Roger "Howe" Waters

Saturday morning I got up and paid the exhorbitant bill they sent to put my cat Syd down in December, and then drove to a fairly distant animal shelter to pick up a kitten. I'd seen a teeny one online (I wanted a black one) and they showed me all of the cats there. They had the adult cats loose in the main area, and there was one adorable black female (cat) who'd walk up to you and repeatedly stand up her hind legs and butt her head into your hand if you petted her.

I went into the "kitten room" and saw all of the kittens. There was a cage with two tiny black kittens, one of which was the one I'd had my eye on online, and another cage with two larger, healthier ones, as seen here. The lady reached the open the cage seen here and the one looking at the camera (his brother's ears visible below his eyeline) rubbed himself on the cage and leaped out onto me and commenced rubbing his little body all over my face and shoulder.

Eventually I thought "I should give the little one a chance, though" and he was so wobbly and weak and scrawny that once I got him purring a bit, I put him back and picked up the first one again, and he started up again wtih the aggressive rubbing his face and shoulders on me again. He chose me, so I took him. The little one had been left with his siblings in a box, malnourished. A couple of them died. This larger one had been found with his siblings, probably abandoned and recently orphaned on an island in the Rideau lakes region, but in good shape. It was Howe island, so they called this one Howe and his brother Skye (after a neighboring island) and the others after other island names.

When I took Howe (hereafter known as "Roger" after the Pink Floyd songwriter, just as Troy's cat is called Floyd and my previous cat was Syd) and put him in a cat carrier, he got very upset and mewed the whole drive home. I opened the carrier and petted him, and he wouldn't come out, as he was too scared.

Once I got Roger home, he hid and wouldn't come out for about 24 hours. He'd mew questioningly, and if I was in the same room as he was, he'd stay put, and if I called to him from another room, he'd skitter out to the litter box or to look at things before diving back under cover.

Eventually I enticed him out and he erupted in a flurry of rubbing on me and playfully scratching and biting rather hard. Once Joel came over, he was terrified again, then started sneaking out all over the apartment, especially once the sun set and it got dim. A little streak of black or a little head with upright ears would occasionally peer around things and then vanish again. He's getting used to the place. He will even come out and sit near us while we're talking, but if either of us makes a move to stand up, he'll go hide again. There's a mixture of panic and play to it, and his mewing is a confused thing, as he's kinda scared and upset to be taken from the shelter by a large stranger, yet he is appealing to me (said stranger) for comfort.