We have a new cat!
The boychik really wanted a black cat, and since I’ve kinda wanted another cat too, for Chanukah, we went to the shelter and adopted Selina Kyle Maccaby, Nina for short (or Ninotchka, for very short, and also because I love Greta Garbo, but not her name enough to call a cat Greta). The shelter originally tagged her Bridget, but I don’t particularly like that name, and it didn’t fit her very well, so we changed it right away.
She is “about 4,” and if she’d been called Bridget her whole life, we would have kept it, but she was a stray taken off the street, and the people in the shelter had given her “Bridget.” She already responds to Nina.
Apologies that the photos are not better-- she is camera shy-- in fact, the one in the cat tree, I think she is actually saying “Get that thing out of my face!” The brown patch on her side in one pic is where she was shaved for her spay.
I wanted to post, though, because she is really small, and I wanted to ask-- Has anyone ever seen an adult cat this small that was healthy?
She seems very healthy-- plenty of energy, good appetite, alert, affectionate. She is definitely not a kitten, though. She is young-- they aged her about 4 at the shelter, and her teeth are pearly-white, like they are new, but they are all adult teeth. She came through her spay very easily, never seemed to be in pain at all, which is more like a very young cat, but still not necessarily one that is not full grown. While she has lots of energy, she does not play like a kitten-- she’s not crazy, attacking everything that moves, and some things that don’t, and doesn’t get wound up from being pet.
However, she is the size of a most cats I’ve had when they were about 6 - 8 months old-- maybe even younger for the boy cats when were fixed very young.
When we first looked at her, she was skinny too, very skinny, and the shelter had her on appetite stimulants. her waist below her ribs was sunken in, and her hip bones stuck out-- you could feel every rib. We took a chance on her, though, because her exam was good, she was extremely friendly and affectionate, and she had been on the streets during a recent bitter cold snap, so we thought she might have stayed sheltered instead of looking for food.
There’s one other thing, though-- she has a very loud voice, and is VERY talkative. The only cats I’ve had like this before have been Siamese, or half Siamese. So I’m wondering if she is part some related breed, since some of those breeds are very thin, and small.
So, has anybody ever had experience with Oriental Shorthairs, Burmneses, or other non-Siamese Oriental breeds? Are they as vocal as Siameses? I knew someone with a Himalayan, and it was loud, and someone with a reaaaallly thin Oriental Shorthair, and that’s about it for my experience.
I’m wondering if that could explain her being small, but healthy.
Once we got her home, she started inhaling food. She gets canned food twice a day, in small servings, with some CatSip mixed in; she finishes that each in one sitting. She has free access to a bowl of regular food, which has to be topped off a couple of times a day, and twice a day she gets a tablespoon of dry kitten food, and that is like crack to her.
She weighed about 5.5lbs on arrival-- I don’t know how much she weighs now, because she’s too small for my people scale, and too big for my food scale, but her hips no longer stick out, so I feel safe guessing she’s up to 6lbs, and that she’s could top out at 6.5 - 7lbs. Everything I’ve read says that 6lbs is about the lowest healthy weight for an adult cat-- that smaller cats probably have a growth deficiency that can lead to other problems.
Any thoughts and opinions, especially from anyone with experience with a small cat, or small breed, is appreciated.
She has a vet appointment that is a courtesy follow up from her spay, but not until the 20, because they didn’t have anything free until then. I’ll get a good weight on her then, but up until, it’s just guessing.
Oh-- good litterbox action, if you take my meaning.
