Two brothers. Two different characters. Gizmo, the daredevil. Who from the very beginning stared down all strange cats who stood in his way. Who enforces his will with all his might (or at least tries to). Who is immediately there when you call him. Who literally forces himself on you for your cuddles.

And Kalle, the shy one. He prefers to flee to a safe place as soon as danger lurks in the form of strange cats. He lets himself be begged. He meows briefly at the bottom of the stairs, disappears back upstairs to his safe territory and occasionally peers around the corner, asking to be followed.

Having grown up together, the two of them eventually drifted apart for some unknown reason and often had a real fight.

For this reason, Gizmo came to me at the end of 2015 and had a hard time with some of my other cats for a long time because of his nature. Because he never wanted to be subordinate. But we came to an arrangement, at some point there was only a short hissing and today it’s quite peaceful.

When I was supposed to take over Kalle as well, I started to think about it. It’s going really well at the moment. What if it starts again with the two of them?

After some initial grumbling and complaining, it turned out that all the worries were unfounded. Gizmo has become something like Kalle’s bodyguard. Whenever Kalle ventures out on his first forays, Gizmo is always close by. He stands in front of him when, for example, Louise gets too cheeky with “the new one”. He plays with him, romps with him across the upper floor, but sometimes also downstairs, and he cleans him often. And Kalle seems to enjoy it.

I’m optimistic that things will stay like this between the two of them, because Gizmo has become much more social and calm here, which is probably also due to the fact that there are a few more cats here who have shown him that it’s better to be subordinate from time to time.