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I think Hermes is going back on Saturday unless there's 100% improvement today and tomorrow.

It's not his fault. Crawl and I had a new idea to keep Pepper from howling upstairs at night and Hermes from racing around up there - we closed the two bedroom doors, and decided we'd do that every night to encourage them to stay downstairs. Of course, not long after I do that and go to bed, Pepper works her way back upstairs, sees the doors are closed, and does the most logical thing - starts howling again. I ran up, grabbed her, and took her back downstairs and put her into bed.

This morning, at some point, she left the bed and went upstairs AGAIN. This time Mel went up there, too, and so did Hermes and he cornered them. He wasn't hurting them, he just wanted to be with them. But they're still scared of him so they all started fighting (it was mostly Pepper who was growling and snarling, and Mel was hissing... I don't think Hermes made any noise at all this time.) I feel really bad for him. He likes it here, but Mel and Pep don't want him here. I've been woken up three times tonight and have gotten hardly any sleep (and I was dead on my feet to begin with), and unfortunately, it's more Pepper than him, but I can't get rid of her.

Maybe there's a glimmer of hope if they stop being scared of him between today and tomorrow. (And if Pepper learns to keep her ass downstairs at night.)

This is the area in which Mel is the most well-behaved cat - she usually sleeps through the night and is the only one who has since Day 1. Sometimes, Mel isn't quite ready for bed when we are, or wakes up early, but she finds ways of entertaining herself that don't involve making unruly amounts of neighbor and FO-waking noise. (Usually, she'll find and play with one of her plastic balls.)

Well, I'll try to hold onto him for a few more days. I can tell you don't want me to get rid of him just yet. But remember a few things...

1. We weren't the ones who caused him to end up in a shelter to begin with.

2. The shelter won't put him to sleep.

3. All of our interacting with him has gotten him used to people enough that maybe I can convince them to let him out of the cage more often, so he would at least have some freedom. (Actually, the day I went there and the screaming kids were there, one of the volunteers told me that they did previously have him out in the playroom, so they already were letting him out without me there.)

4. I'll get him to the vet either way to get his eye problem checked, so we will have done him some good.

5. Now that he's more used to people, he might have an even stronger chance of being adopted by someone else. And he's a pretty cat, so that will go in his favor, too. (I hate to say this, but I've gotta wonder if the reason such a friendly and playful cat like Grady has not been adopted yet is because he's not very attractive, as far as cats go.)

One problem with them not getting along is what happens when we go on vacation or when we need maintenance to come in here? (They usually come in once a year to service the air conditioner.)

If we go on vacation, we'll either need to leave a spare key with one of your family members to check in on them (which would be the best solution), or take the cats to stay with them. If they aren't getting along well enough, that could be a problem, and we'd probably have to kennel him instead.

When maintenance comes in, I don't know what I could do, except kennel him for a day. I could probably drop off Mel and Pep with your mother or sister for a few hours, but he might be a problem if they haven't accepted him into their "colony".

No sooner did you walk out the door this morning and I heard Pepper growling at Hermes upstairs.

There's a man riding some kind of leaf-blowing vehicle outside, and the noise has scared Mel so badly, she's hiding underneath the bed - something she's never done before. The other two cats are fine.

Yes, this area does have kenneling options. The only problems are that you have to make reservations in advance and also that it would probably be very costly to kennel all three, so we'd probably need to rely on your immediate family for some help with at least Pepper, if not Mel, too.

If we had to kennel Hermes for maintenance purposes, you'll have to excuse me if I make up some bullshit story about leaving town for the day rather than say, "My apartment isn't clear on whether or not we can have cats, so we need to dump him off here until they fix the air conditioner."

Guess what? The Temp Agency just called. I still got the job, but now I don't start until Wednesday instead of Monday.

Unless a serious problem develops before then, I'll extend Hermes's trial period to Monday.

If I still don't feel it's working out by then, he'll go back on Monday instead of Saturday. (Unless Condition #5 happens, then he'll go back after the vet visit.)

But I need sleep. And what if all the screaming they do at each other causes a neighbor to file a noise complaint? Are you willing to move for him?

Pepper just did the caterwauling thing upstairs again. Since she was up there alone, I didn't go to check on her. I'm trying not to reward the behavior if I can ignore it. She eventually came downstairs and ate some food before going to sleep again.

Boy, I'm in a bind on the workplace thing. I just got a call from another staffing agency that wants me to interview with a medical office. This job would be permanent and could pay me as much as I was getting at the glass company. I'd hate to call and cancel on the other job, but that one pays less and may not be permanent. I just hope that if I get this one, they won't be too pissed at me.

Caramel seemed like she wants to play with another cat. She tries to play with Pepper constantly, but Pepper doesn't like it. I thought I'd get her a playmate - a cat that would actually like to play with her - to take pressure off of Pepper. Hermes was playful at the shelter. He played with feather toys, balls, and toy mice. He tried to play with Winifred (another cat there), but she didn't want him to play with her. She hissed, so he backed off. I liked him because he's longhair and polydactyl like Caramel is, and I thought a male cat would be a better choice than another female since there wouldn't be any of that "alpha female" rivalry like there is between Mel and Pepper. I think the unforeseen result, however, is that they're more scared of a male cat than they may have been of a female.

And he is playful at home, but what good is it when Mel is too scared of him to play with him?

That day I was trying to catch that stray in the thicket, I was thinking that she seemed playful, and might make a good playmate for Mel even then. But I couldn't catch her (and for all I know, she belonged to someone and just went home), and I looked every day in that thicket for days to see if she had come back or if another stray had shown up. And then I thought... this is crazy. There's a whole shelter full of kitties right around the corner. Just go adopt one.

But things don't always go as you plan them, and then you have to make the right decisions, even if they're difficult.

But you knew there would be difficulties. There were difficulties with adopting Pepper.

But we saw day-to-day improvement in Mel during that time. I'm not seeing much (if any) improvement now. Even though she still purrs, and does goofy things like "steal the chair" and plays with her plastic balls, her behavior is still not completely normal. I haven't seen her rocket up and down the stairs and run right up the side of her tower like she usually does since I brought him home.

And even before we got Hermes, we were still having trouble with Mel's behavior with Pepper.

Well, this idea was supposed to help with that. I thought if Mel and Hermes would play together, they wouldn't bother Pepper. If you watch the playful cats at the shelter, you'll notice cats like Grady and Nelson play with each other, but they don't bother with Emma and Winifred. (Maybe I should have adopted Grady...but she'd probably be scared of him, too.)

And even you said that it was really Pepper's crying that was waking you up at night.

But I think the reason she's crying so much is because she's stressed out, and she's stressed because she doesn't like him. The third time, he followed Mel and Pep upstairs and unintentionally cornered them because I had closed the bedroom doors. That's what caused Pepper to freak out and start screaming.

In fact, it seems like there were more difficulties with Pepper than there have been with Hermes.

The biggest problem is that I didn't anticipate Pepper being scared of Hermes, because she's usually indifferent to other cats. Part of my motivation for taking her to your mother's house was to see how she'd handle being around 4 (well, 3, since Boo hides) unfamiliar cats, and she passed that test with flying colors. But she was only there a few hours and she might, for whatever reason, be more scared of Hermes than she was of DJ, Minnie, or Itty Bitty.