My (now ex-)husband and I got Kaia from the Humane Society when she was a tiny kitten, back in about 1992. Her cage was labeled with the reason that she’d been brought to the pound: “too aggressive; doesn’t get along with family dog.” Naturally, we wondered what sort of candy-ass wussy dog these people had that was intimidated by this tea-cup sized kitten. She truly was very small, and really did fit in a coffee mug.
So we brought her home and introduced her to the other four cats we had at the time. First we introduced her to Sidel, the mellowest, sweetest cat in the house. Sidel was shy, Kaia was indifferent, and it went well. Next we brought in Milo, who was our crankiest cat. She took one look at Kaia and was instantly in a huff. She started hissing and growling. We worried that tiny Kaia would get scared—maybe even be scarred for life—but we needn’t have feared. No, on the contrary, she marched right up to Milo and smacked her right on the nose. Milo was completely taken aback and from that moment on, Kaia was the top of the household pecking order. She also started to follow around our cat Random, who had her same coloring, but was a huge cat. She clearly wanted to learn from the biggest and the best!
When Kaia was younger, she was very, very feisty. She played aggressively and hard. She is also a very smart cat. She had a favorite toy, which we called “Ball” which was a rubber ball with mylar streamers. She would work herself so hard chasing that thing that she could barely walk and she would pant for the next half hour, if we let her. Usually we would put Ball away before she got that worn out though. We had to put Ball away, because if she found it she would have eaten it. We also had to keep moving the hiding place, because she would eventually find it. She learned how to open a kitchen drawer to get it out, for example.
When you got Ball out, she knew. I don’t know if she could hear it, or smell it, or what, but if you put it in your pocket or under your shirt, and came into the room, she would run over to you, meowing and meowing and sniffing you all over looking for Ball.
When you put Ball away, she would follow you around a bit, complaining, and then she would go into wherever you had been, and meow and meow looking for it. For a good 20 minutes.
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— 10:07:14 PM
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