Mr. Boots

On the last day of my spring break last Friday I happily got up early to go fill in on Clean & Feed at Good Mews — I’d been missing my Friday morning ladies! After greeting Connie, Charlene, Patty, and Karen, I popped my head into Intake to say hello to the new residents. Almost all the cages were full because we’d been the recipient of an influx from yet another hoarding case, though at least this time the kitties were still in pretty decent shape.

When I got to one of the bottom cages, I gasped. The cat in there looked startlingly like my IrisKitty, who (with a little help) I had rescued off the mean streets of Norcross and who had been my beloved feline companion until I lost her to cancer on Christmas Eve, 1998. The only major difference was gender — this was a big fluffy boy cat. He was one of the intakes from the hoarder, and had been there less than 24 hours so we knew essentially nothing about him except for his name.

I took time out to get acquainted and give him some good snorgles, which he grumpily assented to. As I cleaned the isolation room, I kept slipping back into Intake just to look at him and coo at him, in addition to discussing him with the shelter staff. At one point Dana told me that he is front declawed, which sent chills up my spine — Iris was front declawed when we got her.

I told DH about Mr. Boots and introduced them last Saturday. I went by just to visit him twice last week. On Thursday, Dana asked if I had put Mr. Boots on hold yet, and she wasn’t just joking. DH and I talked a little, and Friday morning he went up to the attic and brought down our larger cat carrier without telling me, saying “you don’t want him coming home in a cardboard box with holes, do you?” So Friday afternoon before leaving work I downloaded, filled out, and printed an adoption application.

On “Caturday” our first stop after leaving the house was Good Mews, where I walked in, greeted the counselors, asked who had been adopted so far today (two adoptions and two “on-hold” by 1 p.m. — a good day already!), and told Lori the lead counselor that we were here to put Mr. Boots on hold, knowing that he has to have some dental work before he can come home, and handed her the application. She looked it over, hassled me about forgetting to sign it , then signed the approval spot and took my credit card. That’s the fastest adoption interview she’s done in a long time, I bet — though when Michelle and Janet the tour guides commented, I dryly remarked that Lori has, after all, been interviewing me for the past two years (that’s about how long I’ve been working as an adoption trainee, then counselor, myself).

Of course we spent some time with our new family member before leaving. DH had brought in some Feline Greenies (aka Kitty Crack) and Mr. Boots hoovered them up with even more alacrity than our Sarah!!! We also brought the camera:

Don’t you just LOVE that grumpy little face? He adores chin scritches.

It will be a couple of weeks before Mr. Boots can come home, because he can’t get his dental work done until they do another round of blood tests and make sure that the slight anemia was just a temporary thing. But I will be visiting him frequently to get him used to me, and I will probably be utterly worthless this coming Saturday as an adoption counselor since I’ll be hiding in the back the whole time snorgling him ::LOL::.