Brain’s Family Welcomes In A Visitor
A cat had been showing up on our porch for the past several weeks. Some days she would be there, others not. She was very friendly and affectionate and clearly had been around people before. She had no collar or identification. We have other 'neighborhood' cats that wander around. I see them sometimes early in the morning when I leave for work. But none are as friendly as our little visitor. So on a day when it was raining and snowing and the cat was literally peering into our house, we let the cat in.
I grew up with cats. We had a lot of them on the farm, and also had several as pets in our home. When Holly and I moved into our house one of the first things we did was adopt a kitten. Liddy lived 14 years and was our very first pet. Flash forward to 2018. We're a dog family now. Our Schnauzer Rigby is 5 years old and is king of his domain. How would he react to this intruder? He was very curious and had to take a sniff. The cat put up with him for a bit before taking a swipe at him as if to say, "that's enough!" The cat wasn't going to take any of his dog antics.
We set our new visitor up with food, water, bedding, and a litter box for her to use. She immediately went to the girl's room and slept on their beds with them. She slept on our bed with Rigby for awhile last night and even visited Chase upstairs. She is friendly and purrs nonstop. You would too if you no longer had to sleep outside during the coldest Iowa spring in decades!
Yes, I have concerns. Is there a reason no one kept her as a pet? Will she pee all over our house? Is there some other health problem that we don't know about? A trip to the vet soon will clear some of that up. We've also posted a picture of her on social media to make sure that her owner isn't looking for her. I canvassed our neighborhood yesterday and didn't find an owner. In the meantime, we'll take it day by day. And the girls settled on a name too. Cora, welcome home.