Now You See Him

By Gordon Hopkins I couldn't just leave Harper locked up in the basement all day. I had no idea how long he would be staying with me. It could take days, even weeks, to find his owners. What if I never did? Then I'd have to find him a new home (I absolutely was not keeping him). It would be cruel to just leave him locked up in the basement all alone for days and weeks.The problem was, I knew how my other cats would react to an incursion by some unwanted invader. I'd seen it firsthand when my sister's dog, Elizabeth, came to stay for a while.There is no easier animal on the planet to get along with than Elizabeth. Seriously, it was impossible not to like her, to get along with her. She's like the canine Tom Hanks.Well, my cats hated her. At first, they growled and yowled and hissed and took swipes with their claws at poor Elizabeth. Later, as they got used to her presence, or at least figured out she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, they mostly just avoided her, getting up and leaving whenever she came into the room with a departing hiss.Of course, Elizabeth was a dog and bigger than the cats, although not by that much. Dopey though they sometimes are, I'm sure my cats were smart enough to realize a full-frontal assault on Elizabeth wouldn't go well for them.A cat was another matter, particularly a smaller cat. Harper is smaller than Archie (the fat, orange cat) and even smaller than his little brother, Groucho (the black cat). Plus, I really had no clue how Harper would react to other cats.Somehow, I need to expose the cats to each other in such a way that they could see and smell and interact with each other but couldn't get at each other to inflict injury.I thought seriously about going to the hardware store, buying a big roll of screen and nailing it across my kitchen doorway. The problem with that plan is that I'd have to go outside, around the house and come in through the back door every time I wanted to go to the kitchen for something to eat.Then a coworker of mine recommended a cage. She had a dog kennel she was no longer using and was happy to loan it to me.So one night, I set up the kennel and put Harper in it. It was like giving my cats their own little zoo. A zoo where they could prowl circles around the cage, hissing and growling at the occupant. They didn't reach into the cage, as I was afraid they might, and try to scratch Harper, but they made their displeasure clear.Harper mostly ignored them. He focused on the bowl of food I pull in the kennel with him.After a couple of hours, the tension in the air had lessened a tad and I decided to let Harper out. He was tentative as he roamed about but didn't take any guff from Archie and Groucho. He didn't run away but neither did he attack. He just stood his ground.I felt the cats were fine together as long as I was present to run interference with the spray bottle if things got heated, which they sometimes did. I didn't feel comfortable leaving them alone together, however. When I had to go out to run some errands, instead of putting Harper down in the basement, I put him back in the cage.I returned a couple of hours later. Archie and Groucho were sitting on the couch, not sleeping, not exactly relaxed, but not looking like they were ready to pounce.Harper, on the other hand, was gone. …to be continued (I hope)

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