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If you follow my Twitter at all, you’re probably familiar with Quango, one of our two cats, as I post a lot of photos of him. So today, I thought I’d tell the story of how we came to adopt him as an adult cat. (thread)
We got our other cat, BB, aka Bumblebee, as a kitten in 2018, not long after we moved to the US. This is BB:
We ended up with BB specifically because our son, who was then nearly 5, wanted an orange cat, and as it happened, one of our grad student friends was fostering BB along with his mother (who he ended up adopting himself). Perfect!
What we didn't initially realise about BB is that he's a disabled cat. At best guess, he has a mild form of cerebellar hypoplasia, where the part of his brain that deals with balance is too small, so he wobbles and falls a lot.
BB's presentation isn't quite typical (if that's what he has - it's a best guess diagnosis) but his issues clearly involve balance, very weak rear legs so that he has trouble pouncing very high or sometimes even at all, bad longsightedness, and lack of coordination.
Practically, what this means is that BB can't groom himself at all. He struggles to use the litterbox because he can't balance sufficiently on the litter to stay upright, and sometimes just falls over while doing a poo even on the flat (it's gross, but also extremely tragic).
But BB is also full of love and adores human companionship - so much so that, whenever we all left the house (back in the beforetimes, when that was an option, SOB) he'd be meowing frantically for us by the time we got home.
This being so, we decided to get a second cat to help keep him company. But we needed to choose exactly the right cat - not just so that BB didn't get bullied by an able-bodied cat, but so our small child wouldn't be heartbroken if we had to rehome an incompatible cat.
The other thing about BB - and I don't know if this is just him or if it's part of his condition - is that he doesn't really "speak" cat. His mother cats just fine, it's not an inherited thing, but he doesn't really have any typical cat social language.
This being so, I wanted to test how he'd react to another cat, and so I took him over to a friend's house nearby, where there were three biggish foster-kittens in residence, plus one very old and tolerant ladycat (whose name is Margaret Catcher, aka Maggie).
Unlike just about any cat in the universe, BB was... completely oblivious to the presence of four new cats. He just walked around sniffing things while Teacup the kitten hissed at him, just bumbling his way happily through a new space.
BB hissed exactly once at the end of the visit, when I put him back in his carrier and one of the other kittens, Shadow, decided to creep up and stare at him. It wasn't an aggressive hiss, though - it was like he'd heard Teacup hiss, didn't know what it meant, and wanted to try.
So, based on that, we figured he'd be okay sharing his space with a hypothetical new cat - we just had to make sure the cat we chose was cool with BB. So, when the nearest shelter had a special adoption day late in 2019, off we all went as a family to pick a cat.
Our son, then 5, was absolutely ecstatic. Every cat we saw was the best cat, the cutest cat. He was overloaded on cat proximity. I walked around a few rooms, looking for calm kittens or older females, but none of them really struck me.
Then, as I stood outside the glass door to one room, I looked in and saw a handsome, longhaired silver cat sitting up in his cage, looking directly at me. He had very calm eyes, and he kept on looking at me as I approached.
I put my hand up to the bars. The cat looked at me, then slowly, firmly shoved his whole, heavy head at my hand. I skritched his head. He kept bumping against me, asking quietly for more. Oh, I thought. This one. It has to be this one.
Beneath the cage, there was a little sign noting his shelter name (Chero), his age (4) and his adoptability status (ready to be taken home). There was also, unusually, a note saying he'd been adopted out not long ago, but returned by those first potential owners.
I managed to grab a shelter attendant to ask about this last: why was he returned? She went and looked it up for me, then made a face when she reached the entry. "Hiding," she said. "They brought him back for 'hiding'. Probably first-time cat owners."
I showed "Chero" to my husband and son, who were both equally taken with him, and then went to line up to buy him. It took a while, what with the adoption event being on - I kept on worrying that someone would take him before I reached the counter.
With the paperwork finally complete, and after explaining once again to my then-5yo that we might not be able to keep him if he didn't get along with BB, that this was just a trial, we went to get him transferred to our carrier.
The carrier, I knew, smelled like BB, and I was hoping that being exposed to his scent on the way home would help the new cat to settle. It was clear right away that he didn't like being picked up, but he didn't bite or scratch or hiss about it; just wriggled a bit, resigned.
We got him in the carrier and went out to call a rideshare. While we waited, I chose the name Quango, which felt whimsically appropriate for such a stern yet beautiful cat, and it was approved by the family.
The whole drive home, which was about 20 minutes, Quango was completely silent - not fearful or panting or distressed, but just not meowing, either. I've never known a cat to be quiet during a car ride in a carrier before, but he seemed to know he was going home.
Now: ordinarily, when introducing a new cat to an existing cat, the sensible thing to do is to let them sniff each other through a door for a few days while otherwise keeping them apart. But this time, there were two obstacles to doing this:
One, the only sufficiently roomy place we could've kept Quango with a door between him and BB was the garage, whose door wouldn't allow for sniffing; and two, for the sake of our 5yo's feelings, we needed to know if the two would be compatible before he got attached.
So, in defiance of regular cat protocol, and thinking that Quango at least deserved to stretch his legs after being cooped up in a tiny cage for months, we let him out into the room with BB.
Quango explored the room. He walked up to BB. BB looked briefly alarmed, did a little hiss - which I think, in his odd understanding of Cat Language, after his visit with Teacup, is how he thought you said Hello to a new cat - and promptly fell over.
Quango sniffed BB, bumped him with his nose, and then walked away again. BB got up, decided this meant they were friends now, and walked over to sit next to him. Here are the photos from that first introduction: https://www.instagram.com/p/B2snzliAsXu/
Within 24 hours, they were sharing a couch together, and every fear we'd had about Quango not fitting in with BB had evaporated. He'd looked at our weird kitten, said, 'you are strange, but you are Mine,' and immediately accepted him. https://www.instagram.com/p/B2u0VQTAyQj/
For the first few days he lived with us, Quango slept under the bed - hiding, as his ex-owners termed it, as he got used to the space. But within the week, he'd started venturing out to sleep elsewhere, first on the couch and then on our beds.
We knew he'd finally settled in when, the next month, he started showing us his belly (and asking for belly rubs) while resting. His underbits had been shaved at the shelter, something I suspect he hated, and the fur took a while to grow back. https://www.instagram.com/p/B3qLTZNA5wq/
He's the first cat I've ever adopted as an adult, and he's perfect. I don't know how he ended up in the shelter in the first place - he's clearly well-socialised, so unlikely to have been a stray from birth - but I can't fathom anyone just giving him up. And yet, someone did.
To this day, he has never harmed BB; they playfight sometimes, or else Quango does a dominance thing by biting BB's scruff and standing on him, but he's never so much as scratched his nose otherwise.
He still doesn't like to be picked up and will only tolerate cuddles - a tragedy, as he is perfectly hug-shaped - but most nights, he'll climb into bed with me, purring his very soft purr, and curl up so that his paw or chin are resting on my arm.
With Quango here, BB no longer frets when we leave the house - but Quango, ironically, acts like a sad labrador whenever we go out, waiting on what we've now termed the Sulk Step with his chin on his paws, sadly watching the door until we come home.
He's just a remarkable, wonderful cat, and if this thread has a point beyond celebrating him, I want to say: don't shy away from adopting adult cats at the shelter, even or especially if they've been returned before. All they need is a little love and the right environment.
FIN
