Barley the kitten still a lady-killer, at least for another month

Barley is having a bit of a good news/bad news sort of day.

On the one hand, he didn’t end up having surgery today. He was supposed to get neutered, but since it didn’t happen, there was no anesthesia, no painful recovery, no stitches. Yay.

On the other hand, he wasn’t allowed to have surgery because he’s too small*. He’s still only about 2.5 pounds. And the folks at the SPCA said he’s not gaining weight as fast as his brothers (who I assume were back at the SPCA to be neutered today, too).

He wasn’t allowed to eat or drink after midnight last night, in preparation for the surgery. So chalk up another one on the bad news side of things, as we made him fast for nothing.
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But that all means I’m allowed to spoil him with wet food to try to get him to put on more weight. Yay.

Even though he didn’t get the surgery, he had an exciting day. Aside from staying at the SPCA for a couple of hours, he also came into the pet store with me to restock our wet food supplies. He made googly eyes at the little girl in line with her mom behind us at the checkout counter, and at the girl at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru.

The lady-killer is still on the prowl, at least for another month.

* The vet said he thinks Barley might be a couple weeks younger than the SPCA estimated, which would theoretically mean the cat isn’t as underweight as they think he is. If he’s two or three weeks younger, then being a half-pound underweight sounds about right to me. Part of me wonders if Barley’s brothers are just porking out. I’ll bring that up when we go to the vet next week for more shots.

Pet owners: What do you do when you get mixed instructions or opinions on caring for your little one? Whose advice do you take?

Cat photos: Barley’s favorite toy

Look at those eyes. Laser focus.

I bought Barley one of those fishing rod-type toys with a string fastened to a pole, and something fluffy on the end of the string.

On the end of this one’s string, there is a pingpong-sized ball filled with beads and covered with fabric. And then there’s a feather hanging off the ball.

Best $4.50 I’ve spent.

It’s Barley’s favorite toy, hands down. The (Instagram-ed) photo at left happened when I cracked open the drawer that had the wand inside:

And when I put it away, he stares at the drawer and sniffs around, waiting for it to come back out.

No leopard-covered pingpong ball is safe from Barley’s wrath.

Meanwhile, like other cats, Barley is pretty nocturnal, so he always wakes up when I get home from work late at night. And he’s usually pretty energetic when he greets me.

And so when you combine a hyperactive kitten with his favorite toy in the wee hours of the morning, here’s what you get, in iPhone photos. Enjoy.

In mid-leap and mid-bat.

It’s really his favorite toy. His favorite toy that he loves to beat the crap out of.

Our SPCA kitten adoption story

When I let Barley out of the carrier, he ran up several stairs and sat there, taking in his new digs, for quite some time.

After Aaron and I narrowly avoided the sitcom-level hilarity of both adopting a pet for the other for Christmas, it was time to get down to business with actually committing to a little furrball. It didn’t go as planned, which should come as no surprise if you know us or read this blog.

We went to the SPCA on Saturday, Dec. 15. The plan was to get a kitten. No screwing around.

But Aaron was set on getting a little bitty kitty — despite my warnings that the cat will, in fact, eventually get bigger. And there were only a few at the SPCA. We also were fairly determined to get a female, based on recommendations of some of our cat-owner friends.

So we strolled around the SPCA making googly eyes at the kittens. The only baby females had just returned from being fostered and needed a vet check before we could even pet them.

I took this photo the first day I went to the vet with Aaron, but we didn’t seriously consider the three tabby kittens in this pen because they were all males. Little did we know I’d be bringing this guy home a couple days later!

We also saw a cage that had three adorable tabby kittens, but they were all males, so we didn’t seriously consider them. And we bailed.

Cut to Tuesday morning, the first day the SPCA was open after the weekend. I got there at opening time, hoping to get first dibs on the little female kitten we saw Saturday.

@jsprenk Free advice from an owner of three cats. You almost have to let it pick you rather than the other way. See which one wants you.

— Dave Sottile (@davesottile) December 18, 2012

But she wasn’t out for display/adoption. So KittenQuest continued.

One kitten started playing with me through the window. It was a female, and super cute. I asked to “meet” the cat and was taken to a conference room for some play time. As soon as the cat climbed out of the carrier, she started running laps. And evading my grasp. And running more laps. I remembered Dave’s advice from earlier in the morning, and I realized the cat was not for me.

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And so my attention turned back to that cage of cutie pie little boy cats. One had been adopted, so I headed back to the conference room with the two remaining kittens. I opened the carrier and one kitty hopped out, let me pick him up, immediately started to purr, and I knew he was our cat.

This is the face Barley makes while meowing at you while you do any single thing in the kitchen that doesn’t involve him. (photo by Aaron)

Well, sort of. I still wasn’t sure, because friends had encouraged us to get a she-cat, not a he-cat. And since it was a Tuesday morning, Aaron was at work and couldn’t meet him.

But I had a feeling, so I pulled the hypothetical trigger.

I had serious doubts when the cat cried the entire car ride home. And when he was terrified of us for the first day he was home.

But he’s our snuggly little kitten. And I’m so glad we picked him, if only for this face he makes when he yells at me.

A Christmas gift near-miss, or great minds think alike when it comes to pets

It was something out of a sitcom.

Unbeknownst to the other, each of us was plotting to get a surprise pet for Christmas.

I spent the day making googly eyes at kittens at the York County SPCA with all intentions of picking one out to surprise Aaron for Christmas. The plan was to find our kitten, file the paperwork, try to stall and leave the kitten at the SPCA for another couple of days and stash it at a friend’s house until it was close enough to Christmas to surprise Aaron. He’s been talking about wanting a pet, and I figured a cat would be a good place to start.

“Take me home with you, jsprenk!”

Except I made a rookie mistake.

When I got to the SPCA, I told the worker that I wanted to get a kitten as a gift. And that’s a no-no.

After my flub, I didn’t want to fill out an application for fear they’d mark me with a Scarlet G — a Gifter. So I couldn’t actually visit any of the animals that day.

Still, I went home confident that I was going to knock Christmas out of the park. And I bragged a little bit over dinner, saying that I knew he was going to love my gift.

But then he started to say that he was pretty sure I wanted what he was getting me, but he wanted my input too. And I speculated that we might be considering the same thing. And he said that two of them would be trouble. We’d be in over our heads. And I suggested we get a mediator.

And he texted my pal Kate, whom I’d been sending kitten photos, and she replied to me, and I lunged across the table, and the cat came out of the bag.

He’d been planning to get me a puppy. I’d been planning to get him a kitten.

These two were looking at me with “take me home eyes”, too.

In the sitcom, we wouldn’t have figured it out. We’d have woken up Christmas morning with a cat in a box and a dog in a box, and they’d leap out and chase each other around the house, probably getting Aaron and me caught in a tangle of Christmas lights together.

In real life, we’re going to pick out a kitten together, which is nice because neither of us has the pressure of being solely responsible for picking The Right One. And there’s no more surprise complicating the logistics of the situation.

And in real life, maybe the SPCA’s no-gifting policy isn’t quite as much of a buzzkill as I thought.