"Live Long and Prosper."

I have someone new to introduce you to.
Can you guess by the title of the post where I'm going with this?
No. I did not kidnap the Star Trek character and no, I did not randomly find a Spock circulating the universe, ready to join my family.
I did, however, find someone who used to be named King and who is now named Spock to join my family.
*I can hear your judgmental reading through the computer. Stop it*!
He's not a dog. We definitely don't have room for that, or the time with us both being in our masters programs.
Spock, the kitty formerly known as King, officially moved in Monday evening.
He is about seven months old and is a Oriental Short-Hair mix; or so we have been told. He is mostly white with a little black part on his head that looks like, you guessed it, a bowl cut; just like Spock's. His ears are huge which initially made me think of naming him Spock and today our vet pointed out that he has missing hair on his forehead too. Unlike the character Spock though, our Spock has some black bits on his haunches.
Since Mr. K and I lost Rufio, our Siberian Forest cat, to kidney disease we have been thinking about getting a new friend for Kira. At first, we were content to be a four dog, two human and one cat household, but as time progressed we began to realize that Kira was really needing companionship..
I won't say we tried everything because there are probably things out there that we never thought about, but we did try a lot of things to help Kira. We got her more toys; interactive toys; fed her before we went to bed to distract her; let her come and go from the bedroom. All but the last thing were a bust. And, if we let her have free roam of our bedroom she was happy, but we couldn't sleep. She is just too active at night. If we locked her out she made every attempt to break into the bedroom; again, no sleeping.
So, around the beginning of December I started looking more seriously into finding her a friend. We had picked Kira in particular due to her curious and friendly nature. We had wanted her to be a companion for Rufio which worked. Since she's not a solitary cat, expecting her to be one, just wasn't working.
I often perused Pet Finder or classified ads. We applied for one kitten because she was a a Forest cat of some sort, but she was a part of a bonded pair. That wasn't going to work.
Last Wednesday I happened to be looking at Pet Finder again and saw our little guy. Mr. K said we should go see him and we did. We were both shocked at how over crowded the facility was. Cats were in their own kennels, but in the same room as dogs and dogs were in hallways. It's just the nature of the facility. We both left knowing we couldn't leave him there. When the worker placed him in my arms he barely moved, but suddenly his little motor started and my heart melted.
They kept King/Spock for  a few more days because he needed to be neutered, but when he went in for his surgery, it was discovered that he had an upper respiratory infection. Or, what we think may be more closer to the truth is that he already had one, they didn't know how bad it was and the vet told them how much worse it was. So, no neutering for him just yet.
When we brought him home Monday night he was sneezing constantly and you could hear his chest rattling. He had a bit of a temperature. Because of his infection, he's been sequestered in our bathroom to keep Kira catching from the infection.
I finally got him in to see our vet today and they gave him a heavy dose of antibiotics he's supposed to take for a week. They ran other tests to make sure he was feline leukemia negative which he is; thankfully. So, now we have to wait for him to stop sneezing and the medicine to take hold before he can meet Kira and the rest of the fur kids.
The vet suggested that we keep him in there for another week. We'll try to hold out, but the poor guy does not want to be in there. The vet said that if we can keep him in there a few days after the sneezing stops then Kira should be okay. We really don't want to have to treat her too.
But, until then, our Spock will have to live in the bathroom and be satisfied with his toys, food/water and his litter box as well as our periodic visits. He's pretty flaked out right now from all of the vaccinations he got today. We're still keeping a close eye on him to make sure he doesn't have any sort of reaction.
Here's to hoping that Spock will become a fully integrated family member soon.