Boo boo kitties.

OK, so we are the "cat people" in case I haven't shared that yet. After my precious baby dog, Lola, died from cancer, we weren't emotionally ready for another dog, so we went to the SPCA and picked out Cayenne. Our intention was to have ONE cat.

She was the most pathetic looking animal on earth and we scooped her up and loved her intensely. Lola died in June and this was September.

In October, I had taken Luke to Chuck E Cheese's one day after school as a reward for good grades. As we were leaving, we saw this tiny little shivering kitten sitting in a puddle in the middle of the street. Naturally, we couldn't leave him there, so we took him home. The vet confirmed the next day that it was a boy and only 3 weeks old. We named him Tank. After weeks of nursing him (and finding out it was a girl!), we decided that we had to keep Tank who was a gorgeous long hair beauty that we fell in love with. Her name is now Tay Tay.

There. Done. Two cats. Perfect.

Then the following March, someone sent us a photo of a Russian Blue who was scheduled to be "put down". Ziggy got the email and suddenly felt a ridiculous kinship (he's Russian) and then sent it to me and despite my protests, we went at lunch to meet Mr. Blue.

Mr. Blue was already being taken later that afternoon, but they placed his little sister into my husband's arms (sneaky bastards...they could sense which one of us was the animal lover) and that was it. My husband could not leave it behind and Baby Ju Ju came to live with us (her name is Jules, but we call her Baby Ju Ju because she is still the tiniest of them all).

So fine, now we have three. We have a fairly large house and there are 3 humans, so it actually worked out well. Being a dog owner all my life, I can honestly say that 3 cats were still easier than one dog.

A week later, the shelter called my husband and told him that Mr. Blue's new parents didn't want him.

When Ziggy came to me wanting Mr. Blue, I said absolutely not. I mean, FOUR cats? We would instantly become one of those weird people with a house full of cats, right? He talked me into it only by proving to me that Ju Ju was getting beat up on by the two older cats and since Mr. Blue was her litter mate, he might protect her.

Enter Mr. Blue.

Thankfully I can say that we DID stop there and other than adding a simple Beta Fish, we are done. We've had people try to push cats on us and even a dog or two, but we've been able to say no. We've also stopped hanging around with so many animal activists - if we didn't, then our house would look like Ace Ventura's by now.

So that is my cat story. I have a cat pregnancy story to post next time, but I wanted to give you the cat background first and posting both the background and the story would be too long of a post.

I can still say honestly that 4 cats is still easier than one large dog. They are super clean and loving and never need to be walked - we love our boo boo kitties, though it is a little hard to come out the closet and admit to having four of them! And trust me, sneaking 4 cats into a 5 star hotel when you evacuate for hurricanes is NO easy task as we learned for Gustav this year!

Our cats are loved immensely and they are as much a part of the family as any of the humans are.