Saffron is a five-year old mackerel tabby American shorthair. We found her cute face with a prominent furry M above her nose very charming. She was listed as a “barn cat,” so we assumed that she was likely an excellent mouser. My wife has a mouse phobia, and unfortunately we live next to a wood of perhaps a dozen acres with many kinds of birds and animals–including deer and foxes, woodchucks and mice.
We see mice in our house only several months or so, and we look for droppings, so we know we don’t have a big problem. However, in late March a mouse ran across our living room and my wife went into total meltdown. Leaping on a chair and refusing to come down until I caught the mouse, although it was nowhere to be seen. I persuaded her off the chair by saying that we would get a cat as soon as possible.
Adoption
We had resisted getting a cat because we travel often. Nevertheless, on April 1 we traveled to AWS to get Saffron. Since the staff insisted that she was a barn cat (and she seemed half-wild), we did know what to expect. She did hide under a low shelf in the living room for three days. Only coming out at night to eat and use the litter box, but on the fourth day she walked out into the open and went to the kitchen to eat. After eating, she sat nervously looking us, but she never again retreated to her hiding place.
Within a few days, she was sitting in our laps. And after two weeks, she came upstairs to sleep on the bed with us. She still waits until she is invited to sit on a lap, and she spends a lot of time batting her toys around the living room. When she begins to claw the furniture, my wife tells her “No!” sharply and she stops at once. My wife speaks to her as if she understands English, and sometimes it almost seems that she does. She obeys almost like a well-trained dog. She is certainly one of the most intelligent cats I have known when it comes to human interaction. Although she has been with us only two months, she seems as if she has been our cat forever. Thank you AWS!
