Life with a cat so far

It’s been over 3 months now since we rehomed our little baby Annabelle and wanted to give a bit of an update.

We rehomed Annabelle after finding her on Gumtree. She’s a 5-year-old cat and due to the family moving back to Poland and having a 3-year-old and newborn baby, they decided it would be better to find a new family for her.

When we went and picked her up, we did get the impression she was well loved and looked after which is nice! We did pay a bit more than what she would be ‘worth’ considering her age, but the owners did that to try and weed out any of those nasty humans out there that would just use them as bait, which REALLY distresses me to no end.

Our beautiful little cat settled in with us in no time. She was shy the first night and mostly hid. She cried when we went to bed and shut our bedroom door, so since then we leave the doors open for her. After a few days, she got braver and braver. She even started coming down the stairs to meow at us when we got home!

It didn’t take long until she was sleeping in our bed during the night, at first she slept at the bottom but now she sleeps on our chest, legs, side or back. She sometimes puts a paw in our face at 5 am when she decides she wants us to get up, but mostly sleeps or purs loudly and stares at us. It’s very cute.

She will not sleep in a cat bed. The vet says she probably has a better offer.

She has recently started to sit on our legs on the sofa, but only if we have our legs up.

Her favourite toy is feathers and a bell on a stick that she likes to chase. She doesn’t really care about other toys, apart from a foil ball and laser pen. When she wants to play, she goes and sits by her stick. She will do a little bum wriggle and pounce at it. It’s super cute.

She is not fussy with cat food or litter and will eat whatever we give her. She loves treats and knows the sound the ‘treat draw’ makes’. You can’t open it without her coming running downstairs.

She is very tolerant, she doesn’t bite or scratch and lets us pick her up. If she wants to get down, she does wriggle a bit and has caused accidental scratches, but that’s because she is trying to get down, not to hurt us.

She had never been to the vet before we so we got her injections done and arranged for her to get neutered. The vet said she was in amazing condition and looked like a 1-year-old cat because of how small she is and how healthy he teeth looked.

Getting her neutered was the most distressing time of my life. I cried when we left her there. I was so happy when they called to say she was done and everything was fine and she was waking up. When we went and collected her, everyone in the vets had apparently fallen in love with her. Obviously. She is the most beautiful cat in the world!

She seemed okay when she got home but by the evening she was slow, quiet and skill. She slept under the radiator that night instead of on our bed. We left her there as we didn’t want to hurt her by picking her up, we put her blanket down for her and eventually moved her water and food up there. The next day she was the same and wouldn’t eat, which meant I couldn’t’ get her to take her painkiller. Thankfully the next to days I managed to hide it in some meat so she ate it. It was probably a week before she was back to running up and down the stairs like her normal self. I hope she never has to have another operation again because it was heartbreaking!

It’s only been 3 months but it feels like we’ve had our little Babybel all our life! Can’t imagine life without her now. She is silly, playful and very loving. She is my favourite person in the whole world. My boyfriend is even more obsessed with her than I am and plays with her for hours!