And I was a bad meowmy and didn't remember it until late in the day (very long hard day in our household). Not to worry, she's was still spoiled all day long (as usual).
It was 8 years ago today when our dog Ellie Mae started pacing around the house looking out the windows and getting very anxious. We let her outside and followed her to a garden bed behind the house. A feral cat had just finished delivering 3 kittens. How did Ellie Mae know this? Even though there were no windows on that side of the house, she made a direct line to the kittens. Then looked at us to do something about it.
I know it's not wise to move kittens, but these were out in the open and there were dogs that roamed the neighborhood. So we built a shelter on top of them where dogs could not get in. The next day, the mom moved them to another spot. So we moved the shelter. Then another move up against the house off the front porch. On goes the shelter and mom decided it was OK.
We handled the kittens everyday with mom watching us warily. When they started to move around, Scarlett would run towards my husband every time he came out the door. It was almost as if she opened her eyes for the first time, saw DH, and fell in love!! The porch was about 8 inches off the ground and Scarlett used to leap up and haul herself up to get close to him. If we sat side by side, she always went to his lap and wouldn't have anything to do with me (this went on for the next 4 years).
We noticed that the mom wasn't taking very good care of the kittens and had decided to intervene and supplement their feeding. On the day I went up to the vet to get KMR and bottles, I returned to find the mom gone. We never found her. So Scarlett and her siblings Maggie and Twinkletoes came into the house that day and we learned how to handle orphaned kittens. We found homes for her siblings, but there was no way that DH was going to give up Scarlett. She is the apple of his eye and her finest slave.
Eight years later she still rules the house, even though she is under 7 pounds. She only plays with Stumpy and Spanky, because the rest of the cats are beneath her. And to see her put Stumpy (14 pounds) and Spanky (18 pounds) in their places always cracks me up.
She is our drama queen, always announcing herself when she enters a room, and she has different sounds for different entrances. She screamed one time when friends were visiting and on the way out, picked her up and joked about taking her home. She cried like she was dieing one time when she had a tummy ache (the ER vet that night didn't find a thing wrong with her).
She was dipped in cute on the day she was born and her size makes her look like a kitten. We joke that when you look up the word "cute" in the dictionary, you will see her picture.
It took her 4 years to realize that there was life beyond her daddy. Since then she's as much as a momma's girl and a daddy's girl, and she sleeps curled up against my side every night. She'll chirp when you lift the covers so that she can crawl inside and get closer.
At eight, she's starting her senior years. I'm not sure we'll be able to handle it if she gets sick. I hate to admit it, but Scarlett is both DH and my favorite in the house.
As a kitten with her brother Twinkletoes:
She got the prototype Kitty Cuddler:
And she's a nip head:
Snuggled inside daddy's shirt:
And in her favorite spot in the entire world (she gets carried around like this for hours each day:
The day she discovered that she really liked pork
:
And how could you not love this face?
It was 8 years ago today when our dog Ellie Mae started pacing around the house looking out the windows and getting very anxious. We let her outside and followed her to a garden bed behind the house. A feral cat had just finished delivering 3 kittens. How did Ellie Mae know this? Even though there were no windows on that side of the house, she made a direct line to the kittens. Then looked at us to do something about it.
I know it's not wise to move kittens, but these were out in the open and there were dogs that roamed the neighborhood. So we built a shelter on top of them where dogs could not get in. The next day, the mom moved them to another spot. So we moved the shelter. Then another move up against the house off the front porch. On goes the shelter and mom decided it was OK.
We handled the kittens everyday with mom watching us warily. When they started to move around, Scarlett would run towards my husband every time he came out the door. It was almost as if she opened her eyes for the first time, saw DH, and fell in love!! The porch was about 8 inches off the ground and Scarlett used to leap up and haul herself up to get close to him. If we sat side by side, she always went to his lap and wouldn't have anything to do with me (this went on for the next 4 years).
We noticed that the mom wasn't taking very good care of the kittens and had decided to intervene and supplement their feeding. On the day I went up to the vet to get KMR and bottles, I returned to find the mom gone. We never found her. So Scarlett and her siblings Maggie and Twinkletoes came into the house that day and we learned how to handle orphaned kittens. We found homes for her siblings, but there was no way that DH was going to give up Scarlett. She is the apple of his eye and her finest slave.
Eight years later she still rules the house, even though she is under 7 pounds. She only plays with Stumpy and Spanky, because the rest of the cats are beneath her. And to see her put Stumpy (14 pounds) and Spanky (18 pounds) in their places always cracks me up.
She is our drama queen, always announcing herself when she enters a room, and she has different sounds for different entrances. She screamed one time when friends were visiting and on the way out, picked her up and joked about taking her home. She cried like she was dieing one time when she had a tummy ache (the ER vet that night didn't find a thing wrong with her).
She was dipped in cute on the day she was born and her size makes her look like a kitten. We joke that when you look up the word "cute" in the dictionary, you will see her picture.
It took her 4 years to realize that there was life beyond her daddy. Since then she's as much as a momma's girl and a daddy's girl, and she sleeps curled up against my side every night. She'll chirp when you lift the covers so that she can crawl inside and get closer.
At eight, she's starting her senior years. I'm not sure we'll be able to handle it if she gets sick. I hate to admit it, but Scarlett is both DH and my favorite in the house.
As a kitten with her brother Twinkletoes:
She got the prototype Kitty Cuddler:
And she's a nip head:
Snuggled inside daddy's shirt:
And in her favorite spot in the entire world (she gets carried around like this for hours each day:
The day she discovered that she really liked pork
And how could you not love this face?
