Exotic Shorthair Chester: 3 videos of the boy and his scratching post

Exotic Shorthair Chester here!

In July of 2011, my mom and dad went to a big cat expo in New Jersey and picked up a few toy wands for me. Mom started using one of the wands to get me to scratch on my scratching post. As strange as it seems now, I used to ignore my scratching post - I didn't know what it was for! When mom put the wand next to or on top of  the scratching post, I thought she wanted me to do tricks!

I wasn't always up to performing:



And sometimes a cat has just got to be a cat:



Hey, I did it!:

I'm a cat scientist!

One of my new furriends on Tumblr added my face to a vintage photo and lookit - I'm a cat scientist!

Cat scientist link

I'm striking a pose!

Chester here! Thank you for the well wishes for my human grampa.

And I'm so happy everyone liked seeing pictures of my family. I guess grampa Remi does look like me! I have the white stripe on my sides, too. I visited crystalpurrs - it was nice to see Truffle and Brulee's mommies!

I wasn't a cat show cat but sometimes daddy will find me pretending like I am one. Here's one of those times:

Exotic Shorthair Chester has other ideas

Chester arrived on Sunday and by Monday morning he wanted out of the safe rooms! I let him out for "supervised visits" to the kitchen/dining room/living room of our apartment before I left for work and after I arrived home. My husband (he doesn't have an internet presence so I won't be using his name) wasn't thrilled that I wasn't following the plan and letting him out of his rooms, but on Tuesday A. was ok with the boy hanging out with us in the living room at night. Now we had to cat-proof the rest of the apartment quickly instead of in the two weeks we thought we had!

Exotic Shorthair Chester likes his new home

Even though Chester's arrival was delayed by a day, we were still so happy to have him in our lives.  He seemed to be content - he had both a vertical scratching post and a horizontal one, toys, a cat bed and 2 rooms. He even loved the rug! Plus he wasn't bothered by the sounds and smells.

But the bittersweet fact for us was that the boy came to us on a Sunday afternoon,  soon it was evening, and the next day was work. I had more time before work than my husband and visited Chester. He was an unbelievably happy cat

Making Exotic Shorthair Chester feel welcome and comfortable

After Chester meditated (or whatever it was that he was doing!), he was ready to check things out. My husband was following my lead on what to do. After all, I grew up with cats! I said we should each introduce ourselves by taking turns rubbing his cheeks.

I was expecting Chester to run for cover under the futon after that. The cat expert at the cat show said Chester would be afraid to be in a new house and that he needed a safe room - well, in our case two safe rooms - and experience taught me that's what cats do. And...

poor Chester

 this was his third home, he was all ready to board a flight and then was bumped, and to make matters worse, he had to be separated from the other cats at the cattery the night before for fighting!

Well, he didn't hide under a bed...