Once again, I’m a day late sharing Feline Friday with you! Apologies.

I think Romeo’s having a tough time adjusting to being the only cat in the household.

On the one hand, he’s looking good. He doesn’t have to compete with Duke at meal time, and I think he’s been able to eat a bit more. But he seems a little depressed.

So Meda and I are thinking of adding something to his world. The Hawaiian Humane Society offers “seniors for seniors,” a special no-fee adoption deal if we adopt a senior cat, six years or older. Romeo was likely four or five when he joined our household, so the idea of adopting a mature cat isn’t strange.

But we worry that he’s going to have a harder time adjusting to another adult cat appearing in the house than if we were to introduce a kitten or two. So we’re leaning toward the kitten end of the spectrum. Maybe a kitten or two. Littermates?

There’s are a lot of things to consider. Gender? In the past, we’ve almost always had a dominant female in the cat household. But we’ve also had wonderful experiences with the boys. Now that we have the luxury of planning an adoption, instead of being confronted with one stray or another needing to be rescued, what do we do? One or two? Male or female? Perhaps staggered adoptions? Get one now, and another one later? Kili and Wally were litter mates. They grew up together. Miki was about seven months old when we adopted Kua. Miki smoothly became the “mom” taking charge of that new kitten. I’m starting to feel like we could be overthinking all this.

Covid rules have shut down the Humane Society’s cat house and any opportunity to interact with potential adoptees before making a choice. Instead, the humane society advises that we look at their photos of cats ready for adoption, and then phone in any questions we might have.

The problem, of course, is that you really can’t tell much about a cat or kitten’s personality by looking at photos. So I’m not sure what we’ll do. We have asked a couple of people to keep an eye out for special kittens, but that’s likely to take a while.

Do I admit that I’ve even had fleeting thoughts of adding a canine to the mix? But that’s perhaps more complexity than we are ready for!

Anyway, for now, Romeo has been enjoying himself. He had a catnip session earlier in the week, time on the deck most afternoons (safely in his harness), and his choice of the daily spots of sun morning and afternoon. And, of course, lots of time in my lap. So it’s been a pretty good week from his perspective.

Enjoy the photos.