The Christmas Kitten

Those of you who know us well may be surprised that we have acquired our very own Christmas kitten (well, day-after-Christmas-kitten, close enough). We were surprised too by our forlorn, shivering and very skinny visitor. Such a pathetic little creature as this was bound to find a place in our hearts despite Joel's quite vocal opinions about cats. To be fair, I have not been much of a cat person myself in recent years but this little one captured my heart and I knew with absolute certainty that if I did not bring it inside immediately it was going to die. If not from starvation or the freezing cold, then from the coyotes who have been frequenting the area. After my mom and I attempted to grab the cat it ran and crammed itself into the corner of our trash can enclosure. I ran inside to ask Joel (my hero) to help me get the poor thing out and the rest is history!

Our last cat, Coal, lost his place in our family when in a completely overwhelming period of my life I made the declaration, "If one more living creature demands something from me or causes me to clean up another bodily fluid I am going postal!!! Someone has to go!". I gave Joel the ultimatum, either the dog or the cat must go, so, the cat went. Now before I get hate mail from the cat people out there, I would like to explain that Coal was sent to live with my brother who is the ultimate and most awesome of animal lovers! He could appreciate every nuance of Coal's quirky (to put it mildly) behavior. When my brother had to move, Coal was granted a temporary home with my parents and has quite happily lived there ever since. I was wonderfully granted some measure of peace. In my defense, at that time I had become the mother of a 2 year old and a new born and gone through our 2 year old daughter's open heart surgery within the space of three months. Pets were very low on my priority list.

Anyway, fast-forward to December 26th, 2009. I was in a much better place to take on another cat. In fact, with my children growing up before my very eyes, I am enjoying the chance to nurture another "baby" (he/she--we still have not made a positive identification of the furry nether regions-- is approximately 8 weeks old). Of course the kids are over the moon about our new kitty and there was much celebration when none of our neighbors claimed him/her. So our last few days have been filled with they joys of litter box training, cat/dog/kid introductions and lots of scratches on my hands, ouch! We are trying to come up with names for the cat now. Zach wants to call it Cutie, Noelle wants Butterfly or Sparkles, and I am partial to Socks. Joel's name ideas shall not be mentioned, this is a family friendly blog after all.

I am open to suggestions... any brilliant ideas out there?