Cats

I have to say, one of the biggest reasons I wanted out of the dorms at school was because I could finally get a cat. So of course, one of the first things I did after my husband proposed was pick out a kitten.

Dora, short for "Adorable," (and also conveniently the name on an explorer, which is her favorite hobby) is a calico cat I adopted from a family down the street. They probably have around ten cats at a time, though since they're all indoor/outdoor cats it's hard to ever get a good count, and none of them are fixed so they have kittens ALL the time.

Anyway, when I heard they had a new batch we went to take a look. I'd like to say that it was the hardest decision I've ever made in my life, and I would say that had we actually had any choice in the matter, but we didn't pick Dora--she picked us.

Don't get me wrong--she was one of the two I was really interested in anyway (we ended up getting the other one later for my in-laws, and we discovered that Dora really was the superior choice). But she made the choice for us. We played with each of them a bit, including her, but when we put her down she wouldn't leave us alone. She followed us around the house, mewing in that tiny little high-pitched kitten voice, and if we didn't pay attention, she climbed the nearest piece of furniture, as high as she could go, and meowed in our faces. And, lacking a conveniently-placed piece of furniture, she climbed our legs.

Thankfully, I refuse to wear shorts, so it wasn't really painful, it was just cute. But the little attention-slut won us over pretty much immediately. And that's how she is all the time. She loves people, all people, everywhere. She loves to be held, petted, and played with at all times, and she's always very gentle. Basically, she is the perfect cat.

But the true test came when it was time to introduce her to Olivia.

I'd read online about all the cats that were really great until the baby came along, at which point they began peeing on everything, or sulking in a closet all day, and all the ways to break it to them gently that they weren't number one anymore--rubbing the baby's clothes/blankets/lotion on the cat so they smell the same, introducing them a few minutes at a time, all of it.

And, because I'm lazy, I decided I wasn't going to do that. Dora would like Olivia, or she wouldn't, and she'd get used to it. Thankfully, she proved that there was no reason to worry.

Dora spent the first four months after Olivia was born with my in-laws, while I finished school, graduated, moved, and all of that fun stuff. So the first time they met was only about a month ago, when I finally had time to take care of her. I was sitting in bed feeding Olivia, and Dora walked in and jumped up on the bed. She walked up, sniffed Olivia, and promptly set to purring and rubbing her face on every part of the baby she could reach.

Olivia's eyes got real wide, and she reached up and pet her like she'd been doing it forever. Somehow, she knew just what to do with a cat, and Dora loved her. They were immediate best friends, and Dora still handles entertainment while Olivia eats.

I usually like to be all (probably annoyingly) philosophical in my writing, because as I'm sure I've mentioned before, I don't usually like to talk if I don't have something important to say, and that includes writing. But I honestly don't have anything meaningful to say. It just made me happy to know that my both my babies are perfect.