Otter came to live with us because I fostered another mom-cat with kittens for the shelter. The kittens were 2.5 weeks old when I began fostering.  Otter is a brown tiger DSH (with lovely green eyes) and she was always laying on her back with her feet in the air -- she reminded me of a river Otter, and Oshun is the African Goddess of Rivers, thus her name. 

    As a tiny kitten, she was a bold, feisty girl with the nickname of “Li'l Bit” and she's still pretty bold as a bigger girl! She adores being petted but it's only been with time and patience that she will allow us to pick her up and hold her for short periods of time; and she becomes the spitting image of her mother (who was extremely aggressive) if we should try to clip her nails (she’s the only one in the group that won’t allow me to trim her nails)!  She also turns into a tiger if the vet or vet techs try to restrain her. But she's sweet otherwise and usually gets along with all the other animals just fine. She has a tiny pipsqueak of a voice.

    When I fostered Otter was also about the time I first began researching holistic health care for the animals. I had read a lot indicating that doing everything at once (i.e., spay, rabies, multi-vax) was a very bad idea and hard on the animals’ system, but the shelter had their rules and wouldn't listen. Otter had a slight case of the sniffles when I took her in for her required spay at 16 weeks old and I asked them if we shouldn't wait a while longer -- they refused so they did the spay AND all the shots... and she ended up within 2 days having a massive ear infection that burst her eardrum and caused a huge hole (she stumbled and couldn’t walk and her head was tipped way to the side). It healed after about three months but to this day, she still walks with her head tilted to one side. My regular vet concurred that the rupture was likely directly related to the bombardment of her system when she already had a slight (unnoticed) ear infection. Every time I see her head tilted, I feel angry because it might have been avoided. She's also allergic to certain ingredients (I'm not sure which ingredients exactly) in a couple of catfood brands, so is restricted to eating just the proven varieties that she DOESN'T throw back up!

    In December 2003, it seems that Queen Otter-Oshun had decided that it is her place to rule the other cats. During the past several months, she has begun asserting her power over others by dictating who is and is not allowed into the bedroom at night! She is acting increasingly aggressive toward Sophia in particular. Of course, once she falls asleep on the bed – on the opposite side of my body from where everyone else sleeps, mind you – the other cats make their way into the bedroom so that we have a full quota by morning.

    Otter regularly puts Guinevere in her place by swatting her on the butt. Interestingly, though, she seems to also enjoy very active play with Guinevere, Navarre, Imhotep and Gump.

Otter’s aggression continued to escalate until she was regularly terrorizing several of the other cats and wreaking havoc in our household. After trying many things from Feliway to flower essences to homeopathy, we finally decided that she simply had too much of her mother’s genes (her mom was a feral cat who was extremely aggressive during fostering and wouldn’t ‘tame’) to remain in the house with the other cats. We made the decision to try her out with her brother Gump in the indoor/outdoor cattery, and that has worked out splendidly! In nice weather, she can roam the backyard at will -- eating bugs, chasing butterflies, and rolling in the grass. She seems very happy.

Upon our move in June 2011 to Arizona, and with the re-homing of her brother Gump, Otter was re-integrated to our household. With fewer cats, and the two elder “Queen Bees” having passed on since Otter’s separation, she is getting along quite well with the remaining cats. Thank goodness! Okay, I spoke a bit too soon as Otter was often rough on Khepra as she tried to assert her position as Queen in the group, and he was reluctant to give up his top-cat position.