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I set up food and water dishes for Hermes upstairs the same way I did with Pepper. I think Mel and Pep are going to have difficulty sharing their eating space with him for awhile, so I'll try to "train" him to eat up there.

Oh, for crying out loud!! First Pepper and then Mel went upstairs and ate out of his food dish! And Pepper hasn't even been in that room in months! And after all that time I had a dish of food up there for Pepper and neither of them would touch it!

Mel is being more confrontational with Hermes than she was with Pepper. When we first brought Pepper home, she hid all the time and would go WAY out of her way to avoid crossing paths with her. Mel is going right up to Hermes a lot and walking past him, although she does hiss and growl the whole time.

It could be that being with Pepper has made her more used to being around other cats, so she feels a bit more confident.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm very in-tune with Mel's emotions. When she's happy, it makes me feel really happy. The past couple of days I was wrapping piles of coins into coin wrappers, and she was extremely fascinated with the whole process. She kept walking around me, rubbing against me and purring, sitting down and watching, pawing at the coin piles, playing with the empty wrappers, and generally being really good and loving.

But now that she's upset about this intruder cat in the house, I feel guilty for making her feel that way. For some reason, I didn't feel quite as bad about her reaction to Pepper (maybe because Pepper also came to our doorstep and because Pepper, being smaller and declawed, is not much of a potential threat to Mel).

If Mel never showed much interest in playing with other cats, I never would have considered a third one. But lately, she's been harassing Pepper more and more and it's tiresome to get between them all the time. So, I thought getting a cat that's more willing to play with other cats would be a benefit to both of them (since Mel would get a willing playmate and it would take pressure off Pepper).

So, yeah, I guess I just have to wait it out and see. Lucky I have all week home. I think if it doesn't work out, though, I won't bother adopting another and we'll just have to look at alternate ways to keep Mel from harassing Pepper (Crawl has suggested a water gun).

Right now all three are sleeping within eyesight of each other. Pepper's indifference is kind of amusing. I think that's the reason my emotions aren't quite as attuned to Pepper's - because she's indifferent to so many things, whereas Mel has curiosity about everything. Although, this morning Pepper did investigate the coin wrapping situation, too.. by plopping herself right down where I was counting my coin piles.

One behavior problem Hermes has is that he wants to scratch the carpeting on the stairs.

He's got another one - he's scared of the dark. He's been going crazy almost all night. I finally turned on the upstairs hall light and he settled down.

It might just be because he's in a strange place and he won't do that after a few days, but if these problems don't correct themselves by the end of his trial period, he might just have to go back.

It seems like they are being friendlier with each other. It's like one of those '80's cartoon truces where the enemies realize they have to work together to defeat a more dangerous foe.

They've become Honen and Nucleo.

Hermes is looking at me from the steps. He is cute. I think we're gonna have to take him to the vet, though, because he keeps blinking and squinting his left eye, and I think it might have a film on it.

According to what I was told at the shelter, we have one free vet visit, so I'll set that up today. I kept telling them that it looked like something was wrong with his eye, but they kept saying they didn't notice anything unusual.

During the day, Hermes doesn't seem like a bad cat at all. He rubbed his head on the computer and the CD tray popped open. Then he rubbed his head on the tray. He also likes to scratch the sisal rope, and so far he's the only one of our cats that does.

He does act like he wants something from the kitchen a lot, but if I ignore him long enough, he'll go and eat some of the dry cat food from Mel and Pep's bowl instead.

We just have to iron out that problem of rampaging through the house at night if it persists. If all he needs is a night light, I could switch the hallway bulb with a fluorescent bulb.

He's being so good, that I'm almost wondering if I could trust him alone with the other cats long enough to go pick up some plastic storage totes from OfficeMax. I need at least two so that I can put away these DVDs that we got from Circuit City.