Felix - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Monday 14 November, 2005

by Rosemary at 10:19pm in Cats 3 comments Comments closed

We have a new addition to our family. After losing Homer a few weeks ago, I had a wee trip to the local cat shelter last week, to hand in a donation. There were lots of lovely cats and kittens, but one in particular caught my eye. So he moved in on Saturday.

His name is Felix. He's a six(ish) year old black (mainly) ex-tom cat. His previous mum and dad split up, and his mum couldn't keep him in her new house.

He's absolutely lovely but...

we were told he had a cleft palate and that made him snuffly. He'd also had cat flu as a kitten, which also contributed to his snuffle. And snuffle he does!

Dan took him to our vet today and he's pretty much got a clean bill of health. Our vet says he doesn't have a cleft palate - he has a small abnormality in his mouth. He also has chronic flu most likely caused by a feline herpes infection when he was young. Stress probably makes his snuffle worse, so hopefully it will get better once he's settled in.

Felix has really interesting markings. He has a white collar. I thought this was really special, but the vet says it's been caused either by a flea collar or a collar that was too tight. I hate collars on cats.

Felix is very small compared to Copper and Cassius, but then, they are big cats. He is very affectionate and has a splendid vocal range. He loves to sit on your shoulder and lick your ears or the back of your neck or your face. Within an hour of arriving here, he was flat out on the sofa with Dan and Tess.

Cass has whacked him a couple of times mostly when he found Felix in his bed. Meg showed him her teeth when he tried to get into her food bowl. Copper spits and hisses, but tolerates him. Tess loves him and follows him about all the time. I don't know if Copper is devastated or relieved to no longer be the focus of Tess's attention.

I think he'd like to get outside, but it's too early yet. Being much younger than our usual cats, he's much more active than our other cats, so we need to get used to that.

Can't imagine he'll be much of a hunter unless the mices are deaf - the snuffle's quite loud.

Once we get some decent pictures, we'll put them up.