanted more pets and skritches. I expected him to get overstimulated and to snap at me like Bub used to but he can’t seem to get enough of the attention.

He approaches me if I’m laying down or sitting on the floor. Bub hated that. If I was too low to get a book or a tarot deck, and he thought I took too long, he’d attack. I have to give Bub that, he would protect my cards and books…even from me.

Louis, on the other hand, just wants some head rubs. If you’re down low like that, he’s interested. It’s when you get up that he gets skittish and runs.

But yesterday, we hit milestones.

Normally, it takes three days for a new pet to get comfy in your home enough to do the basics, he’s eating, drinking, and using the litter. To me, that’s a win. As long as he’s doing those things, he’s okay. He just needs time.

But lay or sit on the floor and he comes over. Lay with him on the bed and he plays gently and spends that time loving on you. These are the pics taken from Sunday night, the day he arrived. He didn’t spend a lot of time with me but he spent enough to get a little recharge and then he decided “I still need some time” and ran back under the couch. The next day, I had to work so didn’t get to spend much time with him but here they are.

I have so many more photos of him but these were just from the first night. Monday came and went but yesterday, I got him to come out, hang around, explore and even nudge on me and request attention. I’m alright with that. I kinda missed having my sessions of Second Life or other RPGs, video games, etc interrupted by a cat just wanting food or a little attention. I mean it’s nice playing those games uninterrupted but when you have a pet that needs or desires your presence, that’s not something you take lightly. I used to get annoyed at Bub for interrupting a game because he was always the first. He acted like an early warning system. If he was going to interrupt, I could expect a call or text…someone was gonna need something…again. When I worked on Monday, I couldn’t get him off my mind. There was definitely something about him that I couldn’t put my finger on but there was a quality about Louis that I simply could not ignore.

When I got home, I smelled something. I had to throw out some books, namely my copy of Devil’s Knot by Mara Leveritt and Almost Home by Damien Echols. That hurt. Those were the two notable examples. He’d gotten into a box where I’d had the books and he peed on them, he also marked territory behind the couch he was hiding under. I had some cleanup to do. Couldn’t exactly be mad at him, he’s just getting used to the place and it’s my own damn fault for not clearing that space just in case. I booped his snoot for that. Twice.

Yesterday, he started peeking out. I would just go into the bedroom, open a drawer and there he was. I’d pet him, give him little skritches and off I go again. I sat around on the floor of the bedroom playing a GameBoy AdvanceSP and played some FZero, Namco Museum, Tetris, Super Mario 3, etc, read some Mad Magazine. Louis began to peek out, I heard him meow for the first time and it’s this little tiny meow that comes from him. He would come out later that evening and peek around. He still gets spooked as we approach but he eased and over time, he was hanging out in the living room, checking out the memorial in the windowsill to his predecessors. He stared out of the window and I went outside just to say hello to him from the other side of the screen. I think that freaked him out a bit. I came back in and put him in my lap and loved on him. I figured after messing with him like that, he needed to know that it was done out of love. He might see me out there priming miniatures, stripping paint off of Hot Wheels and Matchbox car bodies so that I can paint them up and make them look badass for Gaslands, that’s a wargame, folks and probably one of the cheapest wargames you’ll ever play. Recommended. A family that plays together, stays together, get me? Cool.

Earlier in the day, I’d put him on the bed and just laid there with him, showing him affection and snuggling with him while taking more photos. Namely these…

During some gentle playtime, he literally took my hand and wouldn’t stop nudging it.

I found out that, for now, he doesn’t like to be held as Bub did, he’s a lap kitty and that’s damn fine thing by me.

There’s the other thing that I’m gonna talk about. Listen, for some, I know this is going to be a veritable fount of woo here. That’s fine. You aren’t required to believe anything I type next. I’ll make it convenient for you if you want to skip this part. I’m gonna make it it’s own section just as Louis has made my t-shirt drawer his hidey hole for now.

Okay. Let’s go back.

March 13, 2013.

I’m in PetSmart. Maggie just passed three days ago. Why I’m there, I couldn’t tell you. I’d walked over from Target. I know I had business there. I’d been in month two of recovery from having rolled both hips forward and for some reason, I decided it would be a good idea to stop in. I can tell you right now, my I.T. bands down the sides of my legs were probably screaming and I figured maybe stop in and find a place to sit for a few, hang with a few animals, catch the vibe, leave.

We know how that story ends. I spent part of my tax refund and adopted Bub.

Bub took to the place and me, pretty much immediately. It took six months for him to become the equivalent of having a roomie who’s so comfy around the place that he walks around naked, smoking a cigarette, with a cup of coffee in his hand going “Dude, I had the weirdest fuckin’ dream last night, oh man!” It wasn’t until I became very serious about spiritual matters that Bub decided to start dropping breadcrumbs of “Oh yeah, Dad, about this. I can totally help. Like what you’re putting down, kay? I do! But …need to verify assumptions, cool?”

A month later, he and I had a rapport like no other cat that I’ve ever had save for Pandora and she was blind.

When I said “He’s perfect” I wasn’t talking about the way he looked or felt, though those were colossal bonuses even with his imperfections to me they make him a proud standout. There’s a hidden courage there. He wants to fully engage with me on that level but he’s been through a lot so the breadcrumbing thing started. He actually hit me with a pretty hard loaf of bread last night. When you scroll back up and see that picture of him sleeping in my lap, once he was done and he wanted to relocate to the couch, he looked back at me, reached up a paw, brushed my cheek and he responded to something I’d asked him. I’d asked him the question verbally but he replied. I clearly heard, “Yeah, he’s the one that sent me…” and then he bounced off of my lap, onto the floor, over to the couch where that little quilt is and hopped up and made himself comfortable right in the spot where Bub used to sleep.

Entirely too many synchronicities. Entirely too many things lining up to be mathematically impossible to be called coincidence for me. Make of that whatever you will, my mind is pretty much made up. I know how it sounds and to most, probably sounds like looney tunes shit but I certainly figured why not put it out there? For now, I’m leaving the ball in Louis’ court. Give the kid a minute. Pretty soon, he’ll probably start annoying me with a ton of questions later and interrupting my games.

I’m looking forward to every irritating moment.

Okay, that’s it, that was the final piece of the puzzle for me. Today, he’s back in hiding and I’ve pulled him out, put him on the bed and played with him a bit. Seems to be on track with taking a little time to really process the new digs and surroundings.

At present, he sits in the doorway to the bedroom, staring at me, watching me write this. That’s my little buddy. I’ll just close out with the photos from today. I really like these.

A friend of mine asked me, “Did he fill the black hole in your heart?”

I replied, “Nope, now there’s a Void.”