Meet Tristan.

He’s three weeks old.

My friend came to my birthday dinner with that picture in her phone.

Mr WayofCats says that shows it was premeditated.

My friend was walking her brother’s dogs through a field, when this little guy came running from an abandoned house, desperate for help. No sign of any other cats. They brought him to the vet, where he’s being checked over.

What can I say? He needed a home. It was my birthday.

The kitten called to people for help and was quick to cuddle with them, they said; that’s always easy to work with. He seems in good health. He’s very young, so he’s fragile, so he will be far more an object of curiosity in our house than a threat to anyone.

We committed to giving him a home because he at least needs a foster placement. But we all had a good feeling about Tristan; when Mr WayofCats suggested the name, we loved it. He even got a nickname during dessert, when we decided Chocolate Caramel Cake by Dan at a favorite restaurant is also an excellent name. My friend’s family had called him Spike.

And now you know as much I do about him when we agreed to give him a home.

We often rescue because we are there. This doesn’t mean they are the right cat for us. We might simply be the right person at that time.

It’s difficult to make a long term prediction on such slim, even fanciful, understandings about a very young kitten showing only a little of their personality. Many people prefer such young cats because they feel they can exert more influence on their cat when they are adopted at a younger age.

However, in terms of how our cat will turn out to match up with ourselves and our household, we often give early exposure undue weight. A kitten of this age is simply not physically or mentally capable of expressing much of their unique personality, however much they have.

So we tend to underestimate how our cat is reacting to their environment. Then we overestimate our contribution to shaping their preferences. This age is not our only chance at it; we do it every day.

Adopting when the kitten is very young is more up to chance than choosing. We have less of a reliance on a connection. So it’s important, taking such “sight unseen” kittens, that we realize we have no input into this choice.

Adopting a kitten because “it was me or the shelter” is a good deed. It doesn’t have to be a long deed.

However, of course we are becoming attached already, even though we haven’t met. Tristan definitely has cuteness and gutsy-ness going for him. But it’s not just to soothe our own worries that we hope he fits in.

Because if he doesn’t get what he needs here, he won’t be happy.

Then we won’t be happy. Then nobody’s happy.

But there’s no shame concluding that our rescue cat is not working out. By its very nature, rescue has few variables we can control. Our home full of cats or our home empty of cats; no situation can be expected to work for every cat.

These cats might need a rescue. They might need a home. But they up their odds of getting what they need if they didn’t have to luck upon both with the same person.

Tristan has already managed to get himself noticed, and to the vet, and appear in someone’s cell phone on someone else’s birthday.

He seems to be doing well so far.

Find out more about Tristan from his webpage, or go to the top of this post and click the arrow on the right; my blog readers got to see Tristan grow up with every third post marking one of his milestones. To start with the present, see all my posts about Tristan.

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There’s more to choosing a cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See my CHOOSING A CAT.

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