He's over here . . .



And she's over there . . .



Well, it's been a week since Pepper and Paddy met officially, and he's had the run of the house ever since, so their meeetings have been regular and, I'm sorry to say, unhappy thus far. Here's what usually happens: Paddy is dashing about like a fool, attacking his own tail, playing with his toy mice, leaping onto things that seem too far away but turn out not to be, basically making his own entertainment and apparently growing about an inch a day, and Pepper will come in from outside or enter the room and, instead of keeping a respectful distance, bless him, he'll approach her, keen to make friends. And she will contort her face into that of an alien and hiss at him, in other words: back off. He'll make any number of submissive, cute shapes, but these will have no effect. She's taken to the box, which I put up last week to see how many videos I could fit into one for transportation to the charity shop. She leaps in and stays there, observing Paddy's juvenile antics from the safety of a sentry box. Eventually, she settles down and sleeps in there.

It's frustrating, in that it's so obvious he wants to be her friend or surrogate son. The encouraging thing is that, even after she's attempted to slap him down when he's crossed the line in the sand, he still goes back for more. He has that unquenchable optimism of youth. She can hiss and growl and smack all she likes, he's going to make peace at some stage. This gives hope, but it's a shame to see Pepper looking so grumpy and put out. After all, we got him for her!

I guess it's only been a week. (It feels much longer.) Occasionally she almost seems to ignore him, which is the best we've got so far. It's a long game. I've stopped intervening when she bawls him out, as it's their problem, they need to sort it out. The more they run in to each other, the better. At one stage in the week, we left the pair of them on adjacent stairs (Pepper was on the top, spread out, he was on the next one down, sensibly curled up), and some kind of uneasy detente was temporarily reached. But as I write, she's chased him under the raincoat that's hanging on the doorknob of my office and he is beseiged there. In the words of Rodney King, why can't they just get along? Encouraging words again gratefully received. They are our favourite two cats in the world and we want them to love each other as much as we love them both!