Po from Pohang

Scott and I met up with Alice at Emart yesterday because she was going to buy a Siamese kitten. Emart has a fully functioning vet clinic and pet store on the second floor here, which I didn't know about until this weekend. While Alice was cuddling her new found friend and signing some paperwork, we had the chance to fall in love with two little Persian kittens who were also in the store. We were doomed from the moment Alice went into that office. Not that it was a complete whim, for we'd already done prior research into having and relocating an animal back to America.

And that is how we met and acquired Po- we named him for the city he was born in. The vets in the office speak English, which helped make our decision at the time. He's only two months old and still has some shots and...other medical procedures to be done, so it makes it easy on us that we can just take him back there. He was born on Sept 26 and was bred in a home and not a kennel, so he's already litter trained and perfectly social. Persians also have the benefit of scarcely shedding and being quite quiet (as evident by his only 2-mew car ride home), a trait that will be of great benefit as a cabin passenger on a flight back to America in another year. I don't know if I should disclose the price of him, for that is the drawback of falling in love with designer cats, but I will say that he was only a fraction of the cost that a Persian kitten would be in America.

Back at home Po settled in quite comfortably.


He's quite perfect (so far...), because he already is a cuddly fuzzy lap kitty, but also very playful. An early fixation on wires meant we needed to do a bit of kitty-proofing on our apartment. During his first day, he discovered half of our apartment, and I think I'll miss his awkward little kitten gait when he gets older; bouncing and halting from place to place, flinching suddenly at the dangers inanimate objects pose after staring at them for 5 seconds. He still hasn't traversed the 15 foot expanse of open room to discover the kitchen or the bathroom yet, but I'm sure he'll be climbing into sinks in no time.


He can't yet jump up and down from anything, so it was a rather big surprise when he insistently kept finding ways to climb on the bed last night and effectively trapping himself there. We let him stay after about 4 rounds of this, taking our chances on his tiny bladder. I built him a makeshift ramp this morning in case he needed to conquer the bed again while we're gone.

He's currently experiencing his first independent run of the house while we're at work. Unless he's figured out how springy his legs are in the past 7 hours, I think our apartment will be relatively free of mayhem.