Well, actually it’s more like the ‘five and a half week mark’ at this point, since I have been meaning to post this for a while now. I had a pretty long week last week, driving over 1500 miles total, and getting home close to seven PM a few nights, and then the bad weather closed the shelter and made it impossible for anyone other than us to get to it this weekend, so we took care of all the animals both days. I also spent part of this afternoon making a futile attempt to clear a path through the ice and snow in the driveway for my van to get out in the morning (not looking good for that happening, at least not before noon) and am now sitting on the couch feeling every one of my forty one years right now. But at least I finally have a moment to give a report on how things have gone with Dandelyon this past month or so.

As I mentioned in the first post, we were a little hesitant to be optimistic about a new addition to the family, with as bad as things went with Arthur… and adding a cat was particularly dicey, given the aggression issues we’ve had with Olive, and between Olive and Winter. We’d hoped the right one would kind of balance things out, but it could just as easily have been a total disaster.

I’m happy to say that things have gone better than we could ever have hoped. By the end of the first week, we had him intermingled with the rest of the gang. The only problem we did have was him giving his upper respiratory infection to Winter, but that may have helped the transition in a way, funny as that sounds; she was feeling too bad those first few days to worry about being hostile to the ‘intruder’ in the house.

Now, over a month later, Winter treats him like a little brother – sometimes she finds him amusing and she actually plays with him, other times he’s too much for her and she gets angry. He does pay attention when she gets mad and backs off. Simon also gets along well with him — we were worried he was being too rough with Simon but Simon seems to initiate the wresting at least as often as Dandelyon does. They sleep together and Simon even grooms him sometimes.  Olive… well, Olive is Olive. She is OK most of the time but we have had some issues with her jumping on him when she’s having one of her off days. Still, overall things have gone well.

Cricket was initially kind of snarky with him (in her defense, he does treat her as a chew toy) but she’s gotten over that and he’s showing a bit more restraint with the flying tackles. Lindsy snapped at him a few times, but she hates all of the cats and we didn’t really expect she’d be any different with a new one.The unfortunate thing is we now have two cats that love dogs, and no dog that likes cats, but we’re still hoping to find the right dog to add to the family some day — though ideally not until after Lindsy’s passed on.

One thing I do need to explain is that Dandelyon is now his middle name, and we’ve been calling him “Calvin.” It just suits him more, most of the time. His full name is “Calvin Dandelyon Weasley.” Yes, not only have we confused things by spelling one name weird, but now we’ve given him a name from “Calvin and Hobbes” but not named him after the cat in the cartoon. At least the Weasley part is pretty straightforward, if you’re familiar with the Harry Potter books. His personality is very Calvinish, he’s funny, inventive, mischievous, and cheerful, but can put on a good pout when he gets tired. And he has yellow hair that sticks up all over the place.

He has been so much fun to have around, he really is like a little ray of sunshine. We really love him. He makes us laugh constantly with his antics, and he’s blossoming into a beautiful cat. The five AM wake up in the form of a five pound kitten suddenly pouncing on your face we could maybe do without, but I’m sure he’ll outgrow that.

How could anyone resist a face like this?