new kitties!

A friend of ours, Joseph (who rents our condo), just became a truck driver and as he was only going to be in town three or four days a month he was going to send his cats to a shelter. While we weren't going to get another cat (or cats) for a while yet, at the same time I knew if they ended up at the shelter that their chance of being adopted probably wasn't too great, so I told him we'd take them in.

Last Wednesday I made the kitty transport and both of the new cats are still wigged out by their new surroundings. The grey cat is especially shy / scared and tries to find the tiniest corners or hiding places and even when we've blocked them off, she's mangaged to find new ways to hide herself or get past our barriers. We put both of them in one of our small rooms so that they wouldn't be overwhelmed by the whole house (and so the grey cat wouldn't have countless hiding places). After a couple of days we brought out the mostly white cat and she hung out in our bedroom, but when Alucard (our black cat) goes over to check her out, she just hides under our bed and stays there until we close the door and she's sure that Alucard isn't around (and Alucard isn't even being as agressive or bossy as I thought he'd be - he's just being curious).

Tomorrow morning we're taking both new cats in to the vet to make sure they're okay before introducing them fully to Alucard, but my hope is that they're okay after which I plan to put all three cats in one room so that they can attempt to deal with each other before opening the door to the room where both new cats are presently and opening the whole house to them. I realize that they won't all get along overnight and that the grey cat will especially try to find hiding places all over the house, but we suspect that it'll take a long time for both cats to feel really comfortable around us, Alucard, and the house. We think this is due to neglect largely from Joseph, not that he didn't care about them, just that he wasn't around much and when he was he didn't try to get them out into the open more and interact with them.
We re-named the cats because the names Joseph gave them were truthfully kinda lame - Katie and Kittie, not to mention that they sounded a lot like each other so even if one was to call one and they responded, they'd have a hard time differentiating between which cat was being called. As most people know, cats don't really respond to names like dogs, so since we were the cats new caretakers, they get new names and if they don't like them they can just try to escape (ha-ha). I named the grey cat Moto, I don't know why, it was just the first name that popped into my head as I was trying to "talk" to her. Kate named the mostly white cat Pixy, again not for any real reason based on characteristics, just that she liked the sound of that name (I do too). Pixy will come up to us if she knows Alucard isn't around and even Moto (the grey cat) will come up to us to be petted once we get her out of wherever she's hiding so I like to think we can all be one big happy family at some point!