The cat adventure begins.

Since we moved into our new house, both of us have been looking forward to adding a cat to our household. We had been visiting a lot of animal shelters and making preparations in the house during the last month, and finally on Tuesday we were able to bring home our new cat. We adopted him from the animal shelter in Ghent. Unfortunately, he had an infection and had to stay at the shelter for a few weeks to recover, but that gave us enough time to make sure we were ready to bring him home. It seems like it was worth the wait because he is proving to be a very sweet cat. I decided to introduce him on OppositeOcean because I’m sure he will be a source of inspiration in future funny animal-related blog posts.

He is already beginning to show us his personality and seems to be an intelligent and very curious little guy. It took him a couple of hours to feel comfortable in his new home and to become used to the two new humans in his life, but he is apparently now much braver and has taken to exploring all the nooks and crannies of the kitchen. I’ve learned that I must close the cabinet doors very quickly or else he will dart inside the cabinet and I will spend the next five minutes trying to coax him out of his new undiscovered territory. He watches very curiously with every movement that I make and seems to be trying to determine the most effective ways to get affection. He also did some problem solving and managed to feed himself breakfast this morning by way of claw upon cat food bag. Apparently cat food from the bag tastes much better than cat food from the cat food dish.

He greets me with a little meow when he sees me and can’t seem to be petted enough. He’s claimed the corner in the kitchen as his current favorite spot and also enjoys supervising the birds in the yard from the kitchen window ledge. This is the first cat that I’ve had the privilege of caring for as my own. I’m musing that maybe he knows that since he continues to wag his tail in dog-like fashion as soon as he sees me. His constant purring gives me the assurance that he’s decided these two new humans are all right. We still haven’t chosen his name, but surely a fitting name will become apparent as we continue to get to know his clever little personality.