On February 11 we picked up our little Sweet Pea from SCARS Animal Rescue. We both wanted a cat, and even though I would love to have a dog some day, a cat is the right choice for us now. I first spotted Sweet Pea, who was then called Astrid, while scrolling through Facebook at my hair stylist’s and something went ‘ping!’ I texted Tom, and he immediately responded yes. One application, a phone interview, and a meet and greet later, we took her home.
She has settled in beautifully. The first 24 hours Sweet Pea kept busy exploring her new forever home, taking periodic naps between us on the couch. As I write this several months later, she no longer naps beside us, but she is always near. She loves to be petted, and has the sweetest, tiniest voice. She’s also a little bullet when she’s got the zooms, taking the stairs two at a time from the basement to the top floor in pursuit of who knows what. Her favourite things are pipe cleaners, but she also loves grocery bags, twist ties, bottle caps, a scrap of carpet from the dollar store, and occasionally, the actual toys we buy her, but maybe not as much. Her absolute favourite thing is watching the birds and squirrels from our many windows which have deep window wells for her to perch and chatter. She’s also a house plant messer-upper and a sponge stealer, but overall a very good girl. We can’t believe how lucky we got with her.
Sweet Pea had her first appointment with our vet on April 7 and she passed with flying colours. The vet wrote ‘Excellent!’ on her health report, and said things like ‘she’s perfect’ and ‘she’s amazing’ to describe her. Only one minor hiss and a bit of low growling but otherwise, she behaved well. She has gained one kilo to 3.4 (or about 7.5 lbs) since we got her, but she’s still teeny tiny. The vet thinks she’s probably a bit younger than what was thought, maybe just under a year. He also thought the sponge stealing was funny but didn’t offer any solutions. When he was done, Sweet Pea jumped back on her own into the carrying case and was completely normal when we got home.
This afternoon, she made friends with a yam. Maybe we should have called her Sweet Potato.
