More cat blogging - Raven

I’ve been meaning to blog about our new family member, Raven. I wanted to wait until I’d uploaded some decent pictures of him, and he’s a bit camera shy. At first he was shy of us, and the camera was just a big scary eye staring at him. He ran every time he saw it for the first couple of weeks. Here he is at last, relaxing. (Click on thumbnails for larger views.)

Raven showed up around our house quite some time before we actually decided to adopt him. In fact I’d seen him around the neighborhood since he was a little kitten, which helped us guess at his age — about 1 year now. We’re sure he had a home when we first started seeing him. But there are lots of rentals in the neighborhood and the area is notorious for abandoned cats. He started visiting every day, back in May, and he got hungrier and hungrier, and kept hanging around, so by the time we finally did feed him he had already seemed to decide this house was home. In a sense he adopted us — including Tara. He visited with her and they played at the windows a lot, before we ever fed him.

The strange thing about that is that once Raven came into the house, he didn’t seem so sure anymore about Tara. Sometimes it seemed as if he’d rather take over and boot Tara out. So there was some adjustment to go through, and finally he let us know he wanted to be outside during the days and only inside at night. Now he usually comes home for dinner a little before sunset, sometimes earlier, sometimes later, and sleeps in at night — which most outdoor cats around here soon learn is wise what with all the coyotes and other predators.

Depending on his mood and how much time Raven spends indoors in any given 24 hour period, sometimes the two cats get along great, playing happily for hours. At other times they just leave each other alone. Now and then Raven gets in a mood and decides to pick on Tara, but it’s usually nothing serious, and she’s very forgiving. We’re all adjusting. Even with all the fluctuations in how Raven gets along, he seems to be a permanent fixture now. He’s made it abundantly clear though that he has no intention of ever becoming an indoor-only cat, which is fine with Tara because that gives her plenty of time with the house to herself, when she doesn’t have to worry about Raven’s mood swings.