Two Years of Calla

This week is the second anniversary of Calpurnia coming to live with me.  On the 20th of February in 2010 I drove into the valley looking for the city shelter, with the Petfinder information for two cats that I was going to choose from.

Calpurnia was the only one of the two I could find there. Nobody working there even seemed to know where the other one might be. This made me even more interested in getting her out of there as soon as possible.

Of course, it wasn’t that easy.  There was some strange back and forth about getting her fixed.  At first they said that this would take a day and cost some money.  Then decided to have their local vet look for a surgical scar, so they shaved a band on her stomach from the head to tail to look.  Why they thought the scar would be near the chest is a good question.

After being unable to find the scar, they decided to just believe the turn-in report saying that she was fixed, and I could take her home once I paid the twenty-two dollar fee

If you thought Calla was furry before her annual haircut last month you should have seen her then…like in the above picture.  See where her dark tail meets the light hair in back?  That is where her spine is.  You could stick your fingers above her back and the entire fingers will be buried in the fur before touching her spine.

She was a strange combination of care and neglect.  She had not been abandoned outside like a lot of rescue Persians I have seen.  But she had mats the size of my fists on each side of her body and little ones behind them.  It was like she was wearing hobbles on her legs.

I didn’t take any pictures the first day, partly because I hadn’t found where my camera was stored.  But she needed some time to unwind after the long drive home.  In her room she tended to hang out in the closet.  It is right next to the furnace, so it was warm and snug.  When I was in to visit, she would come out to greet me, so she wasn’t too scared.

Sunday morning I was surprised to find tha despite the mats, despite the reputation of Persians as being ground loving cats, Calla had some unexpected surprises in store.  She was up on top of my shelves.  Sure, she can’t lie down right because of mats, but she can launch herself to the window sill in one jump like a furry missile, and then again from there up to the top of the shelves, just under the ceiling.

Then to complete the metaphor, when I sat down in the room to read she would fling herself down like a 8 pound fur bomb onto the little sofa next to me.

But this was going to be a stressful week for her – two haircuts and two vet visits in four days, plus a new house and rude boy cats!