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From commentor FoxinSocks:
When last we spoke, I was struggling to find a home for Cornelia, Julius, and Portia, and keep them together as a family. Now, they’ve got excellent new names – Persimmon, Huckleberry, and Peaseblossom – and a wonderful new owner. That’s right, frequent BJ lurker and infrequent poster Klokanek has adopted them and has been spoiling them rotten ever since (as they should be!).
I understand Persimmon, ever the elegant cat, likes to spend her days lounging on the sofa in the living room or sitting atop the bar, overseeing the grading of papers. Huckleberry, meanwhile, is forever in want of a lap and Peaseblossom, who bonded to her new owner almost instantly, keeps herself busy by attacking the feet monsters that lurk under the covers at night.
All of this is on top of a busy regimen of wrestling, snuggling, and napping together, so I think it’s safe to say these are some very happy, and lucky, kitties!Thanks so much to you and the Balloon Juice community for all your help and support. You guys are amazing.
Alison
Yay for happy kitties and forever homes!
JPL
How sweet says I while wiping away a tear.
Bobby D
Awesome sauce!
khead
Love stories like this one.
Elizabelle
So glad to hear a good outcome.
Confused as to which cat is now which, but as long as new owner K has them straight …
Violet
Yay! Love a good outcome for everyone. I love that photo of the kitty with his mouth open. Hilarious.
geg6
I love this blog. Anne, you and Cole have major good karma for all the rescued pets this blog has managed to find forever homes for.
Meanwhile, in a Koda update, she’s fallen madly in love with her new Kong. When Otis bit through his tongue and bled all over the house, she was so concerned about him. She kept coming over to him and bumping his nose with hers. So cute! She’s grown about three inches longer and I have no idea how much she weighs, but it’s quite a bit more than the 48 lbs. she was when we got her. She’s the strongest little thing, too. Nothing but pure muscle, that girl is.
gbear
I wish I could change my name every time I find a new partner…
Soonergrunt
I love these posts.
JWL
September 14, 2027
Reuters
Tallahassee, Florida
The chewed-upon corpse of animal rights activist Anne Laurie was discovered today after neighbors contacted authorities to complain of alleged “uppity attitudes” of the woman’s numerous cats towards humans during the three weeks after she was last seen in public…
JoyfulA
I look on with great delight and melancholy, as I struggle to get strong and ambulatory enough to house some felines of my own. Keep those gorgeous cat pictures coming!
PurpleGirl
This is such a nice story, especially being able to keep the family together.
The pictures are great. I like the multi-level cat tree.
TaMara (BHF)
Yay for everyone! It’s so nice to come here and know there are others who love animals as I do. Anne Laurie, Mel (FoxinSox?) and Klokanek, you did good. Are those halos and wings I see?
Mnemosyne
Feet monsters are very dangerous. Charlotte is very vigilant about keeping them under control at night.
Semi-random question (and hoping WereBear is lurking about) — does anyone have a safe alternative toy for those little paper bags full of silicone beads that come inside purses when you buy them? Charlotte is obsessed with them and I’m constantly having to take them away after she digs them out of the garbage can (I swear she can smell them), so I’m hoping there’s some kind of homemade alternative I can offer her. It needs to be a small package about 1 inch by 1 inch that’s filled with some kind of non-toxic beans or dried peas that rattle loudly when shaken by a fierce kitteh.
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
I can’t edit my comment, but these are the little packages she garbage-dives to get:
http://i01.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/404/431/431/431431404_829.jpg
YellowJournalism
“Happy Cat Rescue Update” sounds like a cartoon superhero show. Not a bad thing.
Patricia Kayden
Awwwwesome and YAY!!
Ash Can
Hooray! Thanks to all involved for the update!
RepubAnon
It is simply not possible to spoil a cat – one can only strive to treat them almost well enough.
(Feline Overlord’s advice to stupid primate minion late with the food.)
Or as the comic strip “Get Fuzzy” observed: “Cats don’t know how good they have it… and yet, it still isn’t quite good enough.”
CaseyL
I am so incredibly happy to hear these guys have a new home! Cat families are rare, and it broke my heart to think they’d be split up. Huge thanks to Klokanek!
Johannes
I love a happy ending! You rock, Anne Laurie, as does Klokanek!
kc
Wonderful!
rikyrah
love reading happy endings
sacrablue
So glad this terrific trio is happily enjoying their new home. They all look so content. Thank you Klokanek and thank you Anne Laurie for all you do.
MomSense
Yay–I love these happy kitty pictures!! And a bonus Koda update! Wonderful!
FoxinSocks
@Elizabelle:
For those playing at home…
Cornelia=Persimmon (because of her orange color)
Julius=Huckleberry (he’s the lapcat with a lot to say)
Portia=Peaseblossom (she’s the fluffy brown and orange girl, named after one of the fairies in a Midsummer’s Night Dream, and the little girl has a charmed quality, so it’s very fitting)
:-)
Kristine
Love reading happy news.
Lymie
@FoxinSocks:
WHy do people rename animals who have perfectly respectable names? I am stuck with a lovely Cocker with the stupid name of DOC, because I wanted to be as familiar as possible, and he is going deaf. He clearly knows his name. Poor boy, should have been called Pudge. (Sorry, fat dog and Red Sox joke, the house dog was named Jason for Jason Variteck, the RS catcher when he was born, and I just kept the Jason. Pudge was Carelton Fisk, another RS pitcher of yore.)
Do you not think they recognize the names, were the animals that young?
So great to rescue them, just wondering how people think about pet names.
satby
Happy to hear they all found a home together; I have to say I wasn’t optimistic about that. And for those who remeber Freckles, the poor tortured dog Noah’s Ark rescued; I got an email that he’s out of ICU!
gogol's wife
@Lymie:
It’s probably more of an issue with dogs than with cats.
Yay for the cats!
Anne Laurie
@Lymie:
Of course animals recognize their names, but the exact shape of the name means more to us verbal primates than it does to most cats or dogs, so they’ll cut us the slack, usually. We renamed our current dog rescues– Zevon (formerly Pepi) is a wild guy but far too self-possessed for his old moniker; Sydney (ex Sebastian) is a nerdly bundle of nerves; and the Spousal Unit just didn’t like Gloria’s name. (Heck, I don’t think Gloria liked her old name; after a week or so, she refused to respond it.)
And sometimes renaming is just the Right Thing to Do. We inherited a nine-year-old chunk of a grey-and-white cat with self-esteem issues, and I renamed him Gunther, because he’d been christened Heineken by a couple college kids… even the low cat on every totem pole deserves better than being called “Heinie” all the time!
Jebediah
@geg6:
So happy to hear that Koda is settling in so well, and such great news about the kittehs. And, as Satby mentioned, encouraging news about Freckles too! It’s making for a pretty chipper evening for me.
As for renaming critters – it looks like Chuckie will be coming home with us in a few weeks. Chuckie is a girl, but “Chuckie” has been her name for all of her ~6 years, so Chuckie she shall remain. (I was told she was named by a three-year-old.)
ETA: So chipper I am off to the kitchen to see if there are any celebratory substances in there to be ingested…
Scamp Dog
Sometimes name changes just happen. When I got my Border Collie through an informal rescue, her name was Bixby. I told my mom about the new dog’s name, and she replied “that’s too hard to say, I’m going to call her Biscuit.” I immediately thought “that’s a great name for a dog!” And she’s been Biscuit ever since. I’ve had her for almost eight years now.
Linkmeister
When we rescued our pooch in February she had the name Abby, but nobody could tell us why. It may be that she was an owner surrender and that’s what the previous owner named her.
We kept it, mostly because she was shy and skittish already, so we thought we wouldn’t burden her with a new name too.
Arachnae
on changing pet names – I adopted an adorable big-eared tabby that the rescue people had named Pumpkin Kitty. No, he wasn’t orange, he was grey. And really? PUMPKIN KITTY? He was Nathan for the next eighteen years, when I wasn’t calling him Baby (because he was a baby when I got him). He was fine with it.
klokanek
Thanks, everyone!
As to renaming, I decided to do so because the cats are so young (mom and dad are 1.5 years, and daughter 9 months) and FoxinSocks had already renamed them. I expect I’ll have all three at least 15 years. Huckleberry comes running when I call him, but I think he hears, “laa-aap!”
They are such great, great, great cats, and I feel so blessed to have them.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Lymie: Depends on the furbaby. Punkie was 6 or so when we adopted her, that had been her name since kittenhood, and Punkin just fit her: round and orange. Duchess and Pixel both kept their foster names, Duchess because she’s a laydeeee and Pixel because it was cool and he already answered to it.
Miles and Max, OTOH, were Valentine and Ruby at their foster home, being difficult to sex at that age and all. I proposed Valentine and Anastasius, which was promptly shot down. When young Val proved to be an escape artist over his first couple of days with us, he became Miles Vorwiggles. Ruby didn’t like Mark* as a name, but perked right up to Max.
*Miles-the-book-character’s brother
hedgehog the occasional commenter
Yay for the kittehs! And Koda. And Freckles (I got the email too).
When we got our two black kittehs (brothers), the shelter told us that everyone else who had come in wanted only one of the kittehs and not the other. We said “of course we’ll take both!” The shorthair was named Sugar Baby (we renamed him Midnight) and we renamed the longhair Shadow (I don’t remember what his original name was). They were four months old so I don’t think changing their names affected them much :)
FoxinSocks
Yes, jumping in to add that they only had their ‘Roman’ names for about 5 months and that their original names were…um, not very good, in my opinion. Especially since Persimmon was originally thought to be a boy and hence was ‘Sammy.’
I guess that could apply to a girl, but she’s such an elegant cat, it didn’t fit.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: I know I came late, but rattle-y toys are sold for cats with such obsessions, our own Olwyn is like that.
Yay for keeping these three together; cats can get very attached to each other!
WereBear
And silica gel is not toxic: it’s a choking hazard.
http://www.ncpoisoncenter.org/body.cfm?id=113
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
The mouse or ball shape doesn’t seem to do much for her — it’s the flat paper package that she adores, and there doesn’t seem to be anything that resembles it available in toy form. :-(
tinare
Yay!
I had to rename my dog. The shelter had named him “Mud.”
JCR
@tinare: I had to rename mine as well. He’s a beautiful, elegant golden dog with caramel-colored eyes. The shelter called him “Hank.” Most inelegant name ever. But he learned his new name within a week or two, and responds to it even when I just say it in passing in conversation.