And then there were two

This past fall, a family of kittens arrived at our house. I guess their mama knew I would take care of them, being the cat lover I am. Mama cat brought us four baby kitties, all very tiny and very skittish. So we let them hang out for a couple of weeks until we officially decided whether or not to keep them, even though I knew we'd keep them as soon as we saw them. By Christmas time, it became quite obvious that we didn't quite need or want all FIVE cats, including our dog, Jenny. And although I knew this was the case, I stubbornly made them all a vet appointment, thinking that I could get them all there. Andy and I worked for three hours one night to catch them all. We ended up with all but one in the garage, ready to take them the following morning. The last cat remained in our house, and we literally could not catch it! We finally shooed it out the door (only after it ran across my dining room table and scratched it), and I decided that was it! We would only keep the two kittens that had really warmed up to us and would let us pick them up. So the next morning, off they went to the vet for a check-up, still unnamed, and I took the other three cats to the animal control, where I was assured they would be adopted. This was a very emotional trip for me because even though I knew the cats would end up with a new home, I felt like I was giving up on them. But, as I said before, we pretty much felt like we had a full plate with the two friendly kitties and Jenny. Nothing prepared me for dropping them off, where I had to put them in the "dog kennel" room and one of the cats got loose and almost got mauled by the dogs. As you could imagine, I was bawling my eyes out as we were trying to catch it, which we finally did, and the cats were then taken to the "cat room", where they should have been in the first place. TRAUMATIC!!! Later that afternoon, I went to pick up my two friendly kitties from their appointment. Let me just say, I'm not sure we could have afforded to keep all five, getting all the necessary shots and spays and neuters, not to mention feeding them!

So as you can see from the pictures above, our two friendly kitties remain and have been appropriately named "Blackie" and "Gray-Gray". Original, I know, but it's been a long time since we've named animals around here. Jenny is 15 or so and my devil cat, Zha-Zha, was 19 years old. Plus, I had kind of already started calling them these names and when we tried to call them something else (Andy's idea was Smokey and the Bandit), it just didn't seem right. So Blackie and Gray-Gray it is...Amelia can now say their names (she actually says Guy-Guy for Gray-Gray) and I have to say that we've been blessed with two of the sweetest kitties ever! Which, by the way, I whole-heartedly deserve after enduring Zha-Zha my whole childhood. They are so good with Amelia and when we let them in the house, they know they have to stay on the rug in the entryway. I'm so glad we kept these two and I love the fact that Amelia gets to grow up with kitties!