Editor’s Note: Last week I left you with Jazmine hypnotizing the boys of the household by her youth and beauty and the girls (sans Harley) seething with jealousy. She still had not left the safe confines of her room and was with us for 6 days at this point. We had been leaving her door open more frequently, hoping to get her comfortable with the possibility of venturing down the hallway, and then eventually out to the rest of the house in the next week or so. In today’s episode of Jazmine’s saga, we pick up where we left off… with the sighting of an unidentified orange blur…

What the heck is that orange blur in the kitchen?

Preparing dinner in our kitchen for our multi-cat household is a nightly ritual of organized chaos to say the very least. We have a varied regiment of dietary needs to cater to for our seven adult cats and now we have the addition of a kitten that also has special eating needs. Until the food dishes hit the floor, all of us are intently focused on what we are doing. Dan and I with making sure each cat gets what they are supposed to eat in each of their bowls and the cats with their important roles of jumping on and off the counter, meowing, and winding in and out of our legs to remind us to hurry up, lest they might perish from starvation within the next minute or two…

That is why on night 6 of Miss Jazmine’s stay with us, it came as quite the unexpected shock to suddenly find we had a furry orange visitor smack dab in the middle of it all! My plan for this particular night was to help ease her out of the room – I came in to say hello to her after I got home from work and I purposely left her door open while I went to help Dan get dinner ready for the gang. I knew the other cats would be distracted in the kitchen and I hoped that Jazmine might feel comfortable enough to cross the imaginary line she had drawn in the doorway and venture into the hallway.

I was then going to bring her dinner to her and feed it to her in the hallway. I planned on using this technique every night until she finally felt comfortable enough to eat with the others – with the girls already making it known that they were not thrilled having Jazmine around, it could be a long and grueling ordeal…

Whoosh!! Like a scene out of a cartoon, the minute the food dishes hit the floor, four orange paw pads came out of nowhere and skidded across the kitchen floor, surprising everyone! Jazmine looked as bewildered as everyone else did to her sudden change in scenery and found herself surrounded by 14 startled eyes! She looked at her predicament, let out an “Oh no, what did I do?” hiss and just as quickly hightailed herself back to her bedroom so that it almost seemed as if it never happened! But one thing was clear, Jazmine had crossed her imaginary line and there was no going back now!

Nobody saw me, right?

The dinner crashing was so brief and other than being initially startled, the other cats barely reacted and went back to eating. I brought Jazmine her dinner and she calmly ate it in the hallway. After that, she went back into her room, but it was clear everything had changed. The deal was sealed – we were officially a household of eight cats again. I closed her door for one last time that night with her alone in the room – I wasn’t completely comfortable with letting her wander the house unsupervised and knew I would be home with her for the rest of the weekend to keep an eye on her.

When I opened the door the next morning I was greeted by a very happy and cheerful kitten – she explored the house with relaxed wonderment, her buddy Kizmet by her side, and she had no fear or apprehension of her new surroundings whatsoever. Our Miss Jazmine was one confident young kitty who could hold her own and when Dan and I went to prepare dinner that night, she was right there with everyone else. Did it go smoothly? No, not really. Jazmine is a kitten and a hungry and excitable one at that! Being that this was a new experience for her, Dan and I were not quite prepared for her overly excited exuberance and we had not quite perfected how and when each food dish would be put on the floor. As a result, we had a casualty – my 5:00 pm drink on the counter ended up getting knocked over by Jazmine and so we had to clean up a sticky mess amidst the throngs of hungry cats waiting for dinner!

Jazmine begins to explore the rest of the house and is completely at home… Here she is surveying the land from the couch!

And here she is like royalty as she poses on the coffee table! Must be a Maine Coon thing… Zee perfected that pose years ago!

One look at that cute little face as she stretches out on the counter… How could I possibly accuse her of knocking over a drink?

Needless to say, dinner the next night was handled differently and looking back over these past 3 weeks, it’s like our Jazmine has been part of the family forever. The girls have decided she isn’t so bad after all…not that they adore her like the boys do, but they have accepted that she is part of the family and pretty much just leave her be.

In a nutshell, she is an absolute joy, a happy ray of sunshine, and has brought back some much needed youth and energy into our household. There has been barely a ripple of fur flying disruption in our lives and it seems she truly was custom made for our house and hearts…so, there you go –  I have brought you up to speed and moving forward I can now concentrate on telling you stories about what it is like living with this darling girl in the present tense!

Happy Caturday to you all and see you next week!

Jazmine watches Rolz and Kizmet play together and wants to join in!

Yup! There she goes – all of them one big, happy blur of fun! Thanks to Jazmine the house is filled with the joy, happiness, and playfulness that a kitten brings!