Christmas Holly ~ New Kid in Town

Introducing . . . . Holly

We have a new family member . . . her name is Holly. We adopted Holly from the local Humane Society yesterday. Isn't she adorable! She looks like a Birman mix to us. . . . known to be friendly and calm, and as loyal as a dog. We thought friendly and calm would be perfect since we have two senior pets already (a 15 year old cat and our dog Cider will turn ten in July).

Holly is estimated to be 10 months old. Our goal over the holidays is to get Holly on our human schedule. She certainly did sleep most of the time at the humane society. . . . which did work to our advantage, as no one even noticed her. We didn't show up until 1:00 in the afternoon on Saturday and the place was packed with potential adopters by then. I am sure she would have been chosen by someone else if she had peeked out of her cardboard sleeping box.

The only reason we asked to see her was because her chart details said she was fostered with 3 large dogs and a family that had children. Sounds perfect! When she was removed from her hiding spot by the shelter volunteer we were stunned to see such big beautiful blue eyes and chocolate brown markings. I expected an all beige cat . . . as she was completely curled up and hidden, with only a bit of her back showing. We fell for her pretty fast.

They said she had only been at the H.S. for a short time (and was in foster care for a month before that). I guess the shelter was scary for her (thus the hiding) and we were told she had not eaten a thing in 24 hours. I was quite happy to see her finally looking hungry. She ate like a ravenous lion last night, around 11:00pm, which likely also fueled her energy. She loves playing with her toys. She was relocated to her kitty kennel around 3:00am this morning, for some sleep time.

She has done everything right. Used her litter box, eventually ate some food and slept well in her kitty crate (after lots of exploring and checking out the tops of all our tall dressers). This gal can jump! I will certainly be taking the tree down early after Christmas, before she gets to explore the rest of our home. It is recommended that we wait two weeks before she meets Cider or Jersey. She needs to adjust to our home first and recover from her shelter cough symptoms before meeting other animals.

The Humane Society gave us lots of suggestions for introducing new pets. I welcome suggestions from my blogging friends too! Have you introduced new animals to the family?