Meet Rory

I can’t believe I let this slip by! I had posted it on Facebook and Flickr, but hadn’t written about it here. We have a new kitten!

A week and a half ago I was on my way into my office when I heard this tiny voice meowing. I looked, and one of the tiniest kittens I’d seen was curled up in the corner just outside of my window. I got a box and retrieved the little beast, which immediately curled up in my hands and started purring.

We’ve had other kittens dropped off at our office. There have been two other such incidents, and each of these had been adopted by my coworkers. This time it didn’t look like anyone was interested in giving this little guy a home. I snapped this photo of the cat in his box, and sent to Laura, just to show her what I’d found.

I had the kitten and his box in my office. He quickly escaped, so I picked him up. He stayed on my shoulder for awhile until I figured out what to do.

The problem is that we have folks allergic to cats in our office. I couldn’t just leave him there, and he was already out of his box. Fortunately, Lori Cooper came to my rescue with a much larger box, and an office that could be closed off so that he didn’t escape. Right after that I got a message from Laura asking if I was bringing the kitten home. I guess he’d found a home, after all. During lunch I brought the kitten home so he could get settled in.

Coming up with a name was easy for this one. One of Laura’s colleagues saw the original photo, and said that his black markings looked like an ink blot test. So, we named him Rorschach, or just Rory, for short. It doesn’t hurt that one of Laura’s favorite characters on Doctor Who right now is also named Rory.

When we first got him Rory was tiny and hungry. He was also injured. Somehow he had hurt his mouth badly so that his lip was separated from the gum line. It didn’t seem to hurt him much, and it didn’t cause problems for his eating or drinking. It just looked weird.

Over the past week and half Rory has settled in. His lip still looks weird, but he has teeth growing in and he’s eating and getting bigger. He bounces everywhere and attacks anything that moves, as kittens do. He has also setting in with our other three cats. He first took to Misty as a mama cat, and snuggles up with her regularly.

Cosmo was first afraid of the kitten, then thought it was something to pounce on and attack. Finally he got to the stage where he plays gently with Rory. We still supervise his play because he has a tendency to get too rowdy. However, which Rory gets big enough I think they are going to be fast friends.

As for IC, our Intruder Cat, he still hasn’t taken to the kitten, or any of our other cats, for that matter. I’m hoping that will change once we get both IC and Rory into the vet for shots and fixing.