A new member of the family

After many months of thinking, discussing, hesitating, emotional blackmail attempts and persuasions from our friends we finally made a decision. Today in our neverlandy hen-house debuted a patter of happy little feet.  Our family expanded with a cute handsome guy.

Maurice listening in the morning to me whining about how much I'd love to have a cat finally gave up:

- Do you realize how big pressure you put on me? - he asked

- What pressure? You love cats and you would also like to have one!

- But it's such a responsibility... - he hesitated.

- You overanalysing everything again.

- Ok, to take your jacket. We're going to the shelter!

The visit in the animal shelter was harder than I thought and I got very emotional. Few time I was sooo close to burst into tears looking at all these lonely animals and hearing their stories. We've already decided a long time ago that if we're gonna take a cat, it's gonna be an older one from a shelter. We want to give him some love, warmth, peace and affection in his old age. Young cats have bigger chances to find a new home and not many people really bother about the old ones with a traumatic past. While they also wanna be loved! Besides we live on a third floor, so there's not many possibilities for a cat to go out. There's almost none possibilities. Even for that reason we needed a quite, stay-at-home creature that wouldn't miss outdor adventures ;)

It was really hard to choose. All of the furry monsters were so cute, I'd want to take them all! A shy, introvert Beer, an extremaly sweet and friendly three-legged puss or a lovable, chronic sneezing old lady. Eventually we decided for an adorable, 10-year-old, black buddy with the hear murmur. While the shelter's employees were filling the papers, we run (ok, drove) with Maurice to the closest shop to buy everything our new member of the family might need. Cat litter, litter box, bowls, cat food, cat snacks, scratching post, comfortable cat bed, some toy, brush... and 100 euro's gone within minutes. But you'd do anything with love ;)

We came back to the shelter with our Portable House. We signed the papres, payed 40 euro (the price was almost half lower because of the cat's age. I don't really know what are the procedures of animal adoption from the shelter, but here in the Netherlands it's a standard price, but the cat is already sterilized, dewormed and vaccinated) and we could get our little furry hero. He didn't resist to get into the Portable House and he was just a little bit scared or confused when the car started. Quite likely also because of many curves and release thesholds on a road. Luckily he did quickly calm down and spent quitely the rest of the journey in the PH on my lap, watching the views behind the window.

Finding the most comfortale and suitable spot on the sofa...

Whe we arrived to our hen-house and I opened the door of the Portable House, Hank slowly came out and started checking out the apartment, sniffing all the walls and the furniture. When he finished, he hid under the little sofa in my studing-room. I didn't want to stress him too much, so I put the camera away and went to the kitchen to prepare him some food and water. After a quarter Maurice lured him to go out with some cat crisps. Still a little bit shy and unsecure, Hank was walking between his bowl, the sofa in the living-room and the sofa in the studing-room. After an hour he already felt confident enough to jump on the sofa next to us and let us pet him. He was purring so loud we were happy to see him finally relaxed and pleased :)  

Stroking time

I kind a have a feeling I'm gonna have to share the milk in the morning from now on. I'm gonna traditionally eat it with my cereals and Hank as a real tough guy is gonna drink it... pure :D from a clean bowl ;)