For all the times I really wish I could dump Facebook, every once in a while it does great things for me. Like today, when it popped up with my "most liked photo of 8 years ago." It was a picture looking down into the cardboard box in which we brought home Alfred and Jackie. Things like that are guaranteed to melt my heart. I had wondered how close we were to Gotcha Day. All I could remember was that it was near to Veteran's Day.
It's a story I remember fondly and love to tell. We had recently bought our house in North Charleston (the Original Smith Park), and I had been obsessing over wanting to bring home a black girl kitten to the new place. Mr S-P made sure I didn't adopt a new baby while we were still living in an apartment, house-hunting. We closed on the house in the middle of October, on my birthday. After three weeks, we had cleared the apartment, but had only begun to set up the house. We drove out to Summerville one weekend to go to PetSmart. We needed cat food for the three cats we moved to Charleston with. As we parked the car, we saw two giant tents set up in the PetSmart parking lot, with big signs announcing an adopt-a-thon. He looked accusingly at me, insisting I must have known this was happening. I truly didn't, but no way was I going to pass up an opportunity to see if that black kitten I'd begged for was in the cat tent, waiting for her new mommy to show up and take her home.
The tent was jam-packed with cats of all ages, from shelters and foster homes from the whole tri-county area. While I was sympathetic with the older kids who had less of a chance of getting homes, I was laser-focused on the kitten I had dreamed of for months. I looked at all of the faces. I picked up a few, and struggled to find the little love I knew was in there somewhere. I was trying to make eye contact with a little tuxie who wanted nothing to do with me. Mr S-P plucked her out of my hands, and put a different black and white kid in her place. Immediately this new kitten relaxed in my grasp, sprawling across my forearms. He looked right in my eyes, gave me a lazy blink, and immediately I knew he was my boy. I said he was the one, and meant it.
I had to go over to the dog tent to fill out the adoption paperwork from the shelter who had guardianship of him to that point. I didn't want him to be freaked out, so I left him with Mr S-P while I went to submit my application and pay inside the PetSmart. It took something close to half an hour to accomplish all of it. By the time I returned, the boy kitten was stuffed into the front pocket of Mr S-P's hoodie (and loving it), and the man was announcing that we were getting a second baby. While I left him alone in the tent, he made eye contact with a pair of pumpkin-orange eyes (or so they appeared in dim light). The owner of those eyes enchanted him, and she has been doing that over and over every day since then. And for the record, her adoption was a breeze. That shelter just scanned his credit card, and it was a fait accompli.
Both Alfred and Jacqueline (previously called "Alfie" and "Turtle") were so small they fit in the same cardboard animal carrier. In the car, we could hear the tiniest growls coming from the closed cardboard box. Jackie was not sure she wanted anything to do with that stinky boy she was trapped with. She got over it. I've never seen a more perfectly matched set.
I looked at the comments under the original Facebook post. My mother's comment was something like, "I'm starting the betting pool for how long until they're both fat." Boy, she was prescient. It didn't take Jack long to turn into a bowling ball. Alfred is longer than her, but they both have giant cat heads. These are easily the biggest cats I've ever raised, and I've had some bruisers in my day. Jackie still has her daddy wrapped around her finger, and her day is ruined if she doesn't get at least two hours of combined cuddle time with him, usually getting between him and grading papers or drinking his coffee. Alfred is still my own Dr Love. He drapes himself across my lap at every opportunity. Until I started this paragraph, he was on my hip. I tried to take a picture of him today, as I reclined with my feet up, taking a short break from cooking. It was all I could do to hold the phone far enough away to get all of him in the frame. He's my Big Kitty Soft Paws.
Happy Gotcha Day to my Minions of Chaos. My life has been brighter these last eight years by virtue of them being in it.
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