Hello from CatByTheSea! Long post, has pictures.

Hello, TCS! I stumbled across this community in the course of my internet research about cats this year. I've always been more comfortable with animals than with people, and I've always thought cats were wonderful, beautiful creatures. When I was a child, I spent time with my dog and horses, but not cats, and I treated the cats I met correspondingly - like the animals I was familiar with. The cats did not approve! 
Oh, good, I think that worked. Here's another of her face. 


Dandy was my first rescue - she was a tiny puppy in a box, and I was five years old. My parents weren't thrilled, but they wanted me to be happy. They were relieved when my mutt puppy stopped growing at 20 pounds. She's the best dog ever, and she instantly allied me with all forgotten and unwanted companion animals. Thanks to this tough little dog, I will likely always be involved in animal rescue in one way or another, even if it's simply by adopting someone who needs me. 

Dandy will likely be leaving us by the end of the summer. If she is a lucky little girl, her new medicine will allow her to make it to 17 years on September 15th. Cancer is a sneaking thing that creeps up, and it has crept up on Dandy. But she is still her happy, bouncy self, so I will continue giving her all the loving I can until it's time to let her rest. 

But this is a cat forum, so let me tell you about the cats now. 

Warbear is bold and curious, and quite the hunter. She likes to catch flies, and she loves to go outside on her Kitty Holster harness. (Which, by the way, I strongly recommend!) Here she is strolling this past spring with Mr. CatByTheSea. 


We decided that it was unfair to have only one cat, but two laps. Also, Warbear is such a lively little lady that it seemed unfair to her not to have a full-time play buddy for her. So we adopted Brenna from the same shelter in May. Brenna is great! But Warbear doesn't think so. We introduced them slowly, and did every thing "right," but Warbear just gets upset whenever there's another cat in her line of sight. Then she tries to hunt Brenna, and will not stop this behavior. (Brenna doesn't enjoy it.) Clearly, we weren't doing what Warbear needed, as she seems very insecure whenever she's not sequestered in her room. What to do, what to do? While reading on TCS, I saw someone's posted door design for a see-through door. Bingo! We are building Warbear a beautiful folding door. This will allow her access to three rooms upstairs, and she will be able to see the other cats if she so chooses, or hide from them. Eventually, perhaps she will realize that they are nice and fun rather than scary and nasty. I can't for the life of me remember who posted the door design, because I was so instantly excited by the idea that I jumped up and told my fiancee about it. Oops. Thank you, whoever you are! I will have to post pictures when we are finished building it.

Brenna is beautiful in a different way than Warbear. Brenna's fur is four inches long in places, and she's stockily built rather than long. Her feet are gorgeous snowshoes, but she doesn't have extra toes. It took me days to figure out that she's not polydactyl when we brought her home, because her feet are so furry. In the end, I had to count her claws.  Here she is:


Brenna is the sort of cat who takes time to process new things. She'll run away from new people and new noises, but we see her watching from a safe place right away. If the new item/person doesn't exhibit any scary attributes, she comes back confident and curious - in a few days. That's ok, I do the same thing. 

These photos are recent; she's grooming herself again, and it turns out her fur is spectacularly soft. I love her chestnut nose. No one else wants her because she is blind and a little wobbly when she walks... but she is so loving, and she deserves a home. She's only 8... in rescue terms, ancient, but in household cat terms, not so old at all! 

So those are my creatures. I'm joining this forum because I see so many members who are knowledgeable and caring. I see healthy disagreements and discussions with multiple perspectives, yet unethical things like declawing are treated like the unfortunate and inappropriate choices they are. This seems like a really good community, and I'd like to take part! I hope to get to know you better, TCS. 

Welcome to TCS . Your dog and cats are adorable. I enjoyed reading about them all. I have a "venus fly trap" tabby here too .

Hi, welcome to TCS!  Your crew is beautiful.  And I also enjoyed reading your rescue stories.  Bless you and Mr. CatByTheSea for helping these angels.  

Dandy didn't quite make it to being 17 years old. Her cancer had suddenly progressed in the last couple of days, and yesterday afternoon she closed her eyes for the long sleep. She was 16 years, 11 months. She went easily and peacefully at the vets' office, knowing that she has been loved all her days. Goodbye, dear elderly puppy. I miss you, and Brenna keeps looking for your bed, which is now missing. 

Updating here, since this thread is so recent. I may post something in the Rainbow Bridge forum later if I'm up to it. 

Your animals are beautiful! And I am so sorry to hear about your loss. Dandy was a beautiful dog and obviously well loved. I know it is so hard to lose a pet. 

Cindy

Hello,

I'm so sorry to hear about your dog. My sister lost her Golden Retriever to cancer earlier this year and she is still heart broken. It's such a shame when these things happen.

Your cats are beautiful. I've found introductions can be difficult, even if you do go really slowly. I have ten cats altogether, who get on pretty well most of the time. One of the cats that I've had for two years now still insists on having her own room so she can escape from the others. She's such a diva!   I hope Warbear likes her folding door when it's finished.

Good on you for adopting those sweet cats, Peanut and Brenna are lucky to have found you. 

I'm back to report on the status of the Warbear Door! It took a little longer than anticipated to get it all ready to go, but life has a way of getting interesting just when you wanted to do something. Anyway, this is what it looks like:


So it's a three panel door, and when it's folded up it actually folds flat to the wall on the left side. Here's a picture of it partially folded to give you an idea:


We did have a slight sizing error on the smallest panel. The CatByTheSea house is more than one hundred years old, and this doorway was oddly shaped to begin with. That makes it more difficult for amateur carpenters to figure out the proper measurements! However, it turns out that that is a good thing, because of the latch. Now we can just reach over the top of that panel to reach the latch from the other side. We expect to be adding a board to close most of the gap, but leave enough room for a hand to reach over and get the latch. Thankfully the cats don't seem to be climbing the door to get out of that one little space (yet). 



The dowels are far enough apart that paws can reach through, but close enough together that none of our adult cats can squash their heads through. (We measured Warbear's head, just to make sure!) I have to scurry now, but later I'll post about how the cats are responding. Basically, it's great! But I have pictures and more to say. 

Also, thank you MargeCat, Skitty, and Norachan for your kind words about Dandy. I miss her very much, and it is difficult getting used to life without her. But I've been working on filling the house with lots of life, and it helps make things easier. 

That is amazing! I love it. It gives me an idea about baby gates as we have to keep a a couple of baby gates up to keep the dogs out of the kids rooms because Moses will pee on things. :/ bless his heart, he is seven and fixed and never learned to potty train. Typical chihuahua. Anyway, the cats need to be able to get in and out of their rooms so we use a baby gate. Wouldn't it be a cool idea to make a folding type gate that latches! Not that we don't have a billion other things to accomplish but it sure is a neat idea. Thanks for posting the pics. I'm impressed.

I'm glad this has sparked an idea for you! It did take us a while to make it... all those dowels had to be cut and have holes drilled for them, and that took a while! But there are probably less labor intensive methods depending on what you need/want the barrier to look like. I actually enjoyed staining and varnishing it, which is something I'd never done before. 

And as for the cats... here's Warbear investigating the door for the first time. This is minutes after we had it all set up and let her out. 



She had a little time before the other cats figured out what was going on to look it over. But then Brenna appeared.


Oh, no! What should she do? Hide and hiss, of course. 



Meanwhile, Brenna crept closer. 


I expected a lot of noise. I expected a lot of hissing and growling and potentially yowling, and I expected Warbear to generally be rather berserk for a little while. She was so upset before when we were attempting to integrate them. But, while she does hiss and fuss often, it has not been very noisy. I think Warbear realizes that the other cats can't get to her. She still insists that they don't belong here, but she seems less upset about it. It's only been a few days, but she's acting more secure and calmer than she was when isolated completely from the others. She has discovered the peep hole where she can see downstairs, and she likes to sit there and growl at Brenna while Brenna is eating. Brenna's response to this? "Meh, you're always growling. Whatever, kitten." Brenna no longer seems interested in staring through the door. Instead she ignores Warbear. This is great! 

So, we're really happy with this situation. We can live with this for a long time, so if it still takes Warbear months or more to get accustomed to other cats that's ok. She has enough room to run around now, which is necessary at her age. (11 months.) She can fuss, she can complain, she can go hide under three different beds, but she can't hurt the other cats and they can ignore her as they please. I think everyone is happier!

Also, we are really proud of that door. We worked hard on it, and it was about at the edge of our current woodworking abilities. 

This is what Warbear spends a lot of time doing now:

Wonderful stories and terrific pictures. Looking forward to your next installment.

It is sad to lose a beloved pet. My condolences for sweet Dandy. It is clear that she had a good life as a much loved dog.

I am glad you found a way to incorporate the kitties. Maybe Warbear will change her mind one day.

Wow, that's some really impressive carpentry skills. It's nice that Warbear can now see the other cats without them invading her territory. I hope she'll realise they're no threat to her eventually.

She's a really pretty girl, isn't she? She has such lovely eyes. 

Warbear is  a beautiful girl! Yes, she's growing up to be gorgeous, long and lean. And the fierce gaze of a predator!  

She's developing a new behavior we think is promising. She'll prowl as far away from her door as she can get, then crouch down and watch Brenna for a couple of minutes.  (Brenna will just sit on the other side of the door and watch all of this without moving.) Then, Warbear starts getting excited, and she'll start wiggling and tensing until, BOOM! she charges right up to the door, growling and hissing, and BAP BAP BAP with her paw on the door right in front of Brenna's face.  Brenna seems to find this amusing, because she sits just out of reach. Warbear has been doing this a bunch today, and then she'll go and play with her toys for a while. So I think she may be incorporating Brenna into her playing time, because she can see Brenna and can't ignore her. We're hoping that eventually the aggressive hissing and growling will become playful. 

Warbear is certainly acting more comfortable in general. She seems to like having access to more windows and beds. She's also a lot less annoying to us, because she actually has other things she can do besides jump on us over and over while we are doing computer things. We had hoped that Brenna could be a playmate for her, but getting Brenna had the opposite of the intended effect. The door is really great. Now she can do all sorts of things and then come and tell us about it, instead of doing all the things TO us. 

I have good news from the CatByTheSea household! Warbear and Brenna, former enemies, are now.... play buddies! It's taken a while, but Warbear got more and more playful and less and less aggressive. Eventually, when we heard rattling and crashing noises at the site of the door, there were no hisses and growls. Then, we brought home this 12 year old dog (rescued from a kill shelter) to foster:


This is Alice. She's around 70 lbs, should be more like 55-60 lbs, but regardless she's a lot bigger than a cat. She's very nice to the cats, but Warbear was frightened of her the first couple of weeks. It's like Warbear had an epiphany after those two weeks: "Alice is big and scary, but Brenna is like me."  And from that moment on, Warbear and Brenna tried to tear down the door to get to each other at all hours of the day and night. So we opened the door, and left it open. 

They've been playing almost nonstop since then. They chase each other, wrestle each other, swat each other, ambush each other. And it's so cute! Sometimes it sounds like they're bouncing down the stairs and we wonder just what's going on. It's a wonder they haven't broken anything yet. We're delighted! This is what we were hoping for in the beginning, a play buddy for Warbear and a lap buddy for me. It's splendid. Alice doesn't get to play with them yet, because they are still nervous around her. I don't want somebody to get hurt because one party didn't realize it was just play.  But the way she's interacting with them, she's so gentle. I think she'll get to play with them eventually. She actually does play a little with our blind cat, Wren (previously named Peanut). Wren actually purrs when Alice snuffles her all over, as I discovered trying to "save" Wren from the big scary dog. She was already purring when I picked her up! She didn't mind the cold wet dog nose at all.  

I haven't gotten pictures of the cats playing yet, but as soon as I do I'll put some here. 

It's pretty soon after Dandy's death to get another dog, but Alice needed a family after getting dumped at a shelter for who-knows-how-long, then getting a terrible blood infection and being scheduled for the gas chamber (this was in North Carolina). We spotted her online and I couldn't leave an older dog like her without a family or home, it hurt too much once I knew she was coming to a rescue organization nearby. She's a total sweetie and we're keeping her as a life-long foster, however long that will be at her age. I'm so glad she's good with the cats! I think they will start to like her once they realize she's like Dandy, only big. Both Brenna and Warbear liked Dandy a lot. 

Aww, thanks for the update. I love happy endings, so it's great to hear that Warbear and Brenna are play buddies now. The slow introduction and awesome screen door worked. And what a wonderful thing you're doing for both Wren and Alice. I know nobody will replace Dandy in your heart, but I am sure she's happy that you found others to rescue and love. What caring people you and MrCatByTheSea are.