It’s been a busy 24 hours or so. Yesterday, Dre and I traveled to Ithaca to bring Rita Mae home. As I type this she’s laying quietly next to Dre.

Everyone is adjusting well. Or perhaps I should say as well as we could hope. The cats, when we see them, still are not sure what to make of RM. Lewis is intrigued, but keeping a cautious distance. Lilah had decided the safest place to be is on the opposite extreme of the house, under the largest piece of furniture she can find. On the plus side, this used to be her reaction to human visitors – so we’re pretty sure she might one day be ok with being on the same floor (if not the same room) with RM. RM’s fine with the cats. Her tail starts to wag everytime she spots one and she hasn’t shown the least bit of interest in chasing them.

She loves car rides and was as good as gold on the trip back to Rochester. This morning she went with us to buy a couple extra toddler gates — we’re sectioning of her free roam of the house in hopes of helping the cats adjust. She also helped us choose new plants for our gardens at Country Way Garden Center.

We’re all getting used to this new dynamic and we’re all pleased (we’ll at least us humans) with the new addition to the house. Here’s a Flickr Slide show of pictures taken from yesterday (the trip into Ithaca, picking Rita Mae up, and bringing her home).

I’m really starting to make progress on getting my day-to-day life under control. There have been a number of great opportunities that have recently come my way. Unfortunately, each of them has required a “drop everything you’re doing right now” type of attention to take advantage of them. The latest example was a grant opportunity for the OPL from HP Labs. It’s a chance to get some great funding for our work (which is good). It also requires that I shift my attention from helping our summer co-ops with their research (which is bad).

Thankfully Dre and I haven’t been letting these type of upheavals compromise our wellness work. We’re avoiding going out to eat, are trying to eat more veggies, and even have begun running in the morning. I’m even finding myself kinda, sorta, liking running in the morning. Weird.

We’re also spending time getting the house ready for Rita Mae. We’ve been spending the last few days shopping for doggie supplies and Dre’s already enrolled her in obedience courses. We’re still trying to figure out how the cats are going to react to the new member of the household. We’ve asked, but as you can see from this picture, we only seem to get one response…

Quoth Lilah the Cat "No Comment"

Things have been moving fast the last few months. The RIT Innovation Fest was a success and has led to a lot of good publicity and opportunities for the OPL. Then there was the race to graduation and the bittersweet experience of saying goodbye, for now, to a number of excellent students. And since then there’s been lots of activity at RIT and in our house.

Which leads me to the new addition to our household, a sweet beagle/jack russell mix named Rita Mae:

Dre and Rita Mae taken the day we went down to meet her. 

Dre had wanted to get a dog for quite a while and I finally realized what was good for me and got with the program. So we began to look at local animal shelters and at rescue dog sites, trying find an older dog to adopt (neither of us was interested in getting a puppy). The key thing was finding a pooch that would get along with our cats (as they obviously have seniority).

After a lot of searching and having a few dogs adopted before we could meet them, Dre came across <a href=”http://cayugadogrescue.org/ritamae.htm”>Rita Mae</a> and immediate feel in love with her. Rita was rescued from a high kill shelter in Kentucky by a group in Ithaca and has been living peaceably with other dogs and cats at a foster home.

We finally got to meet Rita Mae in person this past Thursday (after a phone interview and a home inspection) and there was no doubt she is the dog for us. We visited with her for a couple hours, took her for a walk, saw how she interacted with other animals, and got lots and lots of kisses from her. We just got the news yesterday that the adoption is a done deal and we’ll be going back to Ithaca on Friday to pick her up!

Needless to say, we can’t wait to bring her home. So more pictures and stories are coming soon.