Home sick from work today and Saffy has done her best to comfort me by bringing me all her toys. She brought me a mousie, Mr. Scraps and an elastic ribbon. Such a thoughtful girl.

Saffy and Opal manage to co-exist on the cat furniture.

I've been sick for days with a virus I picked up at a conference I attended last week. I only went back to work today. The cats kindly kept me company while I was in bed during the day. There hasn't been any obvious progress between Opal and Saffy...except that they get into a kind of romp that usually ends in a mild hiss or soft whack. And they will both lie on the same piece of cat furniture at the same time, at least briefly.

Saffy hasn't lived in a house situation before. There are all sorts of rules she has to learn. She was used to jumping onto any surface or shelf she wanted; now she is regularly shooed off kitchen counters. She's fascinated by running water, which is brand new to her. She's still learning that she cannot help herself to the human food at dinner. She's a good girl though. She's learning.

There's been no particular change in the status quo. Pippin continues to tolerate Saffy pretty well. Opal continues to hiss and be a snot. The new feeding situation is working out fine. No one has been complaining or fussing about it. I think Pippin ate more out of habit than any real need.

Tosca is proving to be one tricky girl about spitting out her pills. I found a thyroid pill on the floor a couple of weeks ago, so I've been extra careful about trying to make sure she's swallowed the pill. And yet I found another one yesterday. She somehow managed to fake me out when I was sure she took it. I'm having to be even more careful about double checking that the pill has gone down.

Saffy and Pippin stake out the crows that will come for the peanuts on this rainy day.

Pippin deigns to share the cat furniture with Saffy.

It looks as though Saffy and Opal inherited the same mousie-fetching genes. This morning, Randy found Opal's gray mousie lying on the floor by his side of the bed as usual. Then he found one of the shaggier purple mousies lying on the bed between us, right where Saffy has taken to sleeping. Plus she likes to play with the purple mousie where Opal favors the gray one.

Poor Tosca seems to miss Saffy. Tosca cries at the door a lot more than she used to. Kate, on the other hand, seems happy that she can monopolize my lap.

And now, for your amusement this piece from satiric site, The Onion: Kitchen-Floor Conflict Intensifies As Rival House Cats Claim Same Empty Bag

We are progressing slowly, very slowly, but I guess there is at least some progress being made.

Pippin has achieved a detente with Saffy. He does his best to ignore her, basically.

Opal continues to hiss, act out, carry on and generally make this as difficult as she can. However, she now deigns to co-exist in the same room with Saffy and even occasionally occupy space not that far from Saffy without hissing. I had a good laugh today when Saffy chased Opal up the stairs. I yelled at Saffy to knock it off and she was on the way back down the stairs when Opal raced down the stairs after her and gave her a whack on the butt. Luckily, Saffy didn't respond to it and kept going. Opal laid down on the landing and savored her victory.

If we're careful about how we do it, we can get both Saffy and Opal to chase the red bugs around the living room. Opal isn't hiding upstairs all the time. We're getting all three cats on the bed at night...which is both good and bad. It's good if they can get along that well. But the bed isn't big enough for two people and three cats when one of the people is 6'3". Poor Randy ends up sleeping like a contortionist.

There's back and forth going on which might (crossing fingers) eventually turn into play. The two girls and especially Saffy have more energy than they know what to do with, so this would be a good thing. I've moved the extra food and water bowls to the single location in the kitchen and removed the extra catbox we'd set up for Saffy in Randy's office. All three of them have to use the extra-large catbox downstairs, forcing more co-existence on them.

We're concerned about Pippin's weight. He's gotten quite fat and developed a waddle. He's not very active, nor can he do a good job of grooming his hindquarters and back end. It's not fair to the girls, but we've decided we can no longer allow free feeding all day and night. From now on, we're going to put the bowls of food out during breakfast, at lunch and for a couple of hours at night. They'll have to learn that those are the feeding times. No grazing in between. We're also increased the ratio of the "light" cat food in the mix. Everybody's going on a diet.

Last night went a bit better. I think we got five hours of sleep instead of a mere two. Pippin is coming along. He only occasionally hisses now and then and is growing more tolerant of having Saffy somewhat near him. He's starting to return to his usual routines with us, such as getting on the sofa between us during dinner so we can both fawn over him.

Opal is having a very hard time. She's not giving in or making any attempt to get along. Saffy exacerbates it by chasing her. I sure hope this is going to change.

Oy, Saffy managed to lock herself inside Randy's office.

It's been a rough couple of days. And nights. The hissy fits and growling continued. It wasn't safe to leave the three of them unattended. At night, Saffy wants to be on the bed with us, but each time she jumps up, she gets hissed at. So she jumps off, then wanders around making plaintive unhappy noises and the cycle repeats. Consequently, Randy and I are only getting maybe two hours of sleep a night. Try to work a creative, mind-taxing job for 8 hours on no sleep.

When we go to work, we lock Saffy in Randy's office for safety's sake. We come home at noon, so she gets to come out for an hour. Tonight when we got home after work, I went to let Saffy out and the door was locked! I didn't even know these bedroom doors have locks. She must have been pawing at the handle and pushed in the little button that locks the door. Such talent. And of course, the hinges are on the inside of the door. Fortunately, Randy was able to remove the door handle from the outside and release the lock that way.

We are seeing small signs of detente. Pippin has tolerated having Saffy near him several times without hissing (though he does still hiss at other times). Randy actually saw Saffy rolling around on her back and reaching a paw out to Pippin as though doing her best to entice him.

Now we just have to stop Saffy from chasing Opal around and get Opal to stop hissing and growling. That's going to be the hard part.

That, and getting some sleep.

First thing yesterday morning, I brought Saffy inside, gave her a rubdown with Nature's Miracle, and introduced her to the house and her siblings. You'd think I'd brought a ravenous cat-eating monster into the house. No "Oh, look, it's our long-lost sister!" welcome. We've had nothing but major hissy fits all weekend from Pippin and Opal. Saffy, on the other hand, ignores the hisses and growls (except late Sat. when she finally got fed up and growled back at Pippin once time) and wanders around crying and crying.

Saffy is happy when Randy's in his office and is mostly hanging out in there. His office is large and filled with shelves and boxes that provide plenty of hiding places. We have food, water and a cat box in there for her. She does go up and down between floors, but mostly to be where we are.

Pippin and Opal have been keeping to our bedroom, refusing to interact. It was so bad at first that they were also hissing at each other and at Randy and me. Pippin even had the temerity to whack me on the hand when I tried to calm him down.

So it's not going all that well. I figure it will take a week or two before they reach acceptance. Saffy is accustomed to being with many other cats and having new cats introduced. Pippin and Opal have never been around other cats. They were separated from Saffy and the rest of the Horde when they were around 3 months old. This whole "new cat" business is entirely new to them. I think poor Saffy just wants to know where her non-hissing friends are.

Opal says, "Sister? I have no sister! I am unique! Get that imposter out of here!"

Pippin hides under the bed and has a hissy fit.

Sapphire would please like to know what the hell is going on.

Yes! Good news from the vet. Saffy's FIP-exposure test came back negative. She was a very good girl about going to the vet yesterday, though she was quite unhappy about it. She cried at me the whole way there and burrowed underneath the towel I'd put in the carrier so that all I could see was her little nose poking out.

This is a tremendous relief in light of Tosca's results. Randy and I have discussed moving Saffy inside the house. Bast only knows how that will go. I discussed it with the vet who also thought it was a good idea to separate her from Tosca until we know more about Tosca's situation. I'm not as worried about Kate because, frankly, she's such an old cat.

We'll probably try the introductions over the weekend so that we can be here the whole time to play referee as needed.

Saffy goes to the vet early tomorrow morning for an FIP test. She seems healthy in every respect, but there's no way to predict the results. She's in my lap at the moment demanding a bit more attention from me.

There, scritchies have been given. Tosca has been on the thyroid pills for a few days, but she seems as hungry as ever. That worries me, actually, because it reminds me of how Zebedee was. I'm hoping it takes time for the thyroid condition to settle down and that her hunger will calm down eventually.

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