Yup, animals will do that. Can’t imagine a home without them. They’ve proven that petting an animal will lower your blood pressure. I’m sorry I can’t let my two out into the neighborhood, they definitely miss out on some fun.

I have recently welcomed into my life two wonderful kittens. Giada (Giada-Bear) and Pavlov (Pav, PavCat, PC, PaintChip, Ahab). (If you’ve seen eddie izzard’s pavlov’s cat routine you know why the name). When I was growing up around grade school time we got a cat we named Sammy. Sammy was 18 lbs of rompin stompin cat. And not because we overfed him - he’s massive. (We think has some Turkish Van in him though ALL my cats have always been rescues or shelter cats). Sammy and I used to chase each other around the house - literally. Id chase him, then he’d chase me. If I was in the bathtub hed hangout near by or jump in with me. When I went to college it was a hard time for him. We were always buddies. He would ignore me the first few days I was home each time the first year - years 2-4 were much better. When I moved back home after college to save money while going to law school, Sammy, now well over 10 years old, was my constant companion. Usually this meant laying his whole body on whatever book, binder, or case I was trying to read. Something else changed as well. Sammy, in addition to being at my side constantly, began to talk. He was never much of a talker, but now he and I could converse in short soft meows. (My mom could never tell the sounds apart his from mine). The last year of law school I met my fiance. When he visited me at home it was particularly difficult. He is VERY (like off the allergists charts) allergic to everything…including cats. On top of that, every experience he had with pets (his mothers, sisters, other peoples) was lukewarm to negative. The first time he met Sammy, Sam did what he normally did to new people…went right up to them and if they sat on the floor with him he go plop right next to him and roll on his back for someone to scratch his tummy. This was followed up by Sam’s other specialty - giving people paw massages. My fiance was enamored with the cat. However he was still very allergic to him and Sammy is a MASSIVE shedder. When we (my fiance) moved from Chicago to the DC suburbs after I graduated, I was a mess. It broke my heart (it still does) because my mom and I always shared Sammy and in the end he was too old to handle the move well and then be by himself all day while the fiance and I were at work. Plus my mom would be heartbroken at his loss as well and my fiance needs oxygen. But I still feel horrible because I cannot explain to my Sam why I left him again. When I come home to visit he still remembers me, though now at 17 he has lost about 1/3 of his weight (still huge compared to my two though and Pav’s nearing a year old). When we moved out here, I struggled with the loss of animal companionship on a daily basis. My fiance agreed to undergo allergy shots (not just for me - when I said he is allergic to everything by that I mean 38/42 tests reacted strongly at the allergy panel)…but that took almost a year to have any sort of affect. He still wasn’t sold on getting an animal either. Though I love both dogs and cats, I think in the end I’m definitely a ‘cat person’. Although Sammy had warmed my fiance to the idea, it was something he was going to do for me if we ever got a cat. And by his stipulations it had to be ‘like Sammy’. By March of this year, 2008, after being petless for a year it showed. Of course I was also miserable at work but the amount of stress having an animal in your life can relieve is truly incalculable. My fiance was doing a bit better around animals and when I saw a picture of a small grey kitten in a shelter an hour away…the expression was unmistakably ‘sammy-like’. So we made the trip to Baltimore to meet him. In rush hour. On the beltway. (Those of you DC’ers appreciate the time sink here). To our dismay someone was lined up already to adopt him. We would only get him if that candidate fell through. We put our name in line but I was heartbroken. A coworker suggested a rescue group in NoVA and with the fiances permission I reached out to them. A day later the shelter called about the little grey kitten - he was ours! We always said we were going to get two. And I had always had male cats so thats what I wanted. But we waited a bit for Pavlov, our baby boy, to adjust to life with us. Hell on wheels doesn’t begin to describe him - he literally hangs from my ceiling at times. The rescue group that I contacted meanwhile would ask from time to time if it was the right time for our second kitty. Truth be told we wanted to wait. We wanted him to bond with us a bit. Looking back he really needed a friend because he was probably very lonely during the day - and thats why he was so overly affectionate and attention seeking at night…so I threw up the hail mary. I had always wanted a siamese. Getting a siamese through rescue however wasn’t exactly what anyone would call common. So I told the rescue group if they got a siamese we’d be interested in meeting him. HIM. Meanwhile, my fiance fell madly in love with Pav. Instead of coming home and playing video games he’d play with the cat. For hours. He’d invent new games for Pav. Made new toys out of pepsi boxes. “Kitten forts” made out of blankets and pillows. He’d pick Pav up and just carry him around the house. But the day I knew that my fiance wasn’t just happy that I was happy was when he turned to me and said “thank you for the cat babe”. So a few weeks later I get a call from the rescue group. A 6 week old siamese GIRL was coming to this rescue group from a sister organization in WV. Though I did want a male, we agreed to meet her. She fit in your hand. Zero interest in toys, or us, shy, and obviously intimidated by her surroundings, the other kittens she was transported with, and everyone in general. My fiance and I were very apprehensive about welcoming her into our home. Extreme shyness could be overcome but that takes time and often as you said EKA, loads of patience and work. While we were ok on the first two, the latter we were afraid we wouldn’t be able to do properly. I don’t know what made us take the plunge. Perhaps the serendipitousness of Pav’s arrival in our lives, perhaps the fact that in its 10 year history the rescue group had only had ONE other siamese kitten come to them, perhaps it was insanity. Though there was a period of adjustment (pav being the quintessential rough and tumble boy, Giada being a princess from the start), things started to work themselves out. One small problem however. Giada would still flinch and hide when my fiance walked by. It was about this time that we started to allow the cats in the bedroom. I had zero patience for Giada licking my eyelids at 3am and turtled under my covers. One night I put her outside the bedroom door and closed it. (I would later regret this - she now knows all the doors in the house that because of improper hanging don’t actually shut). The next night she started harassing my fiance instead. Who has much more patience. She sleeps on his head. Under his neck. On his pillow. He now wakes up in the middle of the night if shes NOT there, not because she’s licking his face. (Thank god the shots are on maintenance now). She steals all HIS socks and hides them or carries them around the house. Pav has developed a relationship with the squirrel outside and softly meows while looking at trees for it. (Hence Ahab-the squirrel is Pav’s white whale). Pav and Giada themselves are inseparable. My fiance said to me the other day “how do people not have cats?” And when we visited Sammy a month ago…he finally understood why it was harder for me to leave Sam than it was anything or anyone else in Chicago.