Tomorrow Rudy goes to his new home. To the left is form the first night we saw him, September 13th. It took another month before we got him and his brothers inside, and another month to groom him into respectability. I am sad to see him go, and I wonder, having never had an orange tabby before, are they known for being especially friendly/playful?
He still has some feral characteristics, like not liking being picked up, and scattering at top speed if he think he's been caught doing something wrong (like sleeping in the bathroom sink). But otherwise he's been a great little cat, though maybe not so little anymore.
He is basically 3x the size he was in the top photo. All the older kittens have grown amazingly, which is fascinating, although I fear it will make the last of the brothers a tougher sell. But you can look at them and tell they've still got plenty of room to grow, they have that puppy look, their paws are too big and they have this general appearance of transition. I suspect he's gonna be enormous by the time he's done.
When he's gone we'll have his brother and three smaller kittens. The remaining brother, Baby Bones (at right, we're considering renaming "Newman" since he's a little like the Seinfeld guy) will be on his own, I'm not sure how he'll cope with it. He's been the hardest case so far, keeping his distance from us and not getting into the whole 'house cat' concept. But he's making progress: he finally learned how to take cat treats from my hand, and he now allows limited petting when he's on the bed. I think when he's without his brothers (Ira went home last weekend), he'll have no choice but to come around. He better!
