Welcome, Isabella!

If you were thought we were crazy for having four cats in our house, you can just stop reading immediately. There is now a fifth. There has actually been a fifth since late November, but only since yesterday have I felt okay about permanently calling her our cat.

The only time I feel like we have too many cats is when people ask how many cats we have. It's like growing up in a large family; it never really felt that big because everybody in my family belonged there. These are all our pets. I have the time to give each cat individual attention every day, cat food and litter aren't particularly expensive and they all seem happy to be here. Besides, Khufu is Tylor's cat and will be moving out soon and four cats in a household isn't that much, right?

We found Isabella one night shortly before Thanksgiving meowing and meowing outside our front door. She acted lost and hungry. I brought out a handful of cat food which she was very excited to have. I found out shortly thereafter that Tylor had fed her a little bit earlier that day, as well. I pet her after she ate and she responded very affectionately. She was even happy to let me pick her up. And she just had these sweet pitiful eyes. I had to bring her inside and make her mine. We started calling her Isabella and she fit in immediately. The other cats didn't have nearly as much trouble getting used to her as they did with Khufu (I'm guessing because she's female?), and she hasn't tried to leave our house since.

She's so pretty.

I did feel a little bad about taking her in because you never know if there's some family out there lamenting the loss of their cat. She seemed fairly abandoned, but you never know. I knew that if we did find her original family, it would be the right thing to return her to them (I always assumed she had people before us; she's far too affectionate to be feral).

Yesterday I was out getting the mail and overheard a couple neighbors discussing a cat that looked somewhat similar to Isabella: "Yeah, the whole litter had fluffy tails like that." I inquired, and yes, this was Isabella's sister. One of the women said that she had taken two of the kittens into her house, but "my roommates made me kick out the grey and white one because she had litter box problems." When I told her we've been taking care of her she was like "Yeah, just keep her." So she is ours now, officially. And that lady is a piece of crap for just kicking a kitten out of her house to fend for herself. (As a note, we've never had litter box problems with Isabella, so I don't know what the deal was there.)

Things to love about Isabella: Her fur is bunny-rabbit-soft. She starts purring the second anyone touches her. She loves to play and keeps Khufu busy with endless kitten battles. Her meow sounds like a bird chirping. She has natural eyeliner. She has super long whiskers that tickle your face when she's being cuddly.

Kitten Battle #567

Trevor and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary a few days ago. We have (roughly speaking) added one cat to our family each year of our marriage thus far. It'll be awesome when we've been married 25 years.

If the cats were the Spice Girls:

Baby - Tiberius

Ginger - Julius

Posh - Isabella

Scary - Khufu

Sporty - Fidel