...yep, been a while.
*cough*
So, a bunch of changes went down since my last writing...in April...anyways.
1) We bought a house!
My husband and I rapidly outgrew our apartment, so we went on the hunt for a larger one we could rent, preferably one that'd be big enough to support us starting our family in the next year or two. Well, we live(d) in a college town, and the cost of apartments in the small city just down the street was...unreasonable, to say the very least. On a whim, we did some thinking, crunched some numbers, and hunted around until we found a 3 bedroom house we loved. That was, oh, May.
We moved in on September 19th...if that doesn't tell you how drawn-out closing was. It is very much a buyer's market in our area, meaning houses are for sale at
fantastic prices, but all the real estate lawyers in our area are swamped. There was a solid month of back-and-forth between the seller's attorney, our attorney, the mortgage people's attorneys--it was a
blast.
... I'll pause the sarcasm here.
But
we're finally in! Painting isn't anywhere near done, which is stressing me out. I'm doing what I can between all the other chaos. We're still living more out of boxes than I'd care to admit thanks to a bathroom reno that had to be done
while we moved in, my getting sick, and our other big change:
2) We adopted a kitten!
In the middle of July, an all-black, female kitten had been spotted running around Hubster's sister's yard. She and my mother-in-law asked us if we'd take the female kitten, and we agreed. In the meantime, however, my sister-in-law's neighbor's girls had adopted the kitten and named her Shadow. We were bummed, but we let it go. We couldn't keep a kitten at our apartment anyways and had yet to get our closing date, so we figured God was just telling us he had other plans.
Well, he did: Shadow had a brother, a tuxedo kitten, and he had set up home on my sister-in-law's porch. Reportedly, my sister-in-law opened her back door, asked him what he wanted to do, and this kitten came rushing in and never left. Hubster's sister called us, and we agreed to take him once we got into our house. She agreed, in turn, to care for him until then. Thanks to his hilarious mustache, she and her girls took to calling him Pablo Mustachio, a name that stuck.
 |
| Meet Pablo! |
Our little Pablo is one of the sweetest cats we've met, and he's too cute for words. His moustache becomes "milk dribbles" leading into his tuxedo chest piece, with a tiny tuft of black as a button in that area. All of his whiskers are white, even the ones over his eyes, and he has a white tummy and four white socks/booties. He's also got yellow/green/brown eyes that can't make up their mind as to what color they'll be. (I call it pistachio green...pistachio...mustachio...*ahem*) My favorite part? One of his back "socks" has a black toe.
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| I mean, LOOK at that toe! |
Pablo, as of this writing, is a little over 6 months old and 7 pounds. We moved into our house on September 19th, and he came home the 21st. Poor little guy then immediately chased that with a neutering on the 24th, where we learned he
still had roundworms (we'd treated him for that in August after his pre-adoption check-up and first round of shots), that he had retained two top canine (fang) baby teeth, and that one of those was trying to become infected. He came home from the vet on amoxicillin and on strict orders to rest: no running, no jumping, no climbing.
...
yeah...about that.
For those who are unaware, keeping a 6-month-old kitten quiet, still, and resting is about as effective as telling a kindergartner after a heaping dose of Halloween candy that it's time for a nap, post-haste. Nailing Jell-o to a wall is less of an exercise in futility. He never blew an incision, though, so we call it good. When Pablo hurt or got tired, he snuggled. When he had the zoomies and just
had to run, well, he ran. A lot. Sometimes into things.
It's readily apparent that he's going to be a very long, lanky cat when he's full grown. He's growing like a weed and into
everything we own. We've decided to make him wear these vinyl nail caps to keep him from wrecking things. Pablo's very good about seeking out his scratching lounger and scratching box when he feels the urge to scratch; he just forgets when he's playing or climbing that he packs 18
sharp claws between his four paws. With the caps on, he still can do all the things he wants, but he doesn't inadvertently wreck our banisters, curtains, or hands.
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| Like I said--house is a work in progress. And he got himself up there without help. |
We love the little hooligan, though, and feel blessed to be in a house we love and to
finally have a cat again. Both of us are huge cat people, so being pet-less drove us about nuts. Expect him to feature here regularly as, as my friends and husband tell me, I was always a crazy cat lady: it's just official now.
#CrazyCatLadyStatusAchieved
