In case adopting Felix and Honey wasn’t sufficiently crazy, we decided to up the ante by adding yet another cat into our home.

Meet Stanley (his pictures are at the end of the album). He’s a three or four year old Ragdoll who was having a little trouble finding a home: Stanley has asthma and requires daily medication, which makes adoption a bit of a long shot. Julie had gone to see some kittens at a foster home for 13th Street Cat Rescue and ended up getting acquainted with Stanley instead. In fact, she spent more than two hours visiting with him and was thoroughly smitten by the time she left.

In the days that followed, we ended up getting Honey and Felix—the kids weren’t going to be denied their kittens—but Julie never gave up on Stanley. She reminded me of Ogra, a cat we saw a few times at pet stores before we were married, back in Champaign in 1998; we never seriously considered getting her because of Maggie’s highly developed sense of territory, but Julie pointed out that she still remembered her, some fifteen years later, and that it would be the same thing with Stanley if we didn’t adopt him. I found it difficult to refute that logic. By the time we called the foster home back about Stanley, the woman caring for him said that she was surprised she hadn’t heard from us sooner, given the degree to which Julie and Stanley had bonded.

As an aside, everything worked out fine with Ogra: sometime after we moved to California, spurred by Julie’s fears that something terrible had happened, I called the rescue organization back in Champaign to check up on her. She had been adopted by a nice family and was, as far as they knew, happy and healthy.

Stanley is on Flovent, which he takes through an inhaler once or twice a day. He’s not especially fond of it—we have to press the inhaler to his muzzle and hold it there for twenty seconds, which makes him a bit squirmy—but he tolerates it reasonably well. His reaction is consistent with what seems to be his overall personality: extraordinarily mellow. He spends most of his time hanging out in the back of the house, sleeping in our bed or Julia’s. He doesn’t seem to mind the kittens at all; if anything, he might be a little intimidated by their energy. I’ve never seen him move faster than a slow amble, and he almost has a slight tendency to waddle.

Felix and Honey, on the other hand, have had slightly stronger reactions. Both of them were pretty unnerved when he first arrived, despite the fact that we kept him confined to the back bathroom for the better part of his first day here to help them acclimate to one another. Over the last few days, Felix seems to have adjusted fairly well: I’ve caught him following Stanley around, trying to sniff his tail, on more than one occasion. Honey, however, still hisses when she comes face to face with him, which isn’t too much of a problem except when everyone is back in our bedroom getting ready for bed. There hasn’t been any bloodshed yet, so I’m hopeful that everyone will figure out how to get along in time.