New Kittens

A month ago, I mentioned we had to  part with our cats because of their behavioral problems.  Now, a month later, we have new kittens in our home.  Not long after having to make the difficult decision to remove Kira and Jonesy, there was a hole in our home.  I had two cats (Chekov and Sulu) before I married Jen.  We’ve had cats around the house constantly since then.  To suddenly not have cats made our home feel like it was missing an important component.  Then we learned that Amanda Clayton had a cat who recently gave birth to a litter of kittens.  She wasn’t the best of mothers in the beginning.  Amanda and her daughter Lilly had to bottle feed the kittens to keep their strength from fading.  Even with their care, only two from the litter, a boy and girl, survived the critical first few days.  We talked it over as a family and decided to ask if we could have them.

One of the intriguing aspects of this situation for me was the fact that the kittens came from the same litter.  I liked this idea because Chekov and Sulu were brother and sister from the same litter.  They came to me with a built in relationship with each other.  I didn’t have to struggle to help them get used to each other, they already were.  This familiarity helped to keep problems with jealousy or territorialism from being very prevalent.  After making the decision to open our home to the kittens, we didn’t want to bring them in too soon as they were still pretty young.  It was decided that we would wait until the first week or two of August.  This gave us the chance to clean up the messes Kira had made and to prepare ourselves to have cats in the house again.  We finally brought them home yesterday.

We chose their names very carefully.  Potential names were tossed into the ring, kicked around, and discarded or placed in the “maybe” category.  Ben and Isaac suggested the name Gumball for the boy cat.  One of their favorite cartoons is The Amazing World of Gumball on Cartoon Network.  It’s quite a clever show and has become a family favorite.  With this name unanimously approved, we decided to stay with the theme and pick the girl’s name from the female characters in the show; we settled on Penny.  Gumball is the grey kitten with spots of white and orange and Penny is the tortoise shell; black and brown with mixed measures of white and orange.   After only a few days with us, I have seen characteristics in these two very similar to Chekov and Sulu.  I really like the relationship they have with each other.  They play together and don’t like it when one is out of sight of the other for too long.  Penny is the more high-strung of the two; Gumball is easy going.  Also, spending their first two months in a home with young children has helped them to not be skittish with us or with company.  They are also amenable to being picked up and held.  We’ve all fallen in love with these two new members of our family and hope to have them with us for a long time.