"Look at her tail! We should name her Stubby," is what I jokingly said the day we got Stubby, the still small, half-tailed cat.
My sister and I had been wanting a kitten for a while so on that rainy June day, we went and got her from the SPCA. When we arrived at the SPCA, we headed straight towards the kittens. There were 3 cages that caught my eye. A huge one with hand sized calico kittens, a normal sized one with a gray kitten playfully trying to get out and gnawing on the bars, and another normal sized one with 3 kittens.
My dad said that we needed to get a short-haired female, so that knocked out the gray kitten because he was a male. Also, even though the paper said that the calicos were short haired, they looked like they were too small and long-haired. The calicos were pretty darn cute so I wasn't too happy about that.
That left the cage with the three kittens.
There was one sitting in a litter box, so I told the boy working there to grab her. This was the kitten that became Stubby. I smiled because she had a heck of a grip on that boy's shirt, causing him trouble when he tried to put her down in the room where you could play with them. As my sister and I were sitting in the folding chairs, we put the toys in front of her. She was mainly under the chairs or in a corner, which made us laugh. One of the times when she was running fast from one destination to another, we noticed her tail.
After some shocked silence, I said my joke about the name Stubby. After some more playing, we made our decision to take her home.
It was a little distance between the SPCA and my house so it wasn't exactly a fun ride for Stubby. After much meowing, we had arrived home. We had earlier decided she would stay downstairs so we walked into our basement and let Stubby out.
Stubby's first move was to go hide behind the toilet. After sitting with my sister in folding chairs for a bit she came out. We got two red flags for her to play with. The three of us were enjoying it. Although her name wasn't officially Stubby yet.
The name Stubby became official with a call to the vet.
We realized we didn't have one thing that was needed. That was a bed. So after a quick stop to PetSmart Stubby had a bed. Once everyone settled down, we had a few visits. One interrupted Stubby's nap. Once everyone was gone my sister and I got on Whyville for the summer party. Now to keep an eye on Stubby we had to do this downstairs. It was a fun evening and when everyone was down on the floor staring at Stubby, she started to fall asleep. We headed up to take a shower.
Here's a picture of Stubby, our kitten:
