A New Family Member

Last September (2007) I wrote about Emily's 20th birthday. The morning after Christmas, 2007, though, she had a massive stroke and died. Though at 20 years, she was very old, her death was still quite sudden.

We miss her immensely.


We also found the house to be so very quiet, just too quiet. And though we knew we could never replace Emily, we began to realize that we needed to bring another little one back into the house. I had thought we would wait until the fall, but that just wasn't going to happen. My boss told me about one of their cats that needed a different home, a more settled and quiet place, and we decided we couldn't wait until the fall, the time was now. So we went to meet our new cat, it was decided that we would call him Nick.

Nick has such a bittersweet/sad story; He was adopted by my boss's partner about 7 years ago from the Licking County Animal Shelter, where he arrived after being rescued from a his original owners who raised him for about a year in a closet (why, oh, why do people do stupid thing like that?). She took wonderful care of him and tried to look after all of his needs, but he is a bit scared and skittish, even after all these years, and was afraid of some their other animals, especially one other cat that completely terrorized him (strangely, that other cat looks a lot like Emily did...).

We brought him home on 3/27, and after a couple of days, he began to make himself right at home, claiming my side of the bed as his own:

In the month we've had him, we've found out that he's just a great big ol' baby, sweet, gentle and very loving. He absolutely loves to be be held, cuddled and pet, purrs very loudly and will rollover and cover his eyes while getting a belly rub.

Nick's mostly calm and relaxed now, though he's still a bit scared of people walking around him, and he REALLY doesn't like the doorbell or the vacuum. Overall, though, he's settled in real well and our house feels complete to us again.

Enjoy,
Lorence