Enjoying the pack mentality

Last January, a small kitten called out to Jackie in the middle of the night, from under a neighbour’s deck. Jackie responded by using her power tools to rescue it, and for the next few months we tried to find out where he came from.

We eventually exhausted that effort and realized that he had worked his way into our family unit. Like in a book, we now have a Labrador (Rey), a French bulldog (Leia) and a grey domestic shorthair cat (Moonlight). Two rescues, one from a breeder, and they have come together in a family unit.

They’re not always harmonious, but what family is? We will often find them curled up together, or near each other. And sometimes they scuffle or get up and leave if another tries to scoop some attention.

Feeding is a surprisingly harmonious time, as no one tries to sneak another’s food, which could be because they all eat their entire meals in a minute or two. They all get raw and love it. Moonlight gets a little midnight snack that seems to reduce his nighttime activity (he can be very annoying), which Rey and Leia would love to share, but they have gotten used to it.

Lately, I have been amazed by the way Moonlight’s personality is developing. He has been a good boy most of the time, but occasionally he gets into trouble. He seems to have a cardboard fixation, the flats from bottled pop are a favourite, and is determined to destroy boxes of any kind. That’s fine – I make sure he has plenty of ways to satisfy his need for destruction. But now he’s starting to look at business files and books, which are not OK for him to chew.

Another side of his personality is the hunter in him. Whether the prey is a toy or even a plastic spring, he gets invested in chasing and catching them. Lasers are hit or miss, but his new fixation is the rabbit that lives under our front deck. It comes out in the evening to scavenge the seeds under our bird feeders, along with the herd of deer that occasionally passes by. We can tell when they’re out because he’s at the window, and actually talks to them, which he rarely does. Of course, then the dogs have to join in, which chases him away.

But he just moves to my office, where he sits on the back of my chair and moves the curtains back so he can see out the window. It’s OK when I’m not in the chair, but he surprises me sometimes when I don’t notice him coming into the room.

When we let the girls out for a bathroom break, he always wants to go with them, and occasionally we put on his harness and let him out, but in the cold he quickly retreats. When we don’t let him out, he becomes “Parkour Kitty,” bouncing around from window to window, chair top to chair top, watching what the girls are doing and talking loudly to them until they come back in.

Watching the dynamic develop has been quite fun, and while I don’t think we’d want a fourth member of the pack, I don’t mind three. One was fine, two was where I though we’d stop, but that fateful night in January brought a little Moonlight into our lives, and I think it was for the better.