From Alone to Home: Olive and Nori's Stories

Pets' names: Olive and Nori
Adopted by: Jennifer and Evan
From: Pennsylvania SPCA and Morris Animal Refuge, Philadelphia, Pa.

Jennifer (who blogs at Grey Garden and others) sent the stories of her two cats, who were adopted separately but are now friends.

After my first cat, Frances, died unexpectedly, my fiancé and I hemmed and hawed over whether or not to adopt another cat. Losing Frances was really difficult; for a long time after I was convinced that the joys of pet ownership were not worth the heartbreak of eventually losing your pet.

When we were finally ready, we started visiting local animal shelters. We found Olive at the Philadelphia SPCA when she was only two months old. The shelter employees had separated her, her brother (a tuxedo), and sister (a tortoiseshell) from their mother only moments before and had placed each in adjacent cages. Both the mother and kittens were in an obvious state of distress. Olive caught my eye because she was climbing the metal wire door of her cage; I appreciated her feistiness. A shelter employee told us that because of her calico coloring, she would likely behave crazily. They weren't too far off.

To be honest, the first few months of Olive's life were rough. Due to an infected spay wound (and continued botched attempts by the shelter to fix the wound), she spent the first two or three months with us in an opaque Elizabeth collar which inhibited her peripheral vision and scooped litter and food everywhere. Her unfortunate condition did not dampen her spirits though; she continued to play as hard as any healthy little kitten would. And, I'm not gonna lie, the lampshade look was pretty adorable.

Olive and the cone of shame

We entertained the notion of adopting a second cat, but we never seriously considered it until we saw Nori's sweet and confused-looking face on Petfinder. The shelter listed her age as one year old—roughly the same age as Olive at the time. When we visited Nori (then named Kiwi), the shelter employees had placed a big "adoption pending" sign on her cage. Although we were discouraged, the shelter encouraged us to submit an adoption request form anyway because "maybe the pending adoption would fall through." We were pretty surprised when we got a call a few days later from the shelter asking if we were still interested in adopting. We later learned that there had never been a pending adoption; the shelter has placed the sign on Nori's cage because there had been too many questionable people interested in adopting her.

We’ll never know Olive or Nori's history and how they ended up at animal shelters, so we like to make up stories for them. Since Olive was adopted at such a young age and was fairly healthy when we got her, we assume that she likely did not spend very much time on the streets (or in a foster home). Nori, on the other hand, is likely a Persian or Himalayan mix of some sort, and was already one year old when we adopted her, so we joke that she ran away from the cat show circuit that her previous owners had unwillingly forced upon her.