Goodbye kittens

I feel horrible doing this so late, but I just realized I never updated you about the end of the foster kitten saga.

In the middle of July, we still had 2 kittens left. They were listed on petfinder, we had bugged our friends to no end, and yet we still didn't have anyone who wanted to take them. Finally our friend David decided he would come visit and consider taking one. David already had one cat and had tossed around the idea of getting her a playmate.

We drove up to the City one weekend and met David for the drop-off. He took our pretty gray boy, Elliott, and even decided not to change his name. That made me happy. I always thought Elliott fit him pretty well.

The rest of the weekend is a long story, but basically a series of events happened that led to us randomly running into my friend Cari and her husband at Target. Cari was actually the last person on my list to call about the kittens. I had a feeling she would say no, because they already had a cat, but I knew it was worth a try.

As it turns out, their cat had died a month earlier, and when I mentioned our last kitten to them, her husband's eyes lit up. Then when he heard that Dwight was a fluffy, orange boy, I knew things were going our way. They told us they would sleep on it and let us know their decision in the morning. The next afternoon, we dropped Dwight off with his new mommy. They decided to name him Toby.

Here is the last picture of my boys together, before we took Elliott to David...

...and a funny story to go with it.

The kittens were 12 weeks old when they went to their new homes, and they had spent the last 4 weeks alone, just the 2 of them. They had never been alone, much less alone in that scary carrier without another warm body to snuggle up against. Elliott freaked out when we put him in there, and during the whole 25 minute ride to meet David. He cried and clawed and tried everything he could to get out. I was pretty worried about driving Dwight to meet Cari because I thought he would do the same thing, but to my surprise, he was perfect! Didn't cry, didn't turn in circles, just laid down and rested. I was later shocked to hear that he was not as well-behaved on the ride home with Cari. I guess he knew he was somewhere different, with someone different.

Zeus and Sophie were noticeably happier when we returned home with no kittens. We had been allowing the kittens to run around the house several hours a day, and Zeus and Sophie hated them. S could usually be found under the bed, and Z would sit in the corner and watch the kittens.

Part of me secretly hoped that we would have to keep Dwight for so long that I would be able to convince Rodney to bring him into our crew for good. I fell even more in love with him the last 2 nights that we had him by himself. We were staying at my parents' house, so he actually got to sleep in the room with us for the first time ever, and he slept on top of me all night long. He was the sweetest little guy.

In the end, all 5 kittens went to people that we know, which made me very happy. Raising them from four weeks old was such a good experience that I would do all over again. In fact, next year we might see if our humane society has a litter that needs to be fostered. One thing is for certain, it won't be happening at our house again. Speaking of that, Liddy has been hanging around here so much more since her spay surgery. She still runs if you get too close, but she sleeps on our porch all day now, as opposed to her past comings and goings. She is truly our little cat now, we just can't pet her.

Sorry this post turned out to be so long, but I wanted to get my last thoughts out and close this chapter.