We didn’t intend to become crazy cat people. When we met I had a cat, Herbie. When it was time to move in together Bob said “What’s going to happen to Herbie when we move in?” I said “What do you MEAN what’s going to happen to him? He’s coming WITH me, we’re a package deal” I’m pretty sure I heard him mumble ‘damn it’ under his breath. Once he realized he’d be living with Herbie he spent some time getting to know him and Herbie grew on him. About a week before we moved in together we adopted Lucky, from the Marin Humane Society. I figured I’d have Herbie and Lucky could be Bob’s cat. Lucky definitely bonded with Bob; he spent a week at Bob’s old apartment before we moved in. I was a little worried about how Herbie would do with Lucky since he didn’t actually like other cats; he used to beat up my mom’s. Herbie and Lucky became fast friends, Herbie hid under the bed for about a week and I would often find Lucky under there with him just hanging out.
It’s hard to believe we lived here for almost a year with just two cats. After about six months Bob started talking about a ‘tea cup kitten’, you know the cute pictures you see of kittens in tea cups? He wanted one like that; Lucky was seven months old when we adopted him so he was almost full grown. Bob wanted a TINY kitten. He found an orange tabby at Petaluma Animal Shelter, his name was Ernie. We ‘interviewed’ him but I was worried about introducing another cat. Herbie had done so well with Lucky that I didn’t want to upset the apple cart. Bob went away for business and while he was gone I thought about it, Ernie WAS cute. When Bob got back I said “let’s go get Ernie”. We were too late, he’d been adopted. However, there was this other orange boy named Tiger. We ‘interviewed’ him and ended up adopting him, we changed his name to Ernie.
We started fostering kittens in 2007 and we did really well at first. One of my friends has our first foster kitten, Boo Boo Kitty. We brought William and Fluffy home next. Then we had Niles, Frasier and Quentin. Jack, Hurley, Abby and Penny followed. We started off with their mother as well, but she wasn’t very happy about being a mother so she didn’t stay here very long. The kittens were in one carrier and Crazy Joe (that’s what we named the mother) was in another one. Bob shook the kittens out; Hurley was the last one out. He was as wide as he was long, just a total butterball. Bob declared him to be ‘the one’ and said we HAD to keep him. So all along we knew we’d keep Hurley, but I got attached to Jack. I CRIED about Jack when it was time to turn them in. Not just a few tears, I’m talking full on CRYING. When Bob saw me all broken up he even shed a tear or two. In the end we kept Jack AND Hurley. The last batch pushed us over the top into crazy cat people land. It was a batch of five kittens and their mother, Miss Kitty. Miss Kitty was a very good mom, but she got tired of being cooped up in the bathroom with five kittens that were always climbing on her. After two weeks she went back to the shelter and we kept the kittens, Edward Munster, Ernie Jr, Snuffleupagus, Pippi and Fluffy. Edward and Snuffy were big and got neutered and put up for adoption first. Ernie Jr was next, the girls were about a week or so later. In the end Pippi was left, and it was clear no one was going to adopt her. She pooped next to the box, she growled at other cats (not ours mind you, just other cats at the shelter) and she cried NON STOP at the shelter and drove the staff crazy. One day we went into the shelter for our volunteer work and Bob actually joked with the staff saying “Soon you’ll be paying US to take her” About ten minutes later the shelter manager asked us if we would just take Pippi off their hands. They updated her shots and sent her home with us. And that’s how we ended up with SIX cats.
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