Tom: Chaos Kitten.

Since we moved to Mayo a little over a year ago now, we have had a steady stream of farm cats showing up at our back door, begging for food and cuddles. It started with a chunky orange lady who meowed pitifully and weaved between my legs anytime I walked outside. She was clearly well-fed and loved by someone nearby, but we put a bowl of water out for her and occasionally offered her treats and brushing when she hung around for a while. I nicknamed her Marmalade, and we are 90% certain she's the mother of Tom, who I'll tell you about very soon.

Then, we stopped seeing her as often and another beggar showed up a few weeks later. She was a skinny tortoiseshell with an infected eye, part of her ear missing, lots of battle scars, and a spiky personality. I called her Scraps and befriended her slowly with wet food and lots of sitting perfectly still outside until she came close enough to pet. Eventually, she trusted us enough that we were able to take her to the vet and get medicine for her eye. She hung out in Daniel's office while he worked, we got her a cat bed, and slowly starting thinking of her as 'ours'. Then one day she didn't turn up for breakfast and we sadly found that she had been hit by a car on the road. I was devastated.

In the last few weeks of our time with Scraps, another scraggly little thing had shown up and started annoying Scraps by attacking her tail and trying to eat her food. He was barely past the tiny kitten age, and was so thin that we could see all of his ribs. He followed Scraps around closely (often being rewarded with a bop on the head for being too friendly), and she taught him to hunt and helped him learn to trust us. Like the others, we bribed him with cat food and he gradually got used to me petting him and scooping him up for cuddles. I called this tiny stray Tom.

After losing Scraps, Tom became more and more attached to us. He sat outside on the windowsill of one of our hall windows every morning to watch for when we woke up, then would beg to come inside for hours. He spent most of every working day in Daniel's office, lounging on the couch or playing with the toys we put in there for him. He brought us small dead things as presents (gross, but I appreciate the gesture). As summer ended and the Irish weather grew more and more miserable and cold, we set up a small bed in the barn for him to spend the night and escape the rain. He started playing with Figaro through the glass doors and trying to sneak into the house through open windows.

There were a couple of times that he didn't show up for a meal time and I would worry that he had gotten injured or hit by a car. We made the decision after one of those days that we would bring him to the vet and ask about starting the process of transitioning him to an indoor cat. The vet did blood tests and we found that he didn't have any contagious diseases that could be transferred to Figaro (our old man cat whose health and happiness is a major priority for us in this process). We got Tom neutered, de-wormed, and he had to have a broken tooth extracted. He came back to us that evening drugged, shaved in several places, and extremely pitiful. But, we were able to bring him into the house and start getting him settled into his new life.

We started by keeping him confined to the snug. The vet had told us that he would feel very cold for a day or so because of the medicine he was on, and we were able to keep that room really warm and toasty thanks to the wood burner. It was also a good place to let him start exploring the house (the furniture has covers on it and we were able to remove anything breakable!). Figaro could watch him and smell him through the glass doors, and start to get used to the intruder to his space.

We woke up the next morning to discover he had had an accident on the couch and knocked over tons of books in the night. He had clearly woken up from his drugged-up haze and had a good wander around. We hadn't really considered how difficult it might be to teach a previously feral cat how to use the litter box. Our previous cats had come to us already having the knowledge. We started to watch him more closely, observing his movements like you would a potty-training toddler. We would pick him up and set him in the litter box repeatedly anytime he got squirmy. It was an around the clock job. We celebrated and cheered the first time he used it! Then, we celebrated a few days later when he sought out the box himself without us having to take him to it.

After the first night, he got really upset whenever we left him alone in the room; he would cry and scratch at the door. One of us slept on the couch with him for a few nights to help him settle in (and to keep carrying him to the litter box until he got the hang of it). He slowly got more and more comfortable, we stopped needing to give him medicine, and only then, after about five days of being an indoor cat was Tom's true form finally revealed to us.

He is a true chaos demon of a kitten. He zooms around the house for hours each day, chasing toys, climbing the curtains, knocking pictures off the wall, knocking plants off windowsills, scratching the couch, chirping at birds through the windows, stealing loaves of bread off the counter, and attacking our feet from below the couch. Then, without warning he will collapse and fall immediately into the deepest sleep, curled up in a little crescent with his paws covering his eyes. He has brought such an insane amount of chaos and noise and mess into the house and I honestly couldn't be happier about it. As tired as I am, and as much as I miss our house staying tidy for more than five minutes, he has shaken up our routine in a way that feels exactly right.

Of course we adore him, but you can definitely still sense our desperation for some peace when you look around and see how many pieces of cat-specific furniture we have panic bought in the last few weeks. Figaro has never really been big into toys or cat trees. Especially now that he's old, he really just wants to sleep curled up next to us on the couch or the bed. So, we had no idea what kind of market there is for adults to throw their money away on cardboard furniture! Tom adores everything we have given him. He has several cat scratchers that are strategically placed to protect the most visible bits of our couch. He has a collapsible tube that he gleefully runs into and slides across the floor and into the wall in. He has a tiny cat sized chaise lounge with a ball built into one side. He has jingly balls and catnip mice EVERYWHERE. We even bought a cat tree that reaches to our ceiling. He climbs the trunk like a tree and dangles upside down from the hammock to swat at us when we walk by.

You'll notice in some of these pictures that he has a goopy eye. The vet told us that almost all cats born in the wild in Mayo have cat flu. It's not curable and he will pretty much always have a slight cold that comes and goes. Figaro is vaccinated and safe though <3

The hardest part of the entire process has been trying to help Figaro and Tom get along. In their first days together, we had a few all-out cat fights, complete with injuries and screams. I was incredibly upset, worried about Figaro getting hurt or Tom being bullied. I've never experienced cats being introduced to each other like this; our previous cats came to us as brothers and loved each other from day one. Figaro has now established himself as the boss, but that doesn't mean he's resigned to letting this new orange monster wander freely around the house. He growls and hisses anytime Tom is in his line of sight, and he cowers at my side or tries to attack if Tom gets too close. Tom only wants to play with him. We haven't seen him be violent other than those first couple of days. He will hop up to Figaro and bop him gently or try to grab his tail, but Figaro is not at all in the mood to be playful with him.

We're taking it really slowly, keeping them mostly separated unless we are there to supervise. We are feeding them on either side of the glass doors so they can see and smell each other without fighting over food. We keep swapping blankets that they sleep on so they get used to each other's smell. We intervene if they get too fighty. Maybe I'm being overly cautious; maybe you think I should let them continue fighting until they sort themselves out. But, I do think we are seeing some slow improvements, and I don't want either cat to feel like their home is one where they can't relax or feel safe. We're in no rush. We will continue what we've been doing and hope that they eventually get bored of arguing. As I write this, I have a cat asleep and purring on either side of me on the couch. I think we can make this work.