But to those of you who might consider yourselves fellow catgeeks out there, I pose the following: how many cats is "a lot"? I will offer my take on this below, but would be interested in others' thoughts.
Seeing as I finally managed to trap and adopt Shadow (shown above, brother and littermate to supertabbies Coraline and Brodie) on Monday, October 26, I now live with three fabulous felines.
And come the end of December, I'll be adopting one of my parents' cats as they (my parents) are moving out of state and this particular cat (a seven-year-old Siamese lady named Nikki) doesn't get along with their dog as it is (she's generally been fine with other cats, though).
Which will bring me to a grand total of four cats.
Upon hearing this news, a friend told me I was "heading into crazy cat lady territory". He may have been joking around somewhat, but that got me wondering...is four cats really a lot?
To me, that doesn't seem like that huge of an amount. Granted, most people I know who live with cats have two or maybe three, but I've certainly known people with more than four who seemed to be able to keep up with them all. It seems to be a pretty individual thing.
Essentially, the way I see it, whether or not you have "too many" cats is based less on numbers than on whether you have the resources (food, shelter, space, sanitation, means to provide healthcare) to care for them. For some people, one cat would be too many.
Moreover, it also depends on the cats' personalities and predilections. I know several people who have one cat and one cat only, not because they can't accommodate another from a resource standpoint, but because the resident feline is extremely territorial and won't permit other cats on the premises.
The house my partner and I just moved into is a 3-bedroom, 1-bath single-family detached residence, approximately 1016 square feet (not counting the attached/finished garage). I am still shocked beyond all get-out we were able to find anything remotely like this that was actually affordable to non-millionares like us in this area but I guess we just got lucky. And so far things seem to be going really well since the kittens joined us.
We're currently still restricting feline access to just the three bedrooms, the bathroom, and the adjoining hallway. The living room/kitchen areas still have minor remodeling projects going on, and I definitely don't think kittens mix well with either paint or power tools. Even so, we've yet to have any issues with untoward bodily functions or wanton acts of destruction beyond the occasional shredded kleenex under the bed.
I've got a good litterbox-cleaning routine established -- basically I scoop the poop (1) every morning before I shower, (2) in the afternoon when I get home from work, and (3) right before bed, so the activity is "rolled into" other maintenance-routine stuff I'm doing at those times anyway. And since I never let the boxes get really gross, the scooping itself takes a mere few minutes each time.
Of course, being youngsters, the kitties do get rather rambunctious during their high-energy periods of the day (which, thankfully, no longer seems to include "3 AM"). But the situation nonetheless doesn't feel overcrowded. Coraline has been a bit hissy and growly at Shadow since his arrival (especially if he dares go near her favorite spots on the bed!), but she seems to be settling down about his presence now and I even caught all three of them snuggling together under the bed last night (though, somewhat amusingly, as soon as Cora saw me, she looked over at Shadow and growled lightly).
And that's with the cats having access privileges to only about half the house. I am looking forward to letting them have free run of the place as I expect they'll enjoy birdwatching out the large picture windows on the front and side of the house, and I figure they'll each have plenty of room to stake out territories as they see fit. When Nikki arrives there will almost certainly be some more interesting territory stuff to work out, but I'm optimistic. I think having four cats is going to be awesome fun!
But I also think that four is just about the right amount for me (given my resources, available space, executive functioning, other commitments, and finances), and I don't plan on going over that. Any other cats who cross my path (so to speak) will be trapped, neutered, and returned to their outdoor homes if they're feral, or recommended to others who might be seeking to adopt if they're tame.
And on that note, I was reading about animal hoarders recently, and I think that sometimes when people end up in those situations, it's due to not properly distinguishing intentions from consequences.
Yes, there are probably some out there who think cats are like Pokemon ("I only need one more ginger tabby to complete the set!") but my guess would be that it's usually more of a "rescuing the cat means personally tending to the cat myself in my own home, so I'll just take this one home, even though I already have ten cats, because I can't trust anyone else to properly care for this one" thing.
And then some break in logic occurs where the person might assume that since they meant to give the cats a better life, the cats living with them must have better lives, even if in actuality they're all living in unhygenic and disease-promoting squalor.
To me, the potential for that kind of thing to happen seems like a really good reason not to overfocus on how well-intentioned you are. I've seen this happen in a lot of situations, not just with cats -- e.g., I've been in situations where someone has decided they're going to "help" me, and then get really weird and nasty if I say the help isn't helping.
It gets very tautological at that point -- "But how can you not think you're being helped? I'm trying to help you! I'm a good, nice person! Therefore, anything I do must be helping, even if you say it isn't, and even if some things seem worse!" It's like the person either
(a) blames the "help-ee" for being defective or defiant if their methods don't "work", or
(b) somehow blocks out the reality of what the situation actually looks like as a result of their "help", figuring that there's no way such good intentions can lead to anything actually bad, so what is happening must really be good, regardless of what it looks like to the "naysayers".
But I digress. Like most other people, I have a lot of good intentions, including the intention of helping cats when and where I can. But I do not have it in my head that every neglected/abandoned/homeless cat in the world needs to live with me. The consequences of holding to such a conviction would be lots of suffering and death, which are the exact things I want to help the cats avoid.
Coraline, Brodie, Shadow, and Nikki will be quite enough feline family for my home, and I'm setting a hard limit there at four as far as how many kitties I will actually live with at any given time. And of course they're all going to be spayed, neutered, vaccinated, etc.
Granted, they will also be the sort of cats who are allowed to sleep on the bed, who get "novelty boxes" set out for them in the morning (lately I've been taking empty tissue boxes and putting toys or old socks or catnip in them for the kitties to discover), and who will get to drink out of the bathroom sink if they so request it...and if that makes me some sort of cat-weirdo, so be it!
17 comments:
For what it's worth, I don't think four cats is "a lot", considering you're able to take care of them properly; that's the really important thing. I've also gotten the "crazy cat lady" thing on occasion. :)
The most I've had at any one time was four, plus a litter of surprise kittens until they were adopted. Right now, we have three cats who get along pretty well (they are also related, which seems to help)--and a coddled, poorly socialized older dog we adopted about six months ago. In his case "good with cats" apparently meant "he doesn't try to eat them, but they make him very nervous indeed". I probably should have asked for more clarification on that one. :-| They spend most of the time in separate parts of the house, except for desensitization sessions. He's made a lot of progress, and hopefully they'll be interacting well enough for everyone to roam freely at the same time by the time we move!
But I do not have it in my head that every neglected/abandoned/homeless cat in the world needs to live with me.
*nod* It's sometimes depressing, but one person can't take them all in. And I do need to remind myself of this sometimes.
Good points on the consequences vs. intentions thing, and on the "someone has decided they're going to 'help' me, and then get really weird and nasty if I say the help isn't helping" scenarios. I have also ended up on the "helped" end of that sort of thing more than once.
urocyon: I have been reading/enjoying your blog for a while, cool to see you over here!
That is good the dog is getting more comfortable -- definitely good to take it slowly when it comes to that sort of thing. And also good to know the cats are getting along -- my three present ones are siblings/littermates so with any luck they'll grow up to be friends or at least tolerant of one another (and of Nikki when she gets here -- I am thinking she will be fine, she's pretty laid-back now despite having been a very skittish kitten).
I agree that it's depressing one can't rescue all the animals who need help! But at the same time, I figure that what little any of us can do within our means is probably, well, the best we can do, and really all we should do. Otherwise we're just going to make things worse, not better.
Oh, and regarding the "helping that doesn't actually help" thing, I've noticed that when I've been thinking about cat-related stuff lately my brain is drawing a lot of parallels between that and disability-related stuff. Of course I'm not saying that "cats are just like disabled humans" or that "disabled humans are just like cats", or that humans and cats should always be treated the exact same way, etc., but there are definitely areas where the whole power-imbalance thing seems similar. And where it seems like people have a tendency to sort of use disabled humans and cats (and dogs, and other companion animals for that matter) as "symbols of how much they care", even when their acts of supposed caring are doing more harm than good.
This is not to say that everyone who thinks they really care doesn't or that ALL actions meant to help are bad, or that consequences and intentions are never aligned. Of course they are sometimes. But the way they get aligned isn't ONLY through looking at what one's intentions are, usually it takes a lot of hard thinking and analysis and willingness to back up and admit one is wrong when necessary.
Also, there's the fact that I've always been able to identify with cats in a lot of ways (I've noted a number of other autistic spectrum people who also do, though it is by no means a universal, nor would I claim such a thing, nor would I claim this observation to be anything more than anecdotal). When I went through a "school and personality evaluation" at the age of four (during my stint in special ed preschool) one of the comments the examiner made was that "[Anne] is not a child to fit comfortably into someone else's agenda", and that I seemed to "want to do what I wanted to do" (which doesn't sound THAT unusual for any four-year-old, but I guess in my case it was to an extreme degree, or one that was perceived that way at least by my teachers).
And I remember being totally baffled by hearing someone, a few years ago, say that they thought a particular cat "hated" them. The reason for this was because the cat in question didn't want to sit and be held and petted just then. The cat wanted to do what she wanted to do!
That sort of thing reminded me a lot of how, at times I've felt like I was actually being very social just by sitting there and watching and listening to people as I did something like examine objects in the room -- only to get comments later on how "rude" I was being. It took me years -- until adulthood actually -- to learn that most people did not consider this kind of thing to be "social", and that they wanted a LOT of really direct interaction, whenever they were around other people.
Whereas I like some direct interaction these days but honestly if I am sitting in the computer room at home, and my partner is there as well playing a game or something on his computer, and the cats are all in there playing on the floor with toys, *that* feels pretty social to me!
And it's a nice kind of social, like people all choosing to be together and yet also respectful of each other's space and agenda. The best kinds of interactions are, in my mind, the ones that are mutually chosen, and when the individuals in question *each* come together on their own terms!
FWIW we have three dogs and two cats in our house, people usually think it's a lot but not too much. OTOH if we had five dogs or five cats they would think too much.
Well, I'm biased (we have 5 cats), but, no, I don't think 4 cats is "a lot."
Three of our cats get along really well. One (the smallest) wants to be Super Boss Cat and is *really* annoyed that she's not. (Her archnemesis is the Benevolent Dictator for Life Cat, who still lived in the kitten room at the shelter even though she was a year old, because she was so good with kittens. She and the Wannabe Super Boss Cat get in fights sometimes). The last one is the oldest, and is not amused by all the younger ones' nonsense.
Four sounds good to me.
I've read that Ray Kurzweil collects figurines of cats. I don't know if he hoards live cats, however.
As for cats sociality towards humans, recently I visited a pet adoption place in the local mall, which keeps the available cats in a room with a couch and some chairs. After sitting on the couch, a cat I had never seen before jumped into my lap and acted like it already knew me and liked me a lot. I would almost entertain the notion that my last cat had reincarnated in this one and expected me to take him home.
I think you're being very reasonable - it indeed depends on the amount of space and resources for care you have that determines how many cats are too many. I have lived in a slightly smaller space than yours for over 25 years and, all this time, have had 3 cats (I'm on my 2nd cat family now, my 1st having lived 18 years each of the 3). I think "crazy cat lady" starts when one keeps accumulating animals without being able to care for, feed, have space for, etc. the cats - in fact, that is inhumane. I can't imagine life without my cats. In my space and with my financial resources, the most I would take in would be 1 more - never mind that I wish I had a fortune and could found a no-kill shelter.
Daniel Yokomizo: Interesting, I'd never really thought about that before but it does seem like people are more likely to consider it "too much" if you have X+Y cats or dogs, versus X cats and Y dogs. Not sure why that is, probably some weird cognitive bias thing.
But I would think, realistically, that it would depend again on the person's available resources how many of which animals constituted "too much", not to mention on the size/type of the animals.
My great-grandmother had something like six Toy Fox Terriers at one point plus one chihuahua, and that never seemed like a massive amount even when they were all inside, probably because they were too little to really jump up and knock me over, etc.
But when my family had only one collie, THAT seemed like "a lot of dog" to me, as she was pretty large and very rambunctious. We ended up having to give her away to someone who had a much bigger yard, so she could run off all that energy.
Contrasted with cats, though, it has always seemed to me like cats are lower maintenance overall than dogs, even when you've got a "needy" cat (like Timothy, the Siamese I had growing up -- he could not STAND to be alone). But for some people maybe it's different, and somehow it actually IS easier to have "some of each".
Tera: Ha, my smallest (Coraline) wants to be Super Boss Cat too, and so far she remains unchallenged.
She was pretty hissy/growly with Shadow when he first arrived, but a week later, she will now tolerate his presence on the bed or in one of the cozy-boxes (basically boxes lined with blankets/pillows, I have one in the bedroom and one in the computer room).
I think she's "put him in his place", though, because of the way they act when playing -- I've gotten all three of them up on the bed chasing a toy mouse on a string, and if the toy is near Cora, Shadow will politely wait until she's done with it before going after it. Whereas if it's near Brodie (who he has a lot more of a congenial relationship with), he will happily jump on and tumble all over Brodie, and Brodie will do likewise. It's really funny and interesting to watch!
And, hee, five cats doesn't even sound like a whole lot to me. But four is still my limit, at least for the time being.
Mark Plus: I think Ray Kurzweil is pretty wealthy, so he could probably actually afford to have a decent sized cat-sanctuary if he wanted to, and if it were properly staffed/cleaned/maintained, that wouldn't be a hoarding situation. Hoarding isn't just numbers, but living conditions -- in other words, Malthusian Kitty Nightmare.
And regarding the cat that jumped in your lap: that is sweet! Did you end up taking him home? I don't personally believe in reincarnation and I doubt you do either, but I do know how powerfully cats long gone can be missed. I still miss Tim every day, and half-expect to hear him yowling at me when I'm in the shower.
(And, along the lines of cats and entertaining-ideas-of-reincarnation, if you want some fun fantasy to read that involves cats, I highly recommend The Book of Night with Moon and To Visit the Queen, both by Diane Duane (who also, incidentally, wrote a number of Star Trek novels). They're about cat-wizards who help slow down entropy in the universe by working with "hyperstrings" and such. It's far more fantasy than science but very cool. And one of the things they do in these books is take the "cats have 9 lives" concept literally. :)
Joan L.: Yeah, I've heard "crazy cat lady" used to mean someone who inhumanely hoards animals, which is definitely a bad connotation, but I've also heard it used (and this is how my friend was using it, I think) to simply refer to someone who is batty about cats and who dotes on theirs, something that's possible even with only a few kitties.
In any case, though, I am so glad to finally live somewhere I can have cats! I was a catless cat-person for six years and it felt very wrong, and now it feels like things have been set right. :) It also makes the house feel so much more *homey* with cats in it, and I am glad someone's around to make use of it when I'm at work!
I think you know what you are doing and won't be one of those crazy cat ladies. LOL. I have seen some of those homes on Animal Planet and it gets out of control with cats breeding and no one taking care of them. You certainly take care of your cats.
They sure are beautiful.
Marla: Eek, no, my cats will definitely not be breeding out of control! I am going to get them neutered/spayed ASAP, probably soon after they get their rabies vaccines, which will likely be early-mid December. They will only be about 4 months old then but I want to get the snip over with as early as I can, as I've read that kittens tend to recover faster from the surgery than grownup cats (and it's really safe now as they've worked out anaesthesia for smaller kitties; there's really no good reason to wait until 4-6 months).
What really weirds me out is some of the stuff I've read about people adopting cats and assuming that they can avoid breeding by getting cats who are related. Cat culture doesn't exactly have the same taboos as human culture, though...
The Donovans are up to 10 kitties, three dogs, a half-dozen horses, some Angora goats, etc. etc.
They also have the best Gun Pr0n on the net.
See: http://www.thedonovan.com
Finally, a productive advocacy group, NOEWAIT.
I recommend everyone go visit the site, print out the documents and mail them to your congress people. I am definitely doing this. Today. I'm on the waiting list.
Do something productive.
Anne:
I wish I could adopt another cat as a companion for both me and Hypatia. But my combined employment/living situation might change in the next few months so that I'd have to move into another place that doesn't accept cats. Nothing definite yet.
I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
And you et an account on Twitter?
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