Say Goodnight Gracie

Well, as quickly as we welcomed a new cat into our happy home, the quicker we ushered her out when the going got tough. You see, as I had mentioned in my previous post, it had appeared that our cat Rudy, was lonely after losing his lifelong companion and brother, Oliver. But, I think we were mistaken.

Sure he stared longingly outside to our backyard which we interpreted as him looking for Oliver, but what we realized after taking in Gracie, was that Rudy is truly a loner at heart.

The trouble started almost immediately. Gracie arrived and hid under anything she could find. Personally, I saw that as a positive since I knew she wouldn't wreck our furniture if she was only hiding under it. But when we attempted to bring her out to civilization and introduce her to Rudy, that's when all hell broke loose. Our fearless cat began to tremble, whining, meowing, scratching everything in his sight to get away from Gracie. And Gracie...well she took off to hide under the sofa until the coast was clear.

Once the initial introductions were made, we figured we'd let the cats become friendly in their own time. Except Gracie was nowhere to be found. We searched under all the furniture but no matter where we looked, she wouldn't materialize. That is, until we started to do a little aggressive investigating. After opening one of our closet doors in our basement, we discovered that not only had Gracie found refuge in the cavernous section of our closet, she also decided to create a new way to mark her territory - no need for a litterbox when you can pretty much crap all over the basement.

Oh, but it gets worse. After cleaning up the mess Gracie made in our basement, we soon discovered that Rudy was petrified of setting foot in the basement. Probably because Gracie was lurking in the shadows - ready to pounce when no one was looking. And so, on day five of our foster cat situation, my cat, the one who never really caused any problems for us suddenly decided that the bathtub would be a great place to relieve himself.

When I came home to find that Rudy had used our tub as a toilet, I threw my hands up and decided that taking in a companion for a cat wasn't necessarily the best idea in the world. And so, on Saturday morning, one week after greeting our guest, we all said our goodbyes to Gracie. We sent the feline packing from whence she came, and Rudy, well - he couldn't have been happier.