One Question

Introducing a new cat into your home can be quite challenging, however using some of the techniques mentioned here should make the process a lot smoother. Animals have different personalities and some personalities can clash, so consider choosing a cat which has similar personality traits to the pets you already have.

When introducing the new cat, you need to allow for it to adjust to their new environment this can be done by confining them to one room at first. If the new cat isn’t house trained, then this confinement is an ideal time to start training. During this time introduce the new scent to your existing pets so they can get used to it, then look at slowly introducing the new cat to the rest of your home and the domain of your other pets.

If you already have cats in the home you will understand that they can be extremely territorial and they don’t like change so introduce the new cat slowly, room by room so your existing pets don’t feel like their home is being taken over. Don’t be disheartened if they don’t get on straight away, this whole process does take time.

Just like you can’t force people to like each other, you can’t force pets to like each other either, so when looking to introduce a new cat into your household where you already have pets you really need to have realistic expectations.

Sean has no pets (thank god, he can’t look after himself too well, sorry Sean).

Bobby has a cat, sort of, in that it hardly ever comes into the house, and yet somehow manages to devour all its food every day.

Tracey has her rabbit (and that’s where this conversation started).

And KC has his dog that comes to the office most days now.

But why?

Well, as far as Sean is concerned, he has no pets as we’d all go around and rescue any poor creature unfortunate enough to be taken home by him (except girls).

But looking at it sensibly. Pets are a pain in the bum. You have to go home to them, take them out, feed them, insure them, pray they don’t ruin every other possession in your house, and in the case of dogs, pray they don’t eat other people’s children. You have to groom them, clean up after them and entertain them.

Madness.

In the office we agreed that a dog was the hardest pet, but also the most rewarding as they’re pretty much domesticated and do like to please. The independence of a cat has its advantages and they’re unlikely to cause too many problems beyond wrecking the sofa and depleting the local bird population.

But the rabbit? Tracey doesn’t even have kids! Sorry girl. We don’t understand. Yes it’s cute, but it poos all over your flat! I know you try to tell us it’s house trained, but we’ve been to yours and found its little “presents” around the place.

The pluses of course is that if the damn thing stays still long enough to be stroked it’s a pleasant thing to do, and you always have an excuse for leaving to go home when you’re bored. Still. A rabbit?

Having sort of agreed that they’re all more trouble than they’re worth, we then confounded common sense by also agreeing that none of us would give ours back!

Why? Well, just go get yourself one and see.

Squeak squeak squeak.

And then the little fella’s called Squeak too.

All appropriate. But what’s not is his name Guniea Pig.

He’s neither pig, nor originally from Guinea, yet despite this his familiar name has pig connotations in other languages too.

In the office we think he’s pig like in his shuffling, snuffling movements and with his big head. He’s an all round cutie and Tracey has brought Squeak in every now and then when the dog isn’t here.

As for guinea pig being a term for experimentation, that is a little more straight forward as they were used for animal testing, but not so much any more.

His more correct name of Cavy just seems downright boring, so while we have little idea where the funny name guniea pig came from, we’re happy to let it stick.

Poppy, one of our team here at the One Question office, brought her cat Cat into the office most days last week, and I’m sure the little thing slept all the way through every single day of the week.

Cat is a small black thin with a single white socked paw and a matching white patch at the tip of her tail. She ignored the office dog so completely that the dog didn’t realise until Wednesday that there was even a cat in the room, and even then she sniffed at Cat a few times to which Cat didn’t react at all and so the dog left her be.

Now I’m not saying that the dog is particularly active all day, but she does have mad spells of running around, chasing her ball, or annoying one of us until we give in and take her for a walk.

But Cat just slept.

They’ll usually turn in about 16 hours a day of sleep with a burst of activity at dawn and dusk, then they spend any other waking hours staggering from one warm comfortable place to the next. Folk who turn their cats out at night probably think it’s out hunting for hours, but no, it’ll have its comfortable space that it slopes off to and hang out there until the door is opened again in the morning.

It probably has a lot to do with a hunter’s diet. They’ll track down and kill some poor fluffy thing, eat it, then take life in the slow lane as their bodies gradually digest the meat. It’s a bit like us after a huge Sunday roast.

Sunday roast? There’s a good idea. Let’s get our coats and go find a meal.