We move slowly right now in the deep chill of February 2022. Nothing much is happening and everything is happening. Mostly what is happening inside the house is the total disruption of the feline reality due to the arrival of the big orange cat. Honeybear is here now. And he is a brute.

But oh how I love him! He’s all the best yet worst characteristics of my ex-boyfriends rolled up into a large sherberty Old Yeller type of junkyard cat. Oh, this cat’s tail is just a marvel, long and sinuous and very strong but friendly. He arrived at our house, went under the couch, and literally tried to put his head under a shelf so he could hide in the dark and Calvin, bless him, pulled the cat out from under the shelf because he thought the shelf could fall.

Honeybear was traumatized, and spent the next week under the couch with Wyatt hanging out in his basement room playing videogames and talking to his friends. Every once in a while the cat would slink out and take the smelliest poops we, as a family, had ever experienced. He kicked up enough cat litter to choke a camel. This cat was very upset. I can’t compare him to an ex-boyfriend at this stage because he was really barely functioning.

Shelter personality is not actual cat personality

He’s not a pushover, this cat, and now we are living in a divided house. Nemesis lives upstairs. Her litterbox is in the unused bathtub on the top floor and she eats just outside our bedroom. Honeybear has the basement, and we just started him eating in the basement because we let him eat in the regular cat eating spot in the kitchen, and now Nemesis won’t even go downstairs. He claimed all the territory and drove her off like a starving cheetah on the savannah. We’ve kicked his meals downstairs and he is pissed about it but he needs to eat.

He has some behavior issues in that he bats at people, especially Calvin, whose cat skills are not up to snuff. Calvin loves cats, who cannot bear him. Nemesis can tolerate him, even using him for heat at night in the bed once in a while, but he annoys her. I’ve tried to counsel him about cat interactions and he won’t take direction on it. I told him to crouch down to talk to Honeybear, like squat so you aren’t leaning over him. It’s the same thing as talking to a kid. You don’t bend over them like an asshole—you get on their level.

Same goes for cats, but Calvin just keeps on leaning. I just show Honeybear my hands all the time so he knows I’m coming in to pet. He still flinches a lot but he loves being pet. He’s a good cat. He just needs to keep calming down and understand that the other cat isn’t the enemy.

Also, we’re afraid to pick him up and we failed to get him into his carrier and are terrified of him. Such big claws and feet!

I am “afraid” of Honeybear but not like the way I’m afraid of Maggie

She is quiet and not home and it is so lovely.