Donovan

July 17, 2003 -

After mov­ing into our condo in May, it seemed a lit­tle lonely with just Sarah and me, even with Randy home for the sum­mer. Sev­eral peo­ple had sug­gested that a puppy might be a good idea, just to get me out a bit. So I started going out to pet res­cue adop­tions at the local pet stores most Sat­ur­days that I was home, with­out find­ing the right pup for me.

On July 17, I headed out early, over to Ken­ne­saw to the Petco and Pets­Mart over there, plan­ning to head in to town to visit two other groups later in the after­noon. Petco was the first stop, but Chero­kee County Humane Soci­ety had only big, grown dogs out­side. I went inside to see who was there, and stopped off at the cat cages to say hello like I always do at any pet store.

CASA, a local res­cue group out of Mari­etta, had a cou­ple of grown cats and a num­ber of kit­tens there. Nor­mally I just glance at kit­tens and go “awwww, how cute,” but some­thing made me take a close look. There was a lit­tle sil­ver tabby kit­ten in there. A sil­ver tabby is what I badly wanted when I first started want­ing my own cat (25 years ago!) but one hadn’t crossed my path. I reached through the cage to scritch its ears and coo at it, and felt the lit­tle guy (yeah, a boy — I NEVER am attracted to boy ani­mals) tug­ging at my heart. He was four months old, and already neutered, I was told.

As I crouched there, I looked up and saw Car­olina Ceron, one of my best stu­dents from last year! She is one of the res­cue vol­un­teers with CASA. We were both star­tled to see the other, and chat­ted a bit as I con­tin­ued to pet the lit­tle guy, whose cur­rent name was “Raisin.” After she had to leave, another vol­un­teer (his fos­ter mom) asked if I wanted to hold him. I did. He was squirmy and cud­dly and oh so cute. But I wasn’t intend­ing to get another cat! Still, I filled out the adop­tion appli­ca­tion any­way, say­ing I would have to think about it and would call back.

No dog with my name on it was at the Ken­ne­saw Pets­Mart, so I drove on out to Hiram, to the Pets­Mart there where Pauld­ing County Humane Soci­ety does adop­tions most Saturdays.…but not today. On the way to Hiram I fig­ured it out with “Raisin,” whose name I KNEW was NOT Raisin. An acquain­tance of mine, who is an “intu­itive reader,” had said some time back that IrisKitty would be back, and in fact was get­ting a lit­tle impa­tient to BE back with me. I have this sneak­ing feel­ing that Iris got tired of wait­ing and pushed the issue, and made sure to be just what I could not resist. So by the time I got to Hiram, I knew I was going back to Ken­ne­saw and bring the lit­tle guy home, and I did. Luck­ily I had in fact put the car­rier in the trunk just in case a new puppy came home, LOL!

So “Raisin” said good­bye and we headed home. Randy called as I was almost home, say­ing he was going to work, and I told him to wait to leave until I got there. This meant that I ended up tak­ing him back up to work, and we took the car­rier with “Raisin” in it into Cari­bou so the whole Herd could meet him. Talk about a mel­low kit­ten — it didn’t faze him a bit with all the peo­ple stand­ing around coo­ing and reach­ing in to pet him. Randy, of course, was snorked off about hav­ing agreed to go to work, but I reminded him that the kit­ten isn’t going anywhere.

We finally got home, and I set him up in the hall bath­room with his own water and food and lit­ter box. He and Sarah eye­balled each other from across the room while I set him up, then I shut him in the bath­room. I had to go back out, but when I came home I let him come out and wan­der around, first with me hold­ing him and then by him­self. Sarah was NOT HAPPY, need­less to say. She hissed at him sev­eral times, but actu­ally not as badly as I thought she would. She also man­aged to get too close and chase him a bit at one point.

The name was another issue. He was DEFINITELY not a “Raisin.” After think­ing about it and observ­ing him, see­ing how affec­tion­ate yet curi­ous he was, it came to me — Dono­van. Yes, I am a child of the 60’s, I guess. It’s not a nor­mal cat name but I don’t think he’s a nor­mal cat. So Dono­van he became.

Dono­van adjusted VERY nicely to his new home over the first cou­ple of weeks. He was quite the cool lit­tle gen­tle­man and just ignored Sarah’s hisses and spits. After the first night, they were doing well enough that I didn’t shut him in the hall bath­room for the night, and he opted to sleep curled up with me (and woke me up at 7 a.m. by get­ting in my face, drat it — I didn’t need to get up until 8:30!). After only a few days Sarah­Cat wasn’t hiss­ing as much any more, either. In fact, they were in the same room much of the time, just stay­ing four or five feet apart. A week after Donovan’s arrival, as I was leav­ing for work, I noticed Sarah­Cat lying under Randy’s futon in the liv­ing room and Dono­van curled up on top of it, basi­cally right on top of her. That evening when I got home from work, Sarah­Cat was under my bed (which she firmly regards as HER ter­ri­tory, thank you very much!) and Dono­van slipped under there as well. So we had one cat at the head of the bed and one at the foot, and not a sin­gle hiss.

Since then, Dono­van has grown up to be a goofy, funny love­bug of a cat. He was respon­si­ble for “de-roaching” my patio dur­ing my first late sum­mer here. I may never for­get the sight of a 5 month old kit­ten strolling across the patio, look­ing like the tough­est cat in the world with a cock­roach hang­ing out of his mouth! He’s also known as the “flop-butt cat” for his habit of grace­lessly flop­ping down on his side on the floor. Dur­ing his ado­les­cence, when my son’s kit­ten Shadow was liv­ing here as well, we were fre­quently amused dur­ing break­fast with their “World Cat Wrestling Cham­pi­onship” matches, which always seemed to end in a draw. At other times we would just see one furry streak tear through the room, fol­lowed imme­di­ately by another.

Dono­van acts like he may not be the bright­est light bulb in the box at times, but he cer­tainly knows how to enter­tain and snuggle.