Ciao, Bella!

Well, the Cat Lady got her act together and delivered Bella the new Llama-Cat to our house last evening. (Here let me just put in a gratuitous plug for the Noah's Ark Foundation. Yes, I make Cartman-like fun of them for being a bunch of long-haired hippy freaks, and the Cat Lady was exactly as I had imagined she would be, but given the out of control cat population and the horrific end many of these animals come to, what they do is a good thing.)

Anyhoo, Bella turns out to be a rather small animal. She's long legged and a bit on the underfed side, giving her that ferrel look. Her coat is a dark tortoise-shell with black paws and a blackish patch over much of her face.

She also seems a very amiable little creature. Within five minutes of being introduced into the Butcher's House, she was curling herself around the legs of the Llama-ettes, whose combined attentions I had been convinced would buffalo the poor thing. And, as I suppose is the way of Fate, she seems to have taken an especial shine to me, proving it by climbing on to my chest at 3:00 AM and snagging her claws into my t-shirt. We're going to have to stomp on that custom right quick.

So far, the only unhappy one is Jenny, the other Llama-Cat. Her first reaction to Bella was, "Yo! This is MY house, bitch," and she spent the rest of the evening sulking, with the occassional growl or hiss thrown in. I don't think the two of them will actually fight, however, and once Jenny gets used to things, they should do fine.