Saturday, June 05, 2010

It’s a girl!

...and so, the hiccuping uterus has STFU.

J and I went to the Cocheco Valley Humane Society today to “look”. I’ve wanted a baby for a while, and as I discovered, death makes me want a new baby. (In order: some rabbits when mom died, Apache after dad died and now Charlie. Charlie is named after her grandfather, of course.) As soon as J said we’d look, I knew we were coming home with a cat.

We almost came home with Dino, a 4 year old tabby who has lived with dogs. The only problem was Dino was a “house soiler”. I guess after his owners had a baby, Dino decided to stop using the litter box. We’ve already had a cat that didn’t like to use the box. Pumpkin was scraped, given antibiotics, anti-depressants, and even Rescue Remedy. Nothing worked. I really didn’t want to go through that with another cat. Cat pee STINKS worse than dog pee. So, we gave up on Dino, even though I was finally warming to the idea that not all older cats are damaged goods. (Should have talked to the shelter volunteer first!)

It came down to three kittens - Spidey, Chase and Tootsie. Chase and Spidey didn’t like me very much, but Tootsie seemed to like both of us, so Tootsie it was. Of course, the name was the first to go. I couldn’t do Tootsie. It would have driven me nuts. After a lot of trial and error (dude, I totally would have named the cat “Bruce”, but J said it wasn’t right for a girl.), we came up with Charlie.

I know, most of my friends will be all “Charlie the Unicorn!”, and while that’s not why I chose the name, I have found myself saying “chaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrlllllllllliiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee” a lot.

Adding a third furry member of the family was not something as spur of the moment as it probably looks… I knew Arsey would do well with the kitten. Arsey LOVES all other animals. (As long as they’re not near her food.) Apache, on the other hand, takes some time to get warmed up to new people, so I knew it wouldn’t be that easy with a kitten. We’re a little further on the first day than I thought I’d be, but we’re far from being a happy family. All things in time. Introducing him to Arsey wasn’t all that easy either.

Welcome to our world, Charlie. I do think you’ll like it here.