Meet Ramona's new baby brother Eli

Elias Thurl Ravenscroft McSwadams, if ya nasty

Look, I don’t judge your life decisions, do I? Did we need a third cat in addition to our famous dog and very much in addition to my severe cat allergies? Only time will tell, but we got one. His name’s Eli, and he rules.

We got Eli from Felines and Canines, a wonderful shelter that used to be called Felines Inc., where Rachel rescued our cat Pete from way back in the day, before we ever met. Eli’s shelter name was Punky. We went to the shelter to meet a different cat, but we fell in love with Eli.

Let me tell you all about him! He is ostensibly 2 years old, but we suspect he’s a bit younger. He has what Rachel calls his Wizard Eye, which is a very cool eye that got injured once and the pupil is like a splotch instead of a circle. He might be blind in that eye, but we’re not quite sure. He has lil’ vampire fangs. He has a nick on the top of his ear, and he’s had some broken ribs in the past. He’s too skinny. It seems like he’s had a rough go of things in his old life, but he will henceforth be a spoiled archmage.

Sometimes he sleeps in Rachel’s overalls.

He’s obviously a black cat (which is also very wizard-y) which makes him challenging to photograph. He has some salt and pepper white furs and black whiskers. Our other two cats, Pete and Margot, are very colorful tabbies, and Eli looks weirdly low-res next to them. It’s hard to take a picture of him unless he’s asleep (which is most of the time) because he’s actually a little shadow of an ink spill instead of a cat.

Eli is great. He’s very chill and agreeable and he likes to sleep on my legs. He loves to explore and climb stuff. He’s a Little Adventure Boy. When we were trying to decide on his name, he would squeak whenever we said “Eli,” so really he named himself.

Margot, who is old and crabby, doesn’t like him much, but she’ll come around. Eli is obsessed with his big brother Pete, and they are quickly becoming inseparable.

And now we get to Ramona…

We introduced Eli to everybody on his first night here, and he and Ramona were very curious about each other. In general, Ramona loves the cats and they don’t much care for her. She always wants to play, but she doesn’t quite grasp the finer points of playing with cats. There’s a lot of howling and pawing involved. Sometimes there is hissing and hackles.

HOWEVER. While I was out of the house shipping books the other day, Rachel was able to capture some very excellent bonding between Baby Dog and Baby Cat. Our other cats very rarely consent to dog snuggles, so it’s a huge deal to us that this happened in Eli’s first week in his new home.

This begins the long journey towards teaching Eli to ride Ramona like a horse. Updates forthcoming.