Wee Kitty

For the last week I've had a wee kitty living here. Teapot was out doing stuff in the yard for the end of summer... you know putting away chairs and fixing up the deck so that there were no flower pots to freeze etc.. he happened to go out to the road where he had left our garbage bin for the garbage man to pick up, and while he was out there he noticed a wee grey kitty all alone on the side of the road. Not wanting to leave it for owl fodder he brought it into the house.

Unfortunately, I am allergic to cats.... not all cats, just to the females. People always look at me funny when I say that. But ever since Teapot and I have been married we have had a male cat as part of our family. Never a female. I don't know how we figured out that I was allergic to females only... I think we just figured it out.

Teapot, as a child always had cats in his home and it didn't take me very long to realize that every time I went to his parent's home I would have a severe allergic reaction... Eyes watering and sinus congestion and so forth... to the point that I was miserable no matter how hard Teapot's mom would clean... I felt really bad that she would work so hard to make her home livable for me and still I would have a horrible reaction.  Teapot missed having cats around and I think he really felt that he was a cat person more than a dog person.

When we moved to Ontario first when we were married, there was a great orange cat who followed us home one day.... (actually it followed our dog ,, but that is a really long story). We started feeding the cat out doors and it would come to our home regularly for food. Winter came and the temperatures would be oh so cold and I started to feel sorry for the poor thing.... I would let it in to feed it and then let it back out again. Well soon it was in all the time.... except at night.... I definitely couldn't do a litter so he was pretty good about letting us know when he needed to go out to do his business.  He lived with us for 6 years until we moved to BC.... then he disappeared.

By this time we had children and they were devastated when the cat went missing especially Daughter #1 who adores cats. So we got another cat.... but we made sure it was a male. also, by this time, I knew that I could handle having a male cat around me for limited amounts of time and with limited handling.
Females still posed a problem.

Our second cat was white and went by the name of Mister O'Malley.  Mister O'Malley didn't last long since he got sick and bloated and died withing a day of us realizing that there was something wrong. We decided to wait a while but it wasn't long before our big black cat Midnight came along when Teapot was talking to a lady in town who was looking for homes for kittens. He's black and he's short haired and he is still with us after ten long years. I do not have a problem with him.  Then two years ago came along Oozle the cat.... also known as Pinecone.... he disappeared last month and we were all really upset that he disappeared.... we think we know what happened to him though.

Lately, we have been seeing a great grey owl hanging around, and then Teapot discovered that there is a nest of grey owls in a copse of trees not far from our house.  We have seen owls and eagles lift full grown cats off the ground and then let go in order to kill the cats. Then they lift them up and take them to their young to be eaten.... it is a horrible sight. We think Pinecone/Oozle departed this world via the owls.

Now that I have told you the long rambling story of our cats, I'll get back to telling you about what I started to tell you all about..... so Teapot brings home the stray kitty.... Of course the first thing we did was put out a public service announcement to our community, to let people know we had found a wee grey kitty and that if someone had lost their cat they could come pick it up whenever they wanted. This got no response... zip... zero... nadda!

It is a female so we cannot keep it. Already she has made my eyes water. Daughter #1 is upset that she can't keep the wee thing but she has asked her best friend to take the kitten... (she lost her cat a year ago). The problem is that her friend is away for the next week and so we won't know if she can take the kitten for another while yet.... and so we take care of the kitten while I try not to have reactions and Daughter #1 and #2 and Teapot (and if truth be told, me too) grows fonder and fonder of the little wee cutie. She is a very nice natured cat and she's already got the dogs liking her......  it's hard not to like her.

But she has to go....

I hate dilemmas.....