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Although, one thing that's great about having three cats is when all three are upstairs, and occasionally one comes downstairs - it's like the upstairs of the house is a giant Kitty Dispenser.

I'm gonna have to take him back. He's rampaging all around the upstairs again at 4 in the morning. It scared Pepper and she snarled at him. Mel is too scared to go upstairs.

He's just not a good fit. I like him, but someone else will have to adopt him.

I'll talk to them about that vet visit, though. I still want his eyes taken care of.

Pepper's fine. She's sleeping on the bottom step of the lookout (she loves that blanket).

But Mel came face-to-face with Hermes again this morning and put her ears way back down and low, and hissed three times. She was not this bad after this long with Pepper, and never did I see her put her ears down. She is much more afraid of him. I'll stress that it wasn't his fault when I call the shelter today, but he just can't stay here.

I think the main reason he rampages at night is because every time he tries to play during the day, Mel intimidates him into submission. But when he realizes Mel is asleep at night, it's like, Hooray!! I can finally run around!! Unfortunately, he ends up waking up Mel and Pepper and scaring the crap out of them, so the snarling begins.

I'm gonna go buy him a catnip banana to take to the shelter. This time I'll ask the volunteers to try to make sure he doesn't lose it. It's bigger and easier to notice than the little catnip pillow I gave him that he lost. Maybe I'll write his name on it in non-toxic marker. That way if it gets out of his cage, they'll know who to return it to.

I'll buy him a bag of Temptations, too.

Might be splurging, but maybe I'll buy him a catbed, too. It would be nicer than sleeping on a rag, which is what he had before. I'll also write his name on it.

I've also noticed something very peculiar. Every night this week when I've been woken up by him, I can hear an alarm clock going off in a neighboring apartment, followed by sounds of water running. Someone must work a late shift job, and I'm wondering now if that's what's getting him excited at night. Maybe his previous owners used an alarm clock that sounded similar, he hears that, and he thinks it's time to wake up and start playing.

He's playing in the cubes downstairs and Mel is watching. I wish that I could just make Mel understand that she can play with him, too.

Mel came out from under the futon just a few moments later and continued playing. Pepper got annoyed with us and left the room (and actually hissed at Mel on the way out, for no real reason).

I read a few things online about adjusting cats to each other:

EVERY site suggests doing what we tried with Pepper - leaving the new cat locked in a room by itself, so that the other cats will get used to its scent, and only introduce them to each other slowly. This advice is only good for people who live in a house and don't have to worry that the locked-up cat's howling and scratching at the door won't disturb the neighbors. Some sites suggest it can take cats several weeks (even over a month in some cases) to get used to each other. Maybe Mel acclimated more quickly to Pepper because Pepper was so inert and is smaller than Mel.

So, on to Plan B:

1. First of all, the cubes are going away for awhile. Whenever the cubes are around, not only do they take up playroom space, but they encourage the cats to get inside and hide from the other cat, rather than being out where they can see each other.

2. Play for at least a half an hour, several times a day, with Mel and Hermes in the same room together. Either with the laser pointer, or a streamer toy. Occasionally, throw out food treats to reward them. (Many sites suggest doing things like this - play with the cats and feed them treats in close proximity to each other, so they learn to associate being near each other with good things happening.)

3. Play with Hermes alone at night to wear him out. Lock Mel out of the room so she can't intimidate him into quitting. (He runs around when she's out of the room, but stops as soon as she enters.) And I do mean, wear him out, so that he'll (hopefully) sleep through the night. I want to see him down on the floor, panting the way Mel does after she's had a good run chasing the laser pointer or the feather toy.

4. Hope tomorrow's vet visit doesn't yield a chronic problem.

5. Hope he's not conditioned to the neighbor's alarm clock.

In retrospect, Grady probably would have been the better choice (maybe Nelson, too, but Nelson is on medicine, so I declined him because I'm incompetent with that stuff and want to avoid it when possible), but there were two things that made me choose Hermes over Grady... The first is that Grady is skinny (probably from all the running around he does) and I was worried that Mel might be too rough with him. Hermes was bigger, though he turned out to be bigger than I thought he was. I knew he was bigger than Mel, but I didn't realize by how much until I brought him home. Mel looks huge to me, but all I had to compare her to is Pepper, who is unusually small for a full-grown cat. Hindsight is 20/20, but Mel probably really wouldn't have been too much for Grady to handle.

The second reason was an "Underdog Complex" with myself. Grady is always running around, and is playful and friendly, so I thought he wouldn't have much trouble getting adopted. He didn't even seem to mind the screaming kids and was actively playing with them, so he'd be a good choice for a family with kids. But Hermes was an underdog because he's nippy and I thought would have a lesser chance.

Another thing is that I may have been wrong about a male being a better choice than a female. I read one site that said female cats tend to gather and socialize with each other in a colony, and males only gather and socialize with other males. The thing is, though, it always does seem to me like the females tend to be the most bitchy. Emma and Winifred at the shelter are like that (Winifred doesn't like other cats near her, Emma doesn't like anything near her), and Minnie is the most vocal of the cats at Crawl's mother's place, hissing at everyone but Boo. DJ didn't seem to mind Pepper the day we took Pepper there.

But according to Crawl's mother, DJ and Itty Bitty do play together (and I've seen them touch noses and sleep on the bed together), so there may yet be hope...

I played with them until about noon when they got so worn out that they wouldn't play anymore. They're only just now waking up. Hermes has gone upstairs and I can hear him running around. I'm going to let him play by himself for a little while and I'll go up in a few minutes (or if Caramel goes up there first, so I know he'll stop playing when he sees her.)

Another thing I do during the play sessions is spray some of the toys and furniture around the room with catnip to get them into a playful mood and mellow them out. Thankfully, all of our cats have the catnip gene.

Pepper played with the chirping bird toy for a few minutes earlier, attacking it really aggressively, and then conked out. She just prefers to play alone.