Last summer, I decided to give our daughter a kitten for her birthday. Both our dog and our cat were getting older and I thought it would be fun to have a young and lively kitten around for some entertainment. I found a kitten at the local animal shelter that I fell in love with and decided to adopt (another tabby). We named her Nina.
Nina is full of energy, playful, and loving.
She’s also a little weird. I had never seen a cat pant before Nina. She chases our Golden Retriever around relentlessly until she has to stop to take a break…and then she pants. Strange cat.
She also follows our other cat around and he does his best to ignore her.
At the animal shelter, they asked me if we had any other cats when I was filling out the paperwork to adopt Nina. I told them about our other cat, Tiger , who will be 10 years old this August. He was born to a stray cat at the farm the summer we purchased the property and is the only survivor from the litter. They warned me that “geriatric” cats sometimes have trouble adjusting to kittens and gave me some literature on helping him with the transition.
Geriatric? Did they really call Tiger a “geriatric” cat? How can he fall into this category already? It seems like just yesterday that he was a kitten.
I choose to describe Tiger much differently. Mature. Wise. Clever.
Above all else, he is a loving cat who knows who he can rely on to sneak him into the warm house in the winter.
So, despite what others might say, Tiger is no “geriatric” cat in our book.
Just Two Farm Kids 