My Cats (Part Two)

The next Saturday we headed off to the SPCA (notice how I pretend there hasn't been over a month gap since my last post?). For my wife, going to an animal shelter is traumatic. All those animals in their cages is hard for her to handle. I sometimes suspect if not for me, she would become one of those people that sometimes pop up in the news found dead in their homes with dozens of cats and/or dogs running about. I'm joking, but she does get very upset seeing those poor animals in their cages.

It didn't take long before the wife and kids had picked out a friendly black and white. My brother told us it's a good sign if a cat will allow you to hold it on it's back and rub his belly without freaking out. On a side note, I'm pretty much ok laying on my back while someone rubs my belly. I'm not sure if that's a good sign in humans though. So I picked him up, flipped him over and started rubbing. He laid limp in my arm and if not for the purring, I might have though him dead. It was good enough for me.

We paid the fee, filled out a bazillion forms, received a complementary cardboard cat carrier and took him home. Of course, we had to stop by the pet store on the way to spend about a hundred bucks on essentials.

So that's how Sylvester (or Silly-Vester as my daughter calls him) became part of the family. With the exception of the occasional stalking and pouncing on my poor thirteen year old terrier Max, he's a good cat. He is such a good cat that it didn't take much convincing from the wife and kids to get a buddy for Silly-Vester. After another trip to the shelter, Merlin joined the family.