245/365 - Meet Teddy

Randi has been asking for a pet of her own for months now. We've looked at and considered hamsters, gerbils, dagu's, chinchilla's, etc. However, I'm not keen on the idea of an animal having to live in a cage and knowing how kids are, I'm afraid it'll be fun and exciting for about 2 weeks and then the poor thing will be yesterday's news, so we switched gears and talked about getting a cat instead. Michael loves cats, and even though I prefer dogs, I don't mind cats...especially cute one's with fun personalities. So we brought up the idea to Randi and she seemed on board with it. We looked on the Pet Finder site and one kitten in particular caught her eye. His name was Teddy. The next day I went to our local animal shelter to see what they had to choose from. Most of the cats there were older than what I wanted, however, much to Micheal's horror, I almost brought home a Siamese and an adorable Chihuahua. So early this morning I called the shelter Teddy was listed at to see if he was still available, and as luck would have it, he was. I also asked if they had other young kittens as well so Randi would have several to look at and choose from and was told they had lots to pick from, so we decided to head up right away so as to not risk loosing Teddy to someone else. We had a talk with Randi on the way there telling her that just because Teddy was cute in his picture, he might not be nice or want to come live with her, so she needed to keep her heart open and let a kitten choose her and not to fall in love with one for the wrong reasons. She took it all in and seemed to understand what we were saying. When we walked into the cat area at the shelter, Teddy and his litter mates were in the very first cage Randi walked up to. We took him and one of his sisters out to play, then we got out a couple of very timid grey kittens who just wanted to run away and hide under things, then we got out an orange kitten that must have been on crack because he was so crazy, and we got out a few others that were sweet, but none were as kind and gentle and loving as Teddy. When the kids picked him up, he just lay in their arms and when they played with him he wanted to be with them and didn't try to run away. He was docile and calm, yet playful and silly. After about 30 minutes, Randi asked very sweetly if she could adopt Teddy? I asked her if he'd spoken to her heart, and she said he had, so that was that, and we began the process of officially making Teddy a member of our family. He has to go to the vet for shots and micro-chipping, so we can't pick him up until next week but he is already very much loved by two little children...and truth be told, I like him too!




Randi wanted to fill out the adoption forms all by herself.