A Home for Imogen

It had to happen. Imogen has been adopted. She will be staying with me.

I have no doubt that, despite being a black cat, Imogen would have had further interest in her from other people. But some factors determined that she should remain with me.

Though she is more open to meeting new people than she was, I think she felt deeply her abrupt change of home after being abandoned. Though she would come around in time, I believe it would take her a while longer to trust someone new than it would for other cats.

That leads to another factor: Imo is not a lap-cat sort of creature. She is affectionate in her own way, and shows me that she likes and trusts me. She now sleeps on the bed next to me almost every night. She rubs up against me often and demonstrates when she wants attention. But she will as many times hurry away from me when I bend down to pet her; this isn’t fear but, oddly, humour. It amuses her to play with me. She likes to jump up on the bathroom counter, and spends many hours hidden away under bedclothes. Imogen may not be easily understood.

For her part, she has come to appreciate that there are other cats in her home, and that some may come and go with what a few felines may regard as disturbing irregularity. She has become a playmate to Percy and has tolerated (sometimes with badly-concealed annoyance) Dabney’s attempts to get to know her. She is an asset in a foster-home and, further, my opinion is that she benefits from knowing other cats (some more than others.)

Then there’s the fact that I like her a great deal.

I haven’t adopted a cat since Cammie. Though I may be wrong and Imogen would adapt very well to any new home, she is certainly no Percy or Horace, or even a Hector. Like Cammie, Imo is quite particular. I flatter myself that she has come to regard the Cosy Apartment as her home, and I her human. And I flatter myself still further that she likes that arrangement. Therefore, she will stay.