Welcome Home, Maia

I found a 2012 post where I wrote about our cats: http://paulstroble.blogspot.com/2012/08/welcome-home-saki.html We had just adopted our little guy Saki, a Lynx point Siamese whom at that point we were introducing to our home.

Mauhaus photos from Facebook

It took our previous cat, our tortoise shell Taz, several months to stop being grouchy about Saki. She protested the presence of the interloper by hanging around in the kitchen---asserting a high place in the house, I suppose. But the two of them became buddies after a while and have been for these years since.

On our journey of being crazy cat people, we adopted a third cat last week!

There's a back story. During the past year, when daughter Emily was studying in Japan, she liked to visit the cat cafe, Neko no Mise, in Machida. (http://animalcafes.com/v/25515.html) Cat cafes, already popular in Asia, are coffee houses with cats who you can pet.

Meanwhile, a cat cafe opened in the Maplewood community of St. Louis, not too far from our house. Here is their website: http://mauhauscafe.com Unlike the Japanese place, all the cats (except two, who live there permanently) are available for adoption. When Emily returned to the states, Mauhaus (which my damn auto-correct keeps wanting to spell Bauhaus, LOL) has become a favorite place to get coffee and enjoy the fifteen or so kitties.

Emily fell in love with a new arrival, a year old seal point Siamese. Her foster mother named her Pleiades. We adopted her and brought her to her new home last week. We renamed her Maia, which was the oldest of the Pleiades sisters of mythology, and the name sounds vaguely Asian, too.

Acclimating her to the other two cats has been wonderfully easy. After a week spent in the (finished) basement, she has been spending quality time exploring the house, although we still have her in the basement at night.

As I wrote five years ago: A new pet isn’t as drastically life-changing as a baby. (Emily's birthday is coming up!) But they do introduce additional responsibilities into your day. If you’re a “pet person,” though, your very well being depends upon a little four-legged critter who is your special friend, a refuge and companion amid your tasks and challenges. A new pet is the beginning of a new period of your life, and the anticipation of many family stories and adventures.