Aw. Kitty.

It’s vacation time in my world. Not that I’m going anywhere special…it’s more of a noncation. So really, I’ve been just lazing around. I had these fantastic plans to hang some curtains and do the 87,000 projects I have around the house, but so far it has been just so much more pleasing to lay in my sister Lulu’s backyard and chat. So that’s what I’ve done for the past few days, mostly. Well, that and fight with AM, who has made a roaring recovery over at Poplar Creek and is now back at the top of her Jamie-baiting game. Monday we had an argument over why I should or should not take her old girdles home. Rest assured that said girdles are still in her possession, although whether I need them or not is still up for some debate.

I think God must have known how perturbed I was by Girdlegate ’08, because there was one heck of a rocking surprise for me Monday night. I came home pretty irritated from Poplar Creek, although AM tried to apologize by inviting me to dinner, but I refused the invitation by telling her it would be a cold, cold day before she saw me eat even the smallest bite of food in her presence. So I got back to my duplex, snapped the dogs’ leashes on, and went outside. As we were playing in the yard, I kept hearing this yowling noise. It was L-O-U-D. Once, when Pete and I were living in Greenwood Park, there was a rather “romantic” feline couple who went on a date outside our apartment. That’s about what this sounded like. So I forgot about it and took the dogs back inside.

An hour or so later, I was outside again with Fisher and Trey, and was getting ready to leave for Angie’s (Yay! More Angie!) and I could still hear all the yowling. The house next door to me, which belongs to my friend April, is empty and up for sale, and there’s a crawlspace under it. So then I decided that there must have been a mama cat having kittens under April’s house. I thought I had better go check – I mean, because I would totally have been prepared for cat gynecological surgery and all – so I put the boys back in and shut the door. When I turned around, there was this little grey head popping out of April’s yard. So I said, “What are you doing, cat?” and then…..

That cat ran across April’s yard, ran across my side yard, and jumped into my arms like a dog. And I thought, “Oh, maaaannnnn.”

So I called Mom, the Queen of Pet Rescue, and she came to check it out. It’s a little grey kitten –I think you call this color “Russian Blue” or some crazy name. My best friend (and former roomie) Chuck used to have a cat this color, and it used to beat up on Fisher all the time. Needless to say, Fisher has just sniffed at the kitten and left it alone.

I left the kitten with some water and the towel, left for Angie’s, and decided I would wait until the morning and see if it was still there. And the next morning, it was propped on its little towel waiting for me, and promptly bounded over the grass to twine itself around my feet. Apparently, I have an outside cat now. El Pedro hasn’t seemed mad about it, and the dogs aren’t really interested in it, so I’m waiting to see if it will stick around. It HAS already killed it's first mouse...or mole, or some furry critter...and I think that was a present thanking me for adopting it.

Naming the cat is becoming difficult. Baby Brother, unsurprisingly, suggested Azrael, after Gargamel's cat from The Smurfs. Since it’s getting close to Halloween, though, I was leaning more towards the cat from Miss Switch. For those of you who are not freaks like us, Miss Switch was an ABC After-School Special from when we were little, about Rupert and Amelia and their substitute teacher, who also happened to be a witch. Miss Switch had a cat and I liked the idea of naming my kitten after hers, but the name is Bathsheba. So for now we’re going with that, but what if it’s a boy cat? So I’m taking suggestions for boy cartoon cats. Or names for gender-free cartoon cats!