Today’s the day I signed the paperwork to transfer ownership of Sripati to his new owners. We’ve been a little slow getting this done (on both ends). I put together a bio and collection of photos for them, along with copies of all his medical and legal paperwork. Sad day for me, but hopefully he’ll be happy in his new home. 80 photos, so prepare to be drowned in cuteness. The first photo, in the bag, is from the day they arrived.
Background info, part 1:
https://www.facebook.com/mary.a.mohanraj/posts/10161992035164616
part 2: https://www.facebook.com/mary.a.mohanraj/posts/10162136824629616
His new name is Willie, and amusingly, it turns out that he’s just living half a block away. It shouldn’t matter, but it’s actually quite comforting to know that. The new owner says that there’s an orange cat that comes by and hangs out and they mew at each other, so I suspect Aryabhata has known where his brother was all along.
Once they’ve finished all the paperwork transfer and taken him to the vet, they plan to let him go outside some, so that’s a reassurance to me. He really loved going outside, and they say he still does, so it’s very good to know that’ll still be part of his life.
*****
Family history:
Your cat was originally named Ganymede, son of Florence, born May 28, 2018 (or thereabouts). He and his sibling, Galilea, were rescued by the astronomers at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico; after Hurricane Maria, the astronomers were flooded with feral cats, and did their best to rescue, treat, and re-home as many of them as possible. For more information on this, check out:
https://www.space.com/41619-arecibo-observatory-space…
Two astronomers there were coming to the U.S. and posted on Facebook asking if anyone would like to adopt some of the cats. My husband and I had been talking about getting some cats, and this seemed like a great opportunity. We agreed to adopt a pair of them. They arrived in the midst of our Christmas party in 2018, about seven months old at that point. We thought it was a boy-girl pair, but it turned out that Galilea was actually a boy as well, so two brothers.
We renamed them at that point, giving them South Asian names (since I’m also an immigrant, from Sri Lanka, another little island like Puerto Rico). We kept the observatory names as middle names, so Galilea became Arybhata Galilea, named after an Indian astronomer, and Ganymede became Sripati Ganymede.
Since they’d been feral for so long, and the period of high risk for outdoor cats is when they’re very young and haven’t yet learned to navigate cars, we decided to let them stay outdoor cats; they freely moved in and out of our house (we have a pet door that lets them have access).
They got along well for the next several months, but as they moved into adolescence, they started fighting quite a bit. This is apparently fairly typical for adolescent male cats; since my previous cat was an indoor girl cat, I had no experience of this. The rest of the story you know, I think.
I hope you continue to adore him; he’s a pretty special cat, I think. I think he may well be happier with you than with his brother bullying him – Arya is a little bigger than Sri, and I think tended to win their brawls. If you feel like sending photos occasionally, I’d love to see them, and I’m sure the astronomers would too.
– Mary Anne
