Ingrid, kudos to you for making the right decision. He will be the same
lovable boy afterward, only not as inclined to spray or wander.

[...]>

How much space do you have, Ingrid? Meaning, is there room enough
for you to comfortably have two cats? Usually this means two cat
boxes and many cats like to have their own little territory to retreat to,
even if it is just in a single room. I feel certain Sam would be happier
with a companion since you work so much--but another consideration
is this: do you want TWO cats running over you at night or do you have
room to shut them out of your bedroom and still give them room to play?

On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 14:38:13 -0800, ingrid.seim wrote:

Congratulations, great decision!  Sam will be all the happier and
healthier cat for it.

There won't be any change in the timbre of his meows. :-)

No.  I have worked extensively with feral cats and TNR programs.  My own
cats are "side effects" of such work.  All of them walked into traps set
by me.  One group I've been associated with is
http://www.neighborhoodcats.org/.

Quite probably so.  Go for it.

I had this same thought process last fall and acquired a companion cat for
Oscar.  It was a disaster.  This is not at ALL to say that it couldn't work
for you and Sam, but here are some thoughts:

If you don't feel you have enough time for Sam, will you have enough time to
gradually introduce the two cats to one another?  I somehow had the idea that
I could just plop Eros on the floor, and the cats would work it out.  Well,
they didn't.  There are a lot of techniques for gradually introducing cats,
but they take time.  In the meantime, you may have to deal with elimination in
inappropriate places (for example, Oscar was so frightened of Eros that she
peed in the master bathroom, and I ended up moving her litterbox into the
bedroom) and other concerns.  Cats can take months (plural) to sort out their
differences.  Some never do.  Even if the cats just tolerate one another, you
now have two cats needing human attention, rather than just one.

Do you have room for multiple litterboxes, probably in different locations?

How will you handle food?  What if one cat scarfs up the other's food?  Will
you know if one cat stops eating from the stress of having another cat around?

What if they *don't* get along?  In my case, before I accepted Eros, I made
sure his previous owner would agree to take him back if things got rough.
Unfortunately, when push came to shove, she wouldn't do it.  I kept Eros in a
(nice) boarding kennel while I tried to find someone to adopt him ($13ish/day)
... then, when that seemed not to be working, I took him to a very good
no-kill shelter ($50 for dropoff).  I mention the money, but the money was
inconsequential compared to the heartbreak of giving Eros up.  Then I visited
him at the shelter for about a month before he was finally adopted.  He looked
a little less healthy every time I visited him.  In short, have an exit
strategy in case the cats just won't get along.  You might be able to keep the
cats in separate parts of the house, or you might have friends who would take
the cat.  Just think ahead.

Well, it got me off my butt to make a web page about
"Alternatives to Spaying / Neutering" and other matters, which I'd been
meaning to do for a long time -- and now have up at my site, or at least a
start on it. :)

Margaret S.