02/02/2023: The Freeze, Two Cats, and The Curse of the Broken Leg

When I got my cat Pikachu around four years ago, it was when I had broken my leg for the first time. I had to take a semester off from college, and most of my time was spent dwelling around the apartment, cleaning if I could and playing video games if I couldn't. It was lonely and quiet most of the time; my partner would be out working for the day, so I had to be alone. It was difficult to move around, I didn't have any tasks I needed to do, and it was disheartening to have to leave college for a bit.

I would occassionally hang out with my pet ball python, Monty. I had gotten him around six years prior at a reptile show that I went to with my friend. Her dad bred and sold snakes to other snake breeders, and we got to tag along for one. I went home that day with the cutest little puppy dog-eyed snake in the world. There was nothing but love in his heart and static in his head. I loved him dearly, but you can't handle ball pythons that often. They get antsy, and if you don't want to be bitten, you don't want to be holding an antsy snake.

I have since given away Monty, but he's still relelvant to this story: My partner had to travel to the local pet shop to pick up some frozen mice for Monty. We had this tradition where we would always look at all of the pets they had on offer, especially the cats. I didn't get to see them since I was stuck at home, so I sulked while they got to look at the kittens. They came home that evening and said, "There's a cat there that's named Mewtwo, and one named Pikachu."

My face lit up like Christmas morning, and I immediately said, "We're getting the house ready to bring that cat home tomorrow." After some hemming and hawing, I managed to convince them, and I hobbled around the bedroom picking up trash, picking up laundry, and generally tiding up while my partner checked the rest of the apartment. We got it together good enough that a cat could come home with us.

We headed out early in the morning, got to the pet shop, and asked about Mewtwo. Mewtwo is my favorite Legendary Pokemon, and Pikachu, to me, was an oversaturated mascot at the time. I didn't hate Pikachu; I just liked the name Mewtwo better. Well, it turns out, Mewtwo had been adopted earlier that morning, but we still wanted to see Pikachu.

I fell in love with this tiny little orange tabby tom on the spot.

Of course, this was not a surprise. I had been wanting a cat since I was five years old, and as we established earlier in this story, I had a history of falling in love with small animals in a matter of seconds. We adopted him within the hour, bought all of the supplies we needed for him, and brought Pikachu to his Forever Home.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for Monty.

We had to give away Monty in the Pandemic of 2020. We couldn't afford the new, bigger terrarium he needed, nor were we able to feed him at that point since we were unable to handle a stressed-out snake. When snakes encounter a problem, their only solution is to bite, and that includes the literal hand that feeds them. This approach can solve many problems, including hunger, predators getting too close, and letting something know that you're stressed. It doesn't, however, solve the problem of letting a caretaker help relocate you if you're stressed. He went to a loving home, and he's getting the help he needs.

I don't think I'll be getting any more pet reptiles in my life. Partially because they require immense amounts of equipment to properly take care of them, partially because it's hard to read their body language to make sure that they're as happy as possible, but mostly because things with Pikachu really worked out. He's been the best dang kitty cat in the whole world.

Well, now that the backstory is out of the way, let's talk about The Freeze.

Flash forward to last November: It's my partner's birthday. We're having a great time playing games together and yukking it up. They decide to go to a fast food joint about a five minute's walk away. My leg is broken (for the second time), so I can't stray too far, but I hear them playing just outside of the apartment with something. They walk back in and tell me that there's a grey tabby cat outside, and that she is the cutest, most friendly cat they've seen. She's meowing really loudly, rubbing up on their hand, and rolling around on the ground.

(If you've had cats before, you might recognize this as her being in heat. We had no clue; we just liked her.)

We figured that she belonged to someone in the apartment complex and that she was just roaming the courtyard for fun. My partner pets her one more time for good measure, then they walk to the restaurant while I went back inside. Over the course of the next few weeks, word gets out about this cat: She doesn't belong to anyone in the neighborhood, she's been taken to the vet, and not only does she not have a chip, but she's pregnant! She's such a young cat; it didn't seem possible.

Several of the neighbors get together to talk about this cat, including me and my partner. Apparently, we were all independently trying to figure out what to do about her while feeding her and keeping an eye on her. We had set out a cat carrier with a jacket on the top to keep out the cold, and she spent most of her nights in there. We figured that she had either just had kittens or was just about to have kittens. It was... a lot to handle.

Like everyone else, we had grown attached to her, and it was unofficially decided that we would adopt her. We'd all keep an eye out for any kittens and go from there. She had already been to the vet, and we posted about her on a neighborhood forum. After a week, no one claimed her, so she was our responsibility.

Towards the end of December, it was announced that a Super Freeze Storm was about to hit. We didn't want Dedenne the Stray to be out in the cold, and it had been long enough that if she had had kittens or was about to have kittens, they would have surfaced by then. We looked up the best ways to introduce cats to each other to help the transition go smoothly.

When we found out that it was best to have the cats in separate rooms for around a week, we decided to set up the living room as her bunk while Pikachu would be stationed in the bedroom. We set this up a week before the freeze so they would start to get along before the freeze hit. Dedenne spent the first few nights familiarizing herself with the territory, while Pikachu was trying to figure out what That Thing Behind the Door was.

The Freeze came and went without incident, luckily, and it was time to slowly have Pikachu and Dedenne interact in person. We had them sniff each other through the door, then we site-swapped them, and then we finally had them interact through the door over the course of a week. When we finally opened the door to let them hang out, they... weren't big fans at first. They weren't killing each other (which was a plus), but they gave each other a wide berth when walking to the other room.

However, they seem to have warmed up to each other.

As of the time of writing this, Pikachu and Dedenne seem to be fine in each other's spaces. The worst you can say about it is that they act like siblings. Dedenne will follow Pikachu from room to room and mess with his things, and Pikachu will either sit there and take it or occassionally swat at her. Neither one is hurting the other, but they are harmlessly antagonizing each other. It's really cute, and we've really warmed up to Dedenne.

It's still hard to tell at this point if we're just fostering her, or if we're keeping her. She isn't exactly a perfect fit for us, and while a lot of it could be explained by her being in heat (don't worry, Pikachu is neutered and we don't let Dedenne outside), she's very vocal to the point of giving me stress headaches and she doesn't tend to learn from the consequences of her actions.

I wouldn't put it past us to keep her if she straightens up and flies right, but I do find it funny that every time I break my leg, we get a cat in our lives.