Journal Entry: The Animals in My Life Part II

OK, so it wasn’t exactly our idea. Sometimes the fates just conspire against you. On a beautiful Sunday morning in the fall of 2005, my husband and I were preparing for an impending visit from my parents. Upon arrival, my mother came through the front door with a rather puzzled if not concerned expression on her face. I asked her what was wrong, and she said that a beautiful cat had run up to her as she had exited her car. Apparently, the cat was crying and rubbing up against my mother to the point that she thought the cat must be extremely hungry. Much to my husband’s dismay, I immediately charged out into the driveway to look for the cat. There, beneath one of my rose bushes sat a gorgeous Siamese with brilliant blue eyes. Immediately, the cat ran up to me, flopped over on her back, and in a very coquettish way asked to have her tummy rubbed. By this time, my children’s curiosity had gotten the better of them and they had come out into the front yard to see what was going on. My children both lay down on the grass and began to pet the cat. She reciprocated their attention, purring and nuzzling. It was at this point that my heart melted. I felt very badly for the cat, as she seemed to be quite young and had no collar. Therefore, even though my husband admonished me not to do so, I had my daughter run inside to get a bowl of milk and some cat chow. Of course, my mother put the icing on the proverbial cake when she just had to remind me that we live near a very busy road. Her comment was all it took for me to take the cat in for what we initially thought would be a day or so. After bringing the cat into the house, my husband set about trying to locate her owner. On the day we found her, he canvassed the neighborhood and put up signs. Unfortunately, no one seemed to have any idea who she might belong to. So there we were with this adorable cat and no idea what to do with her. We decided to place an advertisement in the local paper and bide our time in the hope that her owner would soon lay claim. In our haste, we once again we did not take into consideration the opinion of our furry family members. Needless to say, chaos erupted almost immediately. It seemed as though all three animals took great delight in antagonizing each other and attempting to assert their dominance. We were most surprised by our seemingly helpless little girl who actually provoked a fight with our twenty pound Ember and chased him under a bed. She also managed to embed one of her claws in our dog’s nose as retribution for the dog getting a little too close for comfort. After both of our pets had a negative interaction with our guest, it was decided that she should stay in the garage. Several days went by and no calls came in. It began to look as though we would not find the cat’s owner. However, over the course of the first few days that we had her, our little hell cat began to ingratiate herself. We all grew very quickly attached to her, so much so that the kids wanted to name her. Both my husband and I knew that the minute we gave her a name that we were on the slippery slope to keeping her. So the cat eventually came to be named, though it was not a very creative name that was chosen for her. Her name evolved out of the situation that she found herself in. Not only was our little waif homeless, she also was in the “family way”. After a few days with her, I began to notice the tell tale signs that we would soon have more than one foundling on our hands. From that point on, we called her "Mommy"...