our new feline friend

We haven't had any pets since having children. That's been on purpose, of course... we haven't wanted to deal with training an animal while also training little children. We did have chickens for a few years, but they didn't require training, and they also didn't come in the house. Well, they weren't supposed to come in the house.

Abraham has been telling us for quite a while that his favorite animals in the whole world are kitty cats. Priscilla's favorites are grown-up ponies, but that doesn't seem to be a feasible animal for us to adopt at this time, so we have decided to begin with a kitty for now. We were at some friends' house one day and they had several half-grown cats that had followed us home a time or two before, and they were looking for homes for them, so we decided to adopt one.

It's a little strange to have a pet after not having one for so long. But he is a welcome diversion for all of the kids. Cheap entertainment, you might say. The kids all like to cuddle him and play with him. Even Ezekiel will say "kitty?" when he is not in the room, or go from room to room calling "meow? meow?" in hopes of finding him. (Can I just say that it is especially funny to me when Ezekiel crawls around acting like a kitty and calling "meow"?) Oscar really likes being around us and would sleep in the kids' room, preferably on their beds, if I let him. We named him Oscar, after "Oscar, Cat-About-Town" from our James Herriot book. He's quite a nice little cat and I'm glad we decided to adopt him.

a picture from Oscar's first week with us

(can you tell how excited Abraham is about Oscar?)

sleeping on Ruthie's lap one evening after being ejected from the kids' room

(I suppose cuddling with a doll is next best thing to cuddling with a child?)

hanging out next to me while I was on the computer

(he fell off the filing cabinet a few minutes after I took this)

going for a ride in the doll stroller, courtesy of Ezekiel

(he's too small for it, but goes along for a while anyway)