Hiss and Vinegar

At this point we have had the cat almost two weeks now and she is still TERRIFIED of the dogs. We put up a divider between Peter's office and the living room so that the dogs don't go rushing into the office to try to eat her. We've also been sleeping on the sofa in the living room because we don't have a bed yet.

Yesterday, the cat decided to jump over the divider and sleep under our makeshift bed, which I didn't realize until this morning, when the dogs were sniffing under the bed and I heard hysterical hissing sounds underneath me. Peter thinks this is because she has become so attached to me that she wants to be around me, and I'm all, "So why does she hide whenever I go into the office?"

And since Peter's family has had numerous cats while he was growing up, he says, "Because she's a cat, not a dog. Hiding is what cats do."

We've discovered that this cat hisses at just about anything: vacuum cleaner, dogs, an accidental touch on the tail. Oh, and let's not forget about the dreaded BROOM. She hates that thing with a vengeance that comes straight from the dark depths of her soul. Somewhere in her short life a broom has done her a large wrong. Whenever Peter sweeps the floor in his office, she goes into conniptions.

Yesterday we went to Petsmart and bought several jingle-jangly plastic balls for her to play with and when I tossed one at her, she ran away from it and gave me a dirty look that said, "Why are you doing this to me?" I let Peter pick out the toy at the store because of his previous cat experience and he said that cats LOVE this stuff.

When she ran away, he looked at me and said, "Well, I guess this isn't going to be the first time this cat makes a liar out of me."