"I want a kitten! I know we have Sugar and Spice but they aren't kittens. They are big cats and they don't wanna play with me," my sister whined.
Every day it was the same thing. "I want a kitten." "Kittens are so cute why can't we get one?" "It's all I want for my birthday! I just a little kitten who will cuddle up by my head and sleep with me at night! Oh yeah, I also want that new Wii game . . ."
She whined about it for days on end. Once my little sister gets an idea in her head, you can't shake it out of there . . . well, the only idea we were able to shake out of her head was when she wanted to get a hunting license after we got to try out a pellet gun. Don't ask . . . just don't ask.
Finally, one day after her whining and nagging became too much to handle, my mom finally gave in and said, "Okay fine, we can get a kitten. But here are the rules: no boys. We have two girl cats and I don't want them to start spraying. No fluffy cats. We are getting a short hair. I don't want a fluffy one. Their fur gets everywhere! No orange and white cats. We had too many of those before you two were born."
That was that -- we were getting a kitten.
Now, I probably don't sound too enthusiastic about the fact that we were soon going to have a new "family member", as I'll put it, in our home. Why you ask? Well . . . we already have two older cats named Sugar and Spice. Each adds a little obstacle of their own to the kitten factor.
I'll tell you about Spice first. Spice has been with us since I was four years old. That's for ten years now! She is the first cat I've had that I can really remember. Spice would come to our house every day, rain or shine. I loved her so much although she wasn't mine . . . yet! In the winter, she would hop up onto our windowsill and I would push the screen of the window out into the snow creating a space for her to come in. She would come in and sleep under our Christmas tree.
Finally one day her "owners" came over with a bag of cat food. "Here, you might as well have the cat food too, she's your cat now," the owner said.
I was overjoyed! Spice was finally my cat. She now sleeps by my head every night.
Spice has a jealous side, though. When we got Sugar, a stray grey tabby kitten who came to our house in 2003, Spice was really angry. She avoided Sugar like the plague and hid under the bed for a month. Slowly but finally, Spice realized she would have to live with Sugar so she accepted that fact, but I'm not sure how she would react to a new kitten in the house, again.
Now another problem about getting a new kitten was Sugar. Her name may make her sound sweet, but really, she is a little nutcase. Sugar is a fighter. She attacks anything that moves and she has no fears . . . well except for the lawn mower and vacuum cleaner. Sugar even chased a few big dogs away from our house. She also chased a bear!
So those are our two dilemmas. I don't want to get a kitten then come home to find it dead.
Well, we were getting a kitten anyways.
We went to the SPCA (the animal shelter) but we couldn't find the right one. There were tons of kittens in the cages, but not the "right one" for my sister.
We were about to give up when an employee came up to us and told us that there were a few kittens in foster care. She gave us the phone number and address, and we were off to some random house to look at some kittens.
When we got there, a nice, but talkative old man, who was obsessed with cats, greeted us. He kind of reminded me of my neighbor.
He led us down to the basement and carefully opened the door. The first thing I saw was this beautiful calico mama cat and her babies. They were seriously the cutest kittens I have ever seen. Right then and there, we knew we were getting one of those kittens.
There were six kittens total.
A black boy named Prince, two twin black, white and brown cats who were both boys with the names of Freckles and Mr. Mini, a black and white cat who resembled bat man, although she was a girl named Gem, an orange and white boy named Sweetie, and a brown and silver tabby girl named Tyson.
I instantly fell in love with Tyson.
The man said we could come back whenever we wanted to watch the kittens grow, because they were still too young to take away from their mother. We had to wait till they were eight weeks old.
We came back a lot and played with the kittens. Each time Tyson would come, lie on her back on my lap and play with me. I was hoping we would get her but my sister didn't want Tyson. She said, "Tyson doesn't like me, she likes you and the cat we get has to be my cat."
In other words she didn't want to get any cat I liked.
After some thinking she finally told us her decision.
"I want Freckles," she said. "I like all the kittens but I like Freckles the best! I'm going to change his name to Fern. The only kitten I didn't really like was that orange and white one."
That was the only kitten she talked about for the next week -- Fern, or Freckles or whatever she was calling it.
A week later we went back to see the kittens. For some reason, something changed in my sister's mind. Instead of wanting Freckles she started talking more and more about Sweetie, the orange and white, fluffy boy cat.
If you remember the rules my mom set down, this wasn't supposed to happen. That wasn't the cat we were supposed to get!
Finally the eight weeks passed and we went back to the man's house and we got our kitten.
We got Sweetie, the fluffy orange and white boy cat.
My grandma decided she was going to take the mother cat since her cat passed away earlier in the year.
It was so sad when we took the mother and Sweetie away from all the other kittens. We put them into the cat carrier and all the rest of the kittens crowded around meowing.
I cried and cried because it was the last time I would see Tyson.
Sweetie is currently living at both houses, my house, and my grandma's house. Breeze, the mother cat was so sad after we took her away from her kittens. She searched my grandma's house for them. Having Sweetie with her calms her a bit so we take Sweetie back and forth between our houses.
The rest of the kittens were taken to the SPCA the same day we adopted Sweetie. They didn't even have to spend a full day there because they were so cute they were all adopted in less than 24 hours.
I'm still sad that we didn't get Tyson, but I guess she still has a good home, I hope.
Instead we have Sweetie, the fluffy orange and white boy cat that doesn't want to do anything but sleep. He sleeps anywhere and everywhere in any position. That's all he does.
I'm just glad that everything worked out for all the kittens.
We still haven't introduced Sweetie to Sugar and Spice. We are keeping them separated for a bit, but I'll let you all know how they react to the little sleepy kitten.
Here's a picture of our fluffy orange and white boy cat, Sweetie.
-ocean10kv
Author's Note: My sister is 12 years old. I think I kind of made her sound like a two year-old in here, but oh well, HaHa. Also, it's no effort to drive Sweetie between my grandma's house and our house because they live down the block from us. Sorry for the length of this article. When I started typing I just had more and more to say. I hope I didn't bore you.
