oh the cuteness!

mew! mew!

A few weeks ago I got in touch with the foster home coordinator at the Humane Society and volunteered to foster kittens. Today we got our first litter! A momma cat, Minnie, with two newborn babies! They were just born this afternoon. One is black & white patched, and the other is black with gray on its back & legs. She's a young cat, only about 9 months old herself, and her previous owners took her and the father cat into the shelter yesterday because they have a new baby and the cats were too much to deal with. (Frustrating lame excuse, but oh well.) Anyways, they may not have even known Minnie was pregnant, though they should have expected it, having unfixed pets of both genders living together... Minnie looks nearly identical to our resident cat, Noni, except instead of his sprinkling of white hairs on his black coat, she has a small white triangle on her chest.

The kids, especially Noodle, are very excited, as am I. I hope everything goes well with the mother nursing the babies these first couple of days. The adoption coordinator said that she saw Minnie nursing one of them, so hopefully the instincts have kicked in and they'll do just fine. I hope to take some pictures tomorrow and will post them when I do.

world's worst blogger

I think I'm in a blogging slump, if you hadn't noticed. I think it was sparked when we were no longer able to keep our dog Louie, which really broke my heart and sent me into a tailspin. I didn't want to go into all the details here simply because it hurts to go into everything, but we did get another dog that is a lot more compatible with the family dynamics and our goals as a family. Her name is Daisy, and she's a Bichon Frise (which is French for, essentially, fluffy little dog). We also were able to take in David's business partner's cat, Noni, when he had to move to a different apartment. The cat & the dog get along great, which is something Louie would never have been capable of doing. To make the long sad story shorter, I came to the realization that while Louie was a great dog for ME, being a mother required me to look at the needs of the whole family instead of just at what I wanted. And it turned out that Noodle & Spud were suffering because of my divided attentions. Louie wasn't the sort of dog that the whole family could do things with, as he was extremely exciteable and strong. I couldn't take him on walks with the kids, as it took all my effort and focus to keep him under control. And playing in the backyard required that the kids be primarily spectators, because when they tried to get in the game, they frequently got bowled over. It didn't seem fair for my animal loving kids, especially Noodle, to have only a spectator role with our family pets. Especially as Louie would also preclude having other pets--no other dogs or cats or rabbits or anything. He just didn't know how to handle any of those. He was great with people, but only people. And while there was likely a chance he could have been trained out of some of his reactivity, I had to be honest with myself and admit that I was not the person who was up to the challenge.

I've been grateful at how well Daisy has fit into our family, though. It has reaffirmed to me that I made the right decision for our family, even though it has certainly been an awful experience to have to learn from.

I'll try and be a bit better. Even if it's just for my own personal sense of validation. After all...