#oneaday Day 195: My Cat's Breakthrough

My cat Meg had a major breakthrough recently: she's started coming upstairs again.

This might not sound like a huge deal, but since we got her new friend Patti a while back, she had been refusing to come upstairs at all. We assume that this was mostly down to the fact that when we first introduced Patti, we restricted her to the upstairs (initially just one room) to allow the pair to adjust to one another. As such, Patti had the opportunity to make upstairs "hers", while Meg was naturally hesitant to enter what suddenly appeared to be another cat's territory.

There's also the fact that when we did actually allow them to see one another face-to-face, they weren't very friendly with one another. Meg would respond to the sight of Patti with hissing and growling, and Patti would often launch herself at Meg. Over time, this behaviour lessened a bit at a time until now, where we're at a stage where I feel reasonably confident in saying they like having each other around — even if neither of them will admit that.

Now they'll quite happily occupy the same room as one another without incident, and I've seen both of them initiating sniffing sessions of each other's faces and arseholes. While this is considered rude in human society, among cats it appears to be the equivalent of asking each other if you saw the new Game of Thrones last night or something.

There's still an occasional bit of hissing and scrapping, but despite the noise they both make, they never seem to be serious fights, and I think they're more attempts to play than anything else. In other words, I think they're finally getting along.

This is good, because we were really worried about Meg after her former Ruby passed away last November. Although Meg would often give Ruby grief in the same way she does to Patti now, it was clear they liked each other a lot and enjoyed having one another around. (We think they may even have been related, which just made Ruby's passing all the more heartbreaking.) Meg was noticeably depressed when she was on her own, particularly on days when both Andie and I had to go to work and leave her alone for the day.

It looks like she's in a much better mental state now, though, which is great. Of course, just as we get to this phase, we're going to head off on holiday for a week and leave the pair of cats in the care of my mother in law… but I'm sure they'll be fine!