Everything but the kitten!

Welcome, Joan. Congrats on the upcoming addition. I thought I’d address your question about a second kitten since I had a similar situation. I am home all day with my 2 sons and my husband works from home. So, when we adopted Emily, our first cat, (at age 6 months) she was an only cat and got lots of attention. She was happy that way, but adding more cats (we ended up with 3 total) added something special to her life that humans couldn’t add. Now, we didn’t really add the cats “for Emily.” We thought it was wisest to add them because we wanted them, not for her. But she just loves playing with her “brothers.” I think they keep each other more active and get out some of their extra energy with each other. (I still think it is important for the human to provide interactive play with wand type toys even when cats have each other to play with.) And the boy cats we have enjoy grooming each other. They all enjoy sleeping near each other and just hanging out together. Plus it adds to our enjoyment of the cats in a major way to see them interacting and playing together. It is a hoot!

As you can see, I’m a big fan of companions for cats. Littermates is a great idea. I would just choose two who already enjoy each other. Just like any two cats, littermates with very different personalities might not enjoy each others’ company.

With our first two cats, I had no color/pattern in mind. But I do love tabby stripes and was hoping for a tabby with our 3rd. I was open to any cat who won my heart and needed a good home (and had a compatible personality to go with the existing cats.) But we did end up with a stripy boy!

You could google animal rescues in your area and see if there are groups who work from foster homes rather than shelters. I wouldn’t hesitate to get a cat from a shelter, but there are some little advantages to a foster home I appreciate. The foster parent can tell you so much about the personality of the cats and knows which ones get along. You should have tons of kittens to choose from before long. Kitten season seems to be approaching where I live. Good luck.

Hi Joan, I’m Joan too! My Leela is almost 4 years old and Comet is 21 months, both black cats. They are not exactly the most harmonious combo, but things just fell that way. My previous generation was Shaddo, a grey and white DSH, and Jiggs, a rescued Maine Coon. They were a year apart and lived to 17 and 16 years respectively. Learned about Shaddo just after losing our beloved and much too young black long hair Smokie. Then a year later my boss told me about free Maine Coons. I thought I would always have black cats, but Shaddo and Jiggs were a joyous generation of kitties. A duo of cats seems to suit us even though these 2 are a challenge!

Are you open to travel for a kitten/cat? Here in northern NJ, many shelters become overcrowded with kittens and unwanted cats.

Good luck to you!

Yeah, vet bills can be a KILLER! Especially since our landlord threatened to evict us if we couldn’t cough up rent money for the past three months… He ended up relenting when he found out I just laid out over $1,000 in Alex’s bills! I haven’t found much help with insurance companies either; they usually manage to wriggle out of paying anything significant (I’ll never forget the time VPI sent me a check for $.18¢ …) I did, however (upon the advice of my little brother!) enroll my cats in a vet discount program called Pet Assure, I don’t save THAT much but I think it’s worth it, because the premiums are ridiculously lower than insurance .. I think there’s a similar sevice called United Pet Care .. maybe you should check into those.