The New Kitty Blues--advice?

This is something of a minor grief, considering all of the pain on this group,
but it has been bothering me for a while. I've been lurking here since
my cat died, and have finally decided to post.

My beloved cat Winston died four weeks ago today. Winston and his sister
Crumpet were my first real experience with pet love, and Winston's death
was my first real experience with grief.

A long sad story: (scroll down if you want to skip to the new kitty)

Before coming to the point, let me explain what happened to Winston.

I got the kittens last June and quickly learned to love them. My husband and
I had just moved in with my in-laws, and this was my first chance to have a pet.
The family had lost a lot of cats to outside accidents. The last cat had been hit
by a car before his first birthday. He survived, only to turn up dead in the yard
less than 6 months later. A few months after that, a neighborhood stray that we'd
been feeding came to us with a shattered jaw, and had to be euthanized. We live
in a quiet, ruralish, residential neighborhood, with little traffic, but drivers just use
the lack of traffic to drive absurdly and illegally fast. (Three days after
Winston died, a woman flipped her car over right outside my window.)
I wanted to keep the kittens inside, but family members kept taking them outside.
The kittens became obsessed with going out. We tried taking them out on halter
leashes, which they promptly removed, and we built them a pen in the back yard,
which they learned to escape. They also managed to escape several times from
the house, but we always quickly reclaimed them.

Four weeks ago, someone in my in-laws' apartment failed to shut a door properly.
We live in a Revolutionary War era house, it was a very windy night, and Winston
was talented at opening doors. He'd been mad at me the night before and gone
to sleep downstairs rather than come to bed with us as usual. He failed to meet
my in-laws when they got up at 5, so they knew something was odd, but they didn't
notice that the door was open until 7. They had a look around the neighborhood,
but didn't find him. Then they told me when they knew I was awake later that
morning.

I went out looking for him with my mother in law. We weren't too worried at first,
because he'd always gone toward the back yard when he'd escaped in the past.
We were coming back from the back yard when we saw him sitting (sphinx-style)
by the back steps. He was looking at us, and he seemed perfectly normal. There
was a horror story moment when I said something to him jokingly and went to grab
him. When I reached down, I saw that the fur on his other side was all wet, and I
knew something was wrong. There was a small bulge in the wet fur, and I could see
that it was pulsing, probably with his heart beat. When the last cat was hit, the vet
told us that getting hit does something to a cat's paws, probably because they try
to cling to the pavement. I could see that his fur was funny around his paws, so I
knew he'd been hit.

We got him into a cardboard box--he put up a struggle when I tried to get
him in the box, and I think I hurt him more. We rushed him to the vet.
When we got there it was still only 9-something in the morning, but the vet's
asssistant said the vet was in surgery and they didn't know when she'd get
out. They told us to leave him there, and we dumbly agreed. I think someone
once said that we tend to act on autopilot at these times. They took him into
the back, and we stared at eachother before he left. When we got home,
there was already a message on the answering machine saying that we should
call back at once. The vet said that he'd been dragged, his ribs were crushed,
his lungs punctured, and something else was punctured as well. She said that
she had to euthanize him at once. My mother in law, who took the call, told
her to do what she had to. We didn't want to prolong his pain, so we gave her
permission to do it at once, and because the family usually doesn't collect the
bodies of the pets we let them bury him. Now I'm left with a lingering sense that
I abandoned him. My mother in law also suggested that if we'd let him go
outside, he might have been streetwise enough to avoid the road. I feel bad
that we kept him inside so he wouldn't get hit--if he was going to die when
only a year old, at least he would have been happier outside.

Crumpet and the Stranger Kitty

When we paid the vet, the assistants suggested that we should get a new kitten,
saying that there were a lot of families with kittens to home. My mother in law
said that she'd never get another cat, having had so many die unexpectedly. I
starting thinking about the idea, but thought it best to wait until we'd had a chance
to mourn Winston and to see how Crumpet was getting by.

Three weeks later, some friends of the family discovered a kitten hiding in the stone
wall across the street from their house, right around the corner from us. This
was during the massive rains that flooded the Northeast earlier this month. They have
had cats dumped in their yard before, so they assumed that he was abandoned.
They'd called around the neighborhood to see if anyone was missing a kitten, but
nobody was. They had two cats already, so were hoping that we'd take him. He was flea ridden,
he was missing a small patch of fur on his back, and he was so covered in flea powder
that his fur felt like a badly made toy. But they handed him to me, and he crawled up
onto my shoulder and then down to my arms, then rolled over in my arms and looked
up at me. Naturally, we fell in love with him.

Our friends thought he was 12 weeks old, but the vet says he's just a large 7-8 weeks.
He's a rangy sort of kitten with big feet, so I think he'll make a large cat. It's obvious
that someone lavished attention on him, as he is very well socialized to people, but
he didn't seem very well cared for, as he had fleas and seemed underweight.

So we brought him home. I have a hard time believing that he was abandoned, so I've
been checking the classified ads, asking vets and pet store owners, and looking for
"missing" signs and whatnot. So far there's been no sign that anyone is looking for him.
We named him Noah Quiggly, because he turned up in a flood and because I like the
name. This is where my latest troubles start.

I loved Winston--he was the best cat I've ever known. I started loving the kittens when
they would come running up to me, sit down at my feet and stare up at me with their
little kitty faces, and say "Mew!" I loved both the cats, but Winston was different
somehow. He was more like a dog or a person in a cat's body. He always knew when
something was wrong--he'd come running if I cried. Somehow he knew the difference
between a weekend or vacation and days when I was supposed to go to work and
didn't--he was always really affectionate when I was home sick or otherwise "playing
hooky." He could communicate very well, and always seemed to know what I
was saying. He'd come running when we went to bed, he'd always be waiting for us
at a certain window when we came home, and he had a habit of waking me up at
3 in the morning every night to tell me how much he loved me. It was almost as
endearing as it was annoying. I lost my job a month before he died, and we were
together almost all of the time. As you can imagine, I was devastated.

I love Crumpet as well, but she is more of an "ordinary" cat. She is more standoffish,
less playful, and rather more prickly. One of the only "benefits" of Winston's death
was that it caused her to become more friendly. She didn't realize anything was
wrong at first, until the middle of the night after he died. They'd never been apart
for more than a few hours since they were born, and it took her a while to realize
that he wasn't just napping in another part of the house. The next day, she clung
to me, crying, and poked into all of the hiding spots around. As time went on, we
both started feeling better, but our relationship was closer. It has been very painful
to see Crumpet without Winston, and I don't claim to benefit from the loss of a cat,
but it has made me feel better to have her near.

Unfortunately, she hates the new kitten. I read the literature on introducing a new
cat into a household, but the standard advice seems to take weeks. We introduced
them right away, and things seemed to be going well. They touched noses and seemed
wary but not too upset. As time went on, though, Crumpet became more hostile. She
started hissing and growling at the new kitten. We've been keeping them in separate
parts of the house, like the advice suggests, and only allowing them to spend short
periods of time with each other under close supervision. She's started swatting at
him, and once or twice has turned violent when I've taken her from the room.

The family has usually just let the cats hash matters out between themselves, with
supervision. I'm more worried that she's going to hurt or traumatize him. So far,
he's staying downstairs with my in-laws, and Crumpet's staying upstairs with me. But
it's been hard on both of us. She's been unhappy and less friendly towards me, I
feel guilty that I'm upsetting her more after she lost her littermate, and I wish I
could spend more time with the kitten. I worry that she's going to hurt him,
that we might have to get rid of him if they don't get along, and to top it all
off he's been sneezing for no apparent reason.

I know that this is probably normal, and after all of this I feel silly to be worrying
about cat relationships, but does anyone have any advice or new cat stories?

-Sarah