I’ve often heard people who are the 3rd or 4th child in a family bemoan the fact that they had less childhood pictures, were treated less protectively, or at worst left behind somewhere accidentally! I never thought I would be that kind of a fur-parent, but given that it has taken me three months to introduce Sam I may have to accept otherwise! Sorry little Sam! And for the record I have never accidentally left him anywhere (and as you can see he has heaps of pics).
In this previous post about Atticus I explained how we, perhaps foolishly, came to add a baby cornish rex to our otherwise mature family. And how we then attempted, successfully, to remedy the drama we had caused with another kitten. That kitten is the adorable Sam – and he indeed flew to the rescue (via plane from QLD to Sydney) about 3 months after we adopted Atticus!
Sam came from the same Cornish Rex breeder as Atticus – he is 5 days older and they share the same father but come from two different mothers. (Backstory – their naughty dad apparently escaped his restricted area and “befriended” three lovely ladies in one day, which resulted in 15 kittens!! Obviously they got their naughty genes from their dad).
By the time Sam joined us he was 6 months old and he has a distinctly different personality to Atticus – which I would suggest is the result of quite different socialisation. We chose Atticus at only a few weeks old and asked the breeder to really focus on his interpersonal socialisation – to handle, cuddle and talk to him as much as possible, and it seems this resulted in quite a smoochy boy who seeks out a lot of human contact. Sam on the other hand was most likely left largely to his own devices and is seemingly much less interested in human company. He pretty much mostly looks to us for food, and to Atticus for companionship. He is, however, an alarmingly intelligent cat – within weeks of arrival he had worked out all our door handles in attempts to help himself to food! Our pull down handles have all been replaced with round ones, and we have child locks in the kitchen!
We have found Sam is very vocal and demanding when not provided with enough stimulation – so as an indoor cat he has really challenged us to come up with some effective enrichment for his environment. He is really curious about the outdoor world, so in addition to ensuring he spends time in our outdoor catio, we also periodically walk him outside on a lead. As he is highly food motivated we have also found ways to enrich his eating with food puzzles and toys. And VERY fortunately for us he and Atticus truly found best buddies in each other – we feel that together they really have their needs met through companionship and play.
Like Atticus, Sam resides in the studio section of our house and spends most days “at work” with my husband Dean – which also allows plenty of time for human companionship and musical capers! We have many tails to tell about our efforts to make sure Sam is intellectually and physically stimulated enough to meet his needs – we’ll share these with you in some future posts. In the meantime if you would like to see more photos of our 4 fabulous rexes please follow our Instagram account – I post pics of there antics there most days!