Introducing Clara

As promised, I would like to share with you the finale of our Mouse Saga.  After the long, arduous, and less-than-fruitful chase over the course of nearly a month, the story has indeed come to its end.  With its end comes a new beginning, which can be summed up nicely in the following statements:

Our new cat is home.

The mouse is gone.

The two statements are unrelated.

Before regaling you with the story of our newest addition, I'll start with the mouse's exit.  We came home with Clara and followed her around as she began sniffing and exploring her new environment.  As we wandered into the kitchen, Tomm heard a noise and wondered if it had come from Clara.  Noticing her silence, he looked instead to the shelving unit which has been the central focus of our mouse hunt and there, in the selfsame basket as the one which started the whole debacle, was the mouse stuck pitifully on a glue pad!

After Monday morning's near-catch, I put one of the month-old glue pads into the basket figuring at least it wouldn't be any less successful there.  The mouse had done a good job of avoiding them for the last month but hey, what the hell.  That morning just before leaving for the shelter, the exterminator came by and threw a few poison packets behind the refrigerator and stove and gave me a handful of large sticky pads.  I wasn't terribly keen on the idea of poison, but something had to be done.

So imagine our surprise when we returned early in the afternoon to find the mouse trapped of its own accord on a little plastic dish of goo that had been sitting in our kitchen for weeks!  This is quite possibly the most anti-climactic ending I could have envisioned for the story. 

It's probably a good thing the mouse found it's way out just as Clara found hers in, because with all the attention she's claiming for herself there'd be none left to bother with the mouse!  She is a four-year-old Russian Blue who has been in at least two shelters over the last couple months.  I don't know much of her story before that, but she is very comfortable with people and is making herself at home quite nicely.  I should also mention that neither Tomm nor I have ever had a cat before, so this is a brand new experience for both of us.  I just hope we do it right!

The shelter had named her Gracey for no particular reason, so we spent the train ride home trying to think of our own name for her.  I started by thinking categorically and considered composers' names.  There aren't a whole lot of well-known classical female composers, but the first to pop into my mind was Clara Schumann, the wife of Robert Schumann.  While I enjoy Clara's strikingly beautiful music, I've never listed her among my favorites (like Tchaikovsky, Shostakovitch, or Brahms) because I've never performed her works or studied it in great detail.  I held the name in the back of my mind as we explored other options, some cute and reasonable, others funny and downright embarrassing for a cat.  At one point on the train, I said "Tush!  We could name her Tush!" Tomm smiled and at that moment a young religious Jewish man sitting across from us said "You do know what that means, don't you?"  "Yes, we do," I laughed.  I tried to convince him I knew my way around Jewish vocabulary, but I don't think he was convinced either of us were members of the Tribe.  Oh well.  

By the time we arrived at home the name Clara had been repeated numerous times, bobbing up to the surface like a ball in a pool between every new ball we threw in.  Ultimately, we decided that the little terrified cat inside the box Tomm carried was, in fact, Clara.  The composer, however, was merely the inspiration and not the true eponym.

After cautiously crawling out of the box, she spent a lot of time sniffing and exploring in between hiding under the bed.  I don't blame her, really.  Later that afternoon Tomm had to leave for a night shift at work (the first night of a full month with that schedule), and a few hours later I left to audition for a community orchestra in Manhattan.  I was a little concerned about leaving Clara alone, but when I returned the apartment was just as I had left it, complete with Clara meowing loudly in the hallway.  I imagined her saying "Why did you leave me?!" over and over again, so I spent the next number of hours curled up with her on the bed while I finished a book.  She enjoyed pawing and kneading the crocheted afghan on the bed and even held it securely by her teeth as she worked her paws, stretching and extending the claws then curling up the paw, right then left then left.  I hope that blanket can survive the gentle but consistent abuse.

When I finally went to sleep, I hoped that Clara might stay with me throughout the night, but I seem to have forgotten that cats are very much nocturnal animals.  With Clara, that means jumping off the bed once every hour and meowing loudly for my attention.  As a new parent I woke up every time, sometimes following her into the living room before returning to the bed where she joined me, if only momentarily.  At some point I'm sure I'll learn to tune out her chitter chatter, but as I strive to understand what she's trying to tell me I'm afraid to miss a single word.

It's only been a day and already I'm in love with this cute and quirky cat of ours, and I wouldn't be surprised if she became a regular feature of this blog.  I hope you won't mind!