Forty-Eighth

There's no easy way to say it - we have to take Otis back to the shelter on Sunday morning.

I don't know what we were thinking, but we should have seen it before - there's no way that Annie will accept another cat in th house. We've tried a few gentle introductions over the past few days, which brought on much hissing, howling and growling from Annie, as opposed to mild curiosity from Otis. Today we had out first proper face-to-face introduction.

Complete disaster.

Annie was absolutely terrified. She's 10 years old compared to Otis' 2 years, is twice his size and has claws that put the shits right up me every time she stretches out and flexes them, but she was still completely terrified. She screamed, growled, hissed, spat and made plenty of other noises which I might actually have nightmares about tonight. She hid in the corner under my girlfriend's PC, hid under the bed and hid behind one of the chairs in the living room, screaming all the while.

Otis however, remained calm and collected, inching up to her slowly with his butt nice and low on the floor, the very model of restrained curiosity. Annie was still terrified. They eventually came to blows (briefly) and Annie ran away screaming, to hide under the quilt of our bed, still growling. The entire episode lasted a couple of hours in total, with Otis wandering around the house (which he's already done without Annie there) and coming back to see Annie every so often, being met with the noises described previously.

After Annie ran and hid, I took Otis away into the spare room and closed the door behind us and got him settled. My girlfriend then called me through to see that Annie was bleeding from her left eye. Closer examination revealed that it wasn't actually her eye, just the bridge of her nose right next to the eye. Still a nasty scratch, but not as nasty as we thought at first.

Cue much worrying and soul-searching from my girlfriend and I.

Plenty of tears, snot, hankies and thinking later we have come to the conclusion that we've been kidding ourselves on from the start. Not only that, but we're both incredibly fucking stupid. Oh, and we're both incredibly fucking angry and disappointed in ourselves. There really is no way that we should have expected Annie to be able to adjust to another cat. Her history is kind of patchy, but we do know that 2 or 3 people had tried adopting her before we did, and had to give her back because she was too much work. It took us about 6 months to get her really, properly settled in with us - she was the kind of cat that wouldn't eat if we were anywhere near the kitchen when she was at her bowls.
I'm not an animal psychologist, or a cat behaviour specialist, but I can tell when a cat hasn't been socialised properly at a young age. She's obviously been cared for, as we have her vet records from birth, but we're of the opinion that she's either been taken away from her mother and litter too young, or she's not been handled enough at a young age, or she's simply been mistreated at some point. Hell, it could even be a combination of the three, we'll never know.

The point is that we should have known better. We let our desire for another cat get in the way of the little voices in our head telling to stop being fucking stupid, and just love Annie for who and what she is - the fact that she is so bloody difficult most of the time just makes it more rewarding when she does curl up in your lap when you're watching TV, or when she leaps up onto the desk for attention when you're trying to play WoW.

I've already contacted the shelter, and they want us to drop him off on Sunday afternoon. I explained the situation to them, and they were nice enough about it. They reminded me that it can take months for cats to acclimate to one another, but I explained that Annie's reaction wasn't just your typical cat that doesn't like the new boy, so had a quick swipe then rolled back over to sleep - this was raw, unfettered terror. If Annie decided to have a proper go at me, there's a very good chance I'd lose some digits before I managed to stop her, but she's still terrified of a cat half her size. If my girlfriend or I were able to stay at home full time for the next few months, and try to introduce them a little each day, then maybe, just maybe, we could have done it, but we can't. We both work full-time, and my girlfriend even has two jobs. We wouldn't be able to give the cats the time they deserved, or the time they needed to adjust, and it wouldn't be fair on either of them. It particularly wouldn't be fair on Otis for us to keep him here longer, letting him form closer bonds with us, and have him get more settled in the house, only for us to have to take him back to the shelter anyway, making it harder for both him and us.

I'm just really angry and disappointed at the moment. Part of me is angry with Annie for not being easier going, but I know that's wrong - the only person I should be angry with is myself. I'm not going to let that anger spoil how I treat Annie, or change how much I love her, that isn't right. This is absolutely not her fault, and it's absolutely not Otis' fault - the fault lies squarely with my girlfriend and I.

We're both heartbroken over the whole affair, and I can't stop crying about it, it just isn't fair to have put either of the cats through all of this. I've always believed in the saying "For Everything A Reason", but I'm struggling to figure out the reason for this, other than teaching me a fucking lesson about being too fucking clever for my own good.

You'll probably hear more from me over the next few days.