After a month or so of bringing my first kitty home, I decided that Princess, also known as Prinny, or Prin, needed some company. I went to work every day for eight hours and my boyfriend still spent a lot of time abroad back then. She was very clingy and needy when I came home, since she was so attached to me.

(This was of course before I knew that Russian blues are known for their intense bond with one particular human and their antisocial/sensitive behavior towards other animals. Apparently they don’t like sharing their territory and attention)

I asked my friends at the shelter to look out for a ‘tricolor’, a cat with a black, white and red coat. I had had one before I left home and it had been my best friend for years. It was my way of showing that I hadn’t forgotten about her.

A week later I got a call that he had the perfect playmate for Prinny. Her name was Prutske(which is a very common and boring name in Dutch). She was incredibly shy for such a large cat, and had been in the shelter for about a week. She was about 3 years old.

When I brought her home, the first thing I did was give her a new name: Trinity (yes I was inspired by the Matrix, so sue me). The three colors which made such a nice quilt on her back made ‘Trinity’ definitely the right choice, not to mention the fact that she had that horrible name to start with.

In my ignorance though, I expected the cats not to get along, but to take it easy at the very least. Nothing was further from the truth. I was stupid enough to put Trinity right in with Princess, because Prinny at first seemed to take it easy. However, when she figured out that Trinity was scared of her, even though she was twice her size, she started whacking at her. Trinity saw all the corners of the room, just by trying to get away from her.

( No blood was spilled otherwise I would definitely have intervened!). It took several weeks, but finally Princess understood that sulking and acting like a spoilt brat didn’t make the intruder go away. She had to accept that Trini was here to stay. It took a month for them though, to get along. And this was only due to the sweet and submissive personality of Trini.

A month later they had settled their disputes of who gets what and who was topcat( clearly Prinny). And they went from warring furballs with claws to best buddies. Washing eachother, sleeping together on my bed, greeting eachother in the morning… My household was finally at peace again, and I had reached my goal: Prinny was still an attention hog but not nearly as bad as before, since now she had a new friend who gave her attention.

I was lucky everything worked out, and it was more than unfortunate that my ignorance had caused Trini to suffer Prinnies wrath for so long. I looked up Russian Blues and hit myself over the head( you know, Homer-style), and I checked out how to actually introduce cats to each other before I got my next kitten…Nothing could have prepared me for that one though...