Sam and Emma in 2007

We kept them isolated from Scout during their first week with us — both to make sure they had gotten over their upper respiratory infections and to give Scout time to adjust to her new siblings.

Introductions

Say Hello To Sam It had been two weeks since we said goodbye to Templeton, but this day wasn’t about goodbye so much as hello — make that two hellos — as we went to the Oregon Humane Society and adopted two lovely little cats. It’s a good thing we left when we did or we might have adopted a handful more, there were so many wonderful cats to choose from. Orginally named Candy Cane, we renamed this little one Samwise based on our tradition of naming the cats after characters from literature. Little Sam (shown here during his first few hours with us) takes his name from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, he’s a sweet little purring machine and seemed a good candidate to be as loyal a friend to Scout as Samwise was to Frodo. We don’t know his exact age but think Sam was about three months old when we brought him home.

Say Hello To Emma One of her former owners named her Purrana, but in her home she’s been christened Emma, taking her name from the lead character in Jane Austen’s Emma. She was 16 months old when we brought her home. One of the features that endeared me to her when we first saw her at the Humane Society is that she often sleeps all sprawled out, something I loved about Templeton. As Emma has discovered, I can’t pass up an exposed belly and often give her belly rubs when I see her sleeping. Turns out Emma loves belly rubs, and her happy purrs make me think she doesn’t mind the intrusion.

No good. She just climbed the gate like it was nothing. Then we tried stacking a large box in front of the door.

No good. She just climbed the box. We added another box. She climbed that one too. Eventually we realized she’d just keep climbing and risk hurting herself if she fell, so we kept the door closed. Fortunately Templeton accepted her quickly so she didn’t stay in there long.

Before long she figured out how to open doors anyway. The ones in the old house had handles that she figured out she could jump up and pull down on to get the door to open. Her true master stroke though was her discovery that she could stick her paw under the door and vibrate it enough to jimmy the door open. This became her favored technique and made us all but give up on trying to keep her isolated.

We put her and Templeton in the upstairs bathroom one day when a contractor was working here (we had told him we would), but she jimmied the door open shortly after we left for work and earned both she and Templeton their freedom to wander the house.

I’m not sure armed guards could keep her locked up.

It seems we have acquired our second escape artist. When you adopt a cat at the Oregon Humane Society, they give you these temporary cardboard cat carriers to bring the cats home. We have a plastic one we used for Templeton and Scout, but we wanted each cat in their own carrier, so we used the temporary carriers which had been festively decorated.

I didn’t realize just how temporary one of them would be.

We placed each carrier in the back seat and began the short ride home. They were both quiet at first but then I heard some quiet mews coming from behind me. I couldn’t figure out which one was speaking up, but eventually Emma’s carrier started to rock and it was clear who was unhappy.

When we got home, we left the cats in the carriers in the living room while we got their rooms set up with food, water, and litter boxes. My wife came upstairs to find Emma half way out of her box, she chewed and scratched a large hole in the carrier but was having trouble getting her hindquarters out.

Scout would have tried to figure out how to get the top to open up, but Emma apparently prefers a more direct approach. A little less Houdini-like, perhaps, but an escape artist nonetheless.

The World At Large During the first couple of days that Sam and Emma joined us, we kept all three cats separated. Emma was put into the downstairs bathroom, which worked well for the first day. She wasn’t too sure of herself yet, and slept behind the toilet when she was alone and wouldn’t leave my lap when I stayed with her. The second day she wasn’t dealing with her confinement so well, so we let her stretch her legs upstairs for a little bit while Scout was napping downstairs, and she settled down outside Sam’s door. I took the opportunity to take my first picture of her outside the bathroom.

In the morning, both Sam and Emma had their first visit to the vet. Emma was quite the lady except for when she was confined to her carrier. She attempted a repeat of Saturday’s escape attempt, but this time she was thwarted by the plastic carrier and its metal grate — not that it kept her from trying. The rough night and the escape attempt must have worn her out, though, as I’ve never seen a cat in as deep a sleep as Emma was that afternoon.

Sam (pictured here) had a good night, even if my wife didn’t — she spent the night with him and between his loud and constant purring and his playing, she wasn’t getting the best night’s sleep before Emma’s woeful cries woke her up for good.

Sam was the perfect gentleman at the vet, purring so loudly that the vet couldn’t get a good reading on his lungs until she distracted him and quieted his motor. Well he was the perfect gentleman until it came time to draw some blood, at which point he attempted to draw some blood of his own. To be fair, he let out a long and loud wail of warning before the claws started flying.

A towel was called for to keep his legs wrapped up while they worked on his ears, he had mites before and a yeast infection so they cleaned out his ears for us and we’re giving additional treatment at home. They also think he’s younger than the four months estimated by the humane society based on his size, you can’t tell it so well from the pictures but he’s a skinny little thing.

Hiding in the Shadows When we first introduced Sam and Emma in the guest bedroom, Sam played with the typical kitten zeal, while Emma sometimes did and sometimes preferred to play out of sight under the bed. This is one of her traits that didn’t last, however, and was a sign of her still getting adjusted to life in her new home. She still sleeps under a chair or couch if we’re sitting there, but in general she prefers open spaces to shadows. You can also see a lovely clash of colors on the bed, this was taken in late December when Sam and Emma (and their litter box) were confined to the guest bedroom. Not only was it a small closed space, but their digestive systems were still adjusting to the high quality food we were feeding them, so we had no choice but to open the window from time to time to air the room out. We grabbed blankets with regard for warmth and not fashion.

Liberation Day December 31st was liberation day in our house — the new cats no longer needed to be quarantined and were given free reign of the house. And not a moment too soon! We did end up keeping Sam on his own for one more day, he was rundown after getting a shot from the vet, so we kept him isolated until he had his vim and vigor back. Emma was set free, however, and it was the first time she met Scout on an equal footing. I thought the meeting would be more adversarial as Emma invaded Scout’s turf for the first time, but Scout walked over and gave Emma a good sniffing and kind of idly followed her around as Emma explored the house.

Sam and Emma At Play

The Inmates Are Getting Restless A couple of action shots of Emma playing with her furry mice during her first week with us while she and Sam were still being isolated away from Scout. She was definitely feeling at home with us by the end of the week, her first few days she didn’t play much and then pretty gently, but it soon became controlled mayhem.

	Keep Watching the Skies Our nascent UFO watcher had been with us for a week at this point, one of my favorite early pictures of Emma.
	That’s A Good Girl Emma … … close your eyes, fall asleep, good good. Now prepare to be Sammied! Sam and Emma at the end of their first week with us in late December, they proved to be good playmates right from the start.
	I Know I’m Just A Little Kitten Emma … … and there are a lot of things I don’t know, but how exactly are we supposed to play with our mice if you keep shoving them under the door? This is one of Emma’s traits that showed itself right from the beginning.

	Disparity Another of Emma’s traits that showed early is that she’s pretty good about playing on her own (at least until she shoves her toys behind a door). I also like how this picture shows the size disparity between the two cats at the time.
	I’ve Got My Eye On You Little Mouse My right eye specifically.
	The Last Time I Saw This Face I Was Watching The Movie Gremlins Don’t get him wet!
	Helter Skelter At first I was annoyed with myself for not doing a better job and getting everything in frame, but after a while the picture grew on me and I like the way the composition highlights the helter skelter style of Sam’s play.
	A Close Call Little Sam likes to run under the dressers and pop back out again, he’s the only one small enough to duck under there. One day he snuck under an opening that was slightly smaller and got stuck halfway in, fortunately I was there to reach past the legs that were frantically flying in all directions and rescue him.
	I Don’t Think It’s Working, Em In an attempt to look more sophisticated, Emma grew a long white beard.

Sam got an exam at Laurelhurst as soon as possible and it was discovered that the mites were probably gone but he had a yeast infection in his ears, so we’ve been treating that.

But how is it that both of these fine organizations neglected to tell us that little Sam has Jedi powers?

I was watching Sam and Emma play with their furry mice when suddenly Sam began to levitate the albino mouse. Fortunately I had my camera in hand to document the event, as people tend to not believe me about things like this.

Maybe we should have named him Yoda?

Has Anyone Seen Sam? I can’t find him anywhere!

Emma Shows Me Up When Emma first came to live with us, she was immediately taken with our furry mice and convinced that she could train them. I was equally convinced that she couldn’t. So you can imagine my chagrin one day when I’m playing with Sam and look over and see that Emma has trained one of the mice to stand on its tip-toes. She’s never let me forget it.

Cuteness

The Gold Medal For Cutest Kitten of 2007 Goes To ... Samwise! Sam was posing on top of the scratching post and reminded me of an athlete accepting a gold medal at the Olympics. Note: In the interest of family fairness, I should point out that, at over a year old, Emma would have been in the running for cutest kitten of 2006 and not 2007, thus I’m not showing any bias for Sam. She may have been the cutest kitten of 2006, but we didn’t know her then, so I can’t say. I’m not slighting her because she chewed on my laptop’s power cord, just so you know.

Good Homes While I certainly think Sam and Emma hit the jackpot when it comes to finding a good home, they weren’t the only cats at the Oregon Humane Society to find good homes around Christmas. I followed the recent adoptees list at the humane society for the first few days after we brought our cats home, and many of the cats we had considered were adopted, including the two who were second on our list if we didn’t bond with Sam and Emma. Becaue of Scout, we were only looking for cats that were thought to be a good fit for a multi-cat household. However, because of Templeton, I’ve got a real soft spot for cats that are hostile in a kennel environment but who might be lovable lapcats in the quiet of our home. There was one cat in particular that had been there for half a year that I would have wanted to adopt except that it was recommended to be the only cat in the home, and thankfully it was adopted the same day we adopted ours. You can see some water drops on Sam’s tags, he would accidentally dunk them when he’d get a drink of water.

Fierceness

This May Be The Worst Picture I’ve Ever Taken There’s only one thing I don’t like about this picture, but that one thing is the reason I took the picture in the first place. Emma had been with us about a week and was sitting in the nice light of the late afternoon sun. We were still getting to know each other and while she was more than ready to be out of isolation, she was otherwise very good-natured and playful. She must have squinted a bit when I tripped the shutter, turning her expression from peaceful to severe. She’s really a sweet girl and not an angry young cat, you’ll just have to take my word for it.