Gotcha Day

Happy 2 year Gotcha Day to Tazo and Earl Grey!!!

(Sorry for the poor quality on the pictures. These were from Daddy's camera phone.)

This is us having our first snack at our new home.

Our favorite napping spot.

The next two pictures are of our first trip to the V-E-T.

And this is one of Momma's favorites of us. It was taken a couple of months ago. It's Tazo doing her best Count Dracula impression.

Tazo here with our Gotcha Day story:
Momma had never had a kitty before, but she always thought they were pretty cool. But she had also always thought of herself as a "dawg person," so she was a bit unsure about kitties. Over the last few years, though, she had seen a couple of kitties that caught her eye, but things didn't ever pan out for adopting them. She decided that one day she wanted to have a kitty and she just figured if and when she was meant to have a kitty in her life, one would pick her. And, so, that's where *we* come into the picture...

In late September 2005, Daddy came home and told Momma that a guy from work had some kittens that needed a home. She thought about it and thought about it. She really wanted them to come and live with her and Daddy, but she was afraid of what Shadow and Titus would think. And, being a dawg person, she didn't really know a whole lot about living with kitties. But she thought about it and purrayed about it and talked to Daddy lots about it. Then the guy e-mailed Daddy some pictures of the kittens. And Momma fell in love. She told Daddy that those kittens needed to come and live with them and so they made arrangements to go pick them up.

On Friday, October 7 (the day before her and Daddy were supposed to pick up the kittens), Momma went out and bought all kinds of stuff. Litterboxes, food and water dishes, food, toys, a PTU, floofy beds, and a scratchy post. She was still going between being really excited and being really scared. She was askeered because she didn't know much about cats, and even though she'd read lots about cats, there's still so much she didn't think she knew. (And boy, has she sure learned a lot in the last two years - hee hee!)

The next day was Saturday, October 8. Momma and Daddy went to a house. There was a man and two little girls that lived there. There was also a big, black dawg. Momma was happy to see that dawg because she figured the kittens would be used to dawgs. There was a very cute kitty there named Buttons (that's our Mom). She was grey with little skinny black stripes. Momma thought she was absolutely bee-yoo-tee-ful. Then Momma looked up and saw a speckly kitty eating the nacho cheese from some Taco Bell nachos. The human Dad said, "Jess! (which was one of the little girls' names) Gizmo's eating your nachos! Are you done with them?" And the little girl said, "She can have the cheese. I just want the chips." That made Momma giggle a lot. Momma and Daddy played with us a little and the guy gave them the basic info. The grey kitty (who they called Philip) was a boy and he had a big knot in his tail because it got shut in a door. The speckly kitty (who they called Gizmo) was the girl. He said that we were about 10-1/2 weeks old and that they could eat regular baby kitten kibble and were pretty good about using the litterbox. He also told them that we had a sibling, but that it had died. Momma was sad about that.

Finally, the man and the little girls said goodbye to us. Momma and Daddy had brought a PTU with them. The man put us in the PTU. Then our mom, Buttons, walked into the PTU. She washed our faces and made sure we were settled in there. Momma got leaky eyes watching this because Buttons was saying goodbye to us. She almost offered to take Buttons home, too.

We rode home in Daddy's car and then he carried us into a new house. He put us in the people litterbox room and shut the door behind him. Momma was in there, too and they were both sitting on the floor. Momma showed us where the litterboxes were - she had gotten one for each of us! She gave us a little snack and showed us where our water bowl was. She picked us up and held us and cuddled us lots. Tazo purred and purred and purred super loud. She had the loudest motor as a baby. EG purred a little. He was more askeered.

Then a very akseery thing happened. We had to get a bath. It was horrible. Daddy tried to bathe Tazo and Momma tried EG. But Tazo kept jumping around. Finally, after all four of us were soaked, bathtime was over. All our furs were soaked and we were super askeered and we were shaking a lot. Momma and Daddy wrapped us up in big, warm, floofy towels, and held us in their laps and talked to us and cuddled us lots. They explained that there were two dawgs that lived in the house, too, and that we had to stay in the people litterbox room for a little while so that we could all get used to each other. That was fine by us because one of those dawgs sounded really hyper (that would be Shadow).

Momma sat in the bathroom with us for a long time. She checked us all out. She scratched our heads and tummies. She giggled at our purrs. She counted all our toesies. she tried to figure out who was the boy and who was the girl. She had some names picked out, but she wanted to make sure that she was giving the right name to the right kitty.

Daddy let the dawgs come to the bathroom door and sniff. The one dawg sounded really hyper. We were not too sure about that one. We couldn't see what was going on because the bathroom door was shut, but it was pretty loud out there with that one dawg barking and snorfling at the door. The other dawg (which was Titus) was very calm. He just sniffed at the door and then walked away.

Momma finally gave us another little snack and then left us alone in the bathroom to take a nap. When she came back in, she found us cuddled up in the sink. She thought that was pretty cute.

Daddy kept asking what she wanted to name us. Since she wasn't 100% sure what sex we were, she came up with a list. Hagrid and Hermione, Sirius and Remus (yes, she's a Harry Potter fan), Tazo and Chai, Tazo and Numi, Barclay, keep our same names (Philip and Gizmo) and well, she didn't know. She had never had a pet before that didn't come already named. She was starting to stress out.

We had our first V-E-T appointment on 10/13/05. Daddy insisted that we have names before we went. Momma thought that since we were going to be Titus' cats (ie, T's cats, ie tea cats), Momma had it narrowed down to Tazo, Numi, Chai, & Sirius. I was always going to be named Tazo. Momma thought I just looked like a Tazo. Which left EG to be Numi, Chai, or Sirius (because Momma loves Sirius Black from Harry Potter, and because EG always looked so serious). But then, Momma didn't think she should name him Sirius - which is also a dawg star. (Can you imagine that? A cat named after a dawg star?! The horrors!) She also thought Chai and Numi were too girly, if in fact he was a boy. So she struggled to come up with another kind of tea. Red Rose was definitely out. hee hee As was Lipton. And Zinger. And a whole list of other teas that Momma didn't think were fitting. Finally, she thought about Earl Grey. He was grey and he looked serious and a little royal, so the Earl part might fit.

Momma couldn't get out of work for the V-E-T appointment, so she sent Daddy with these instructions. The speckle kitten is Tazo. The grey kitten is Earl Grey, if it's a boy, and Numi or Chai (preferably Numi) if it was a girl. And set up appointments to get them spayed and neutered ASAP.

Daddy came home from the V-E-T's office with the following news. We were officially Tazo and Earl Grey. And our names made the V-E-T ladies chuckle a little. And we couldn't get spayed and neutered yet because 1) we didn't weigh enough (Tazo weighed 3.4 pounds and EG weighed 3.8 pounds - and the V-E-T said she'd like us to weigh at least 4 pounds), and 2) EG's hoo-ha's hadn't shown up yet. Hahahahahaha!

Momma said we could have a Gotcha Day party tomorrow for Twins Tuesday. It's gonna be sort of low key because she's still stressed out. But everyone's invited over for 'nip and snacks and naptime. Hope to see you all there!