With Hurricane Irene moving toward South Florida, Ray's wife had spotted a little kitten dart between some hedges in
our neighborhood. The kitten was fast and would not be caught easily.
We decided to feed the kitten (it only came around late at night, very early morning hours) to gain it's trust and have it come
to a location where we could set a humane trap for him.
On 25 August 2011, we captured this tiny kitten in the same trap that we used to capture Ethel.
Around 4 a.m., we brought the kitten inside to his own private suite, complete with food, water, litter box and toys to play with while
we advertised that we had him in case his owner was looking for him.
None of our neighbors had any idea where he had come from and no one else came to claim him. At this point, we would normally decide
to Foster the kitten until someone adopted him, but we decided to see if he could get along with our office cats. If he could get along
well with them, he could stay with us forever - if not, he has to be adopted by another family.
We had him checked out and fixed, he came back with a clean bill of health.
Due to his personality, and that he is getting along well with our office cats, he will be living with us.
As an update, the way in which we decide where a cat will live, is how well the cat can get along with the other cats in the office or
the house. Smokey gets along well with the office cats, and Biff is the most important part of that team. Biff is one of our two largest
cats (Linus is the other). Both of these big cats are have the sweetest personalities. They truly are gentle giants.
Linus came from the same field as Peanut, and they get along wonderfully. Peanut and Ethel get along great as well, spending a lot of
time together with Linus very close by. Biff, on the other hand, kind of floats around the office and hangs out by himself, watching the
other cats and just being happy. When we placed Smokey with Biff, they began to play like two small kittens. Biff seems to like Smokey
very much, and it makes him happy to play and run around with this tiny kitten.
Ray learned from a special on cat trainers (who have cats that perform in shows) that the best way to get a cat to do something is to
encourage what the cat will already do on their own. This works pretty well with all of our cats, so we will be encouraging Smokey and
Biff to play together and hope that the relationship grows strong.
Smokey is a Russian Blue mix. He is grey with the green eyes and light hint of stripes, but he also has a little bit of white on his chest
(they refer to that as a "fault," but Smokey isn't a show cat anyway, so he is just perfect!).
