Who doesn’t love kitties?

Ok, so my hubby, who I’ve been married to for 23.5 years, and dated 4 years of high school prior, is not a cat person, at all. I’ve had cats, don’t get me wrong.. I love them. We had adopted 2 kittens right after we got married, before we had our first apartment. I was gutted when they were gone. He is a dog person.. me, not so much. They are ok, I don’t hate them, I just don’t love them like I do the kitties.

We were without cats intermittently, as some places we lived, didn’t allow them, and that was the hardest. And then found out my oldest child was allergic to cats, we kind of tried to not make her allergies worse by having them for awhile..

My youngest daughter was in kindergarten, when I was working for a friend who sold stuff on ebay, and they had a warehouse that they rented & worked out of. We had a feral cat that lived there, she was super friendly, we named her, fed her, and cared for her, my friend & I. She started getting fatter.. and we realized she was pregnant. She had the kittens in the warehouse, and we cared for them from the time they were born. When they had their eyes open, and were moving about, I was worried they would get out, and get hurt from the traffic, or other animals in the area. I brought them home, with momma kitty, 4 in all. I told hubby.. we’re “fostering” them, until we can get them fixed, and find them homes. Momma got fixed first, and when she was able to be removed from the kittens, she was happy to be back at the warehouse, but my friend eventually took her to her home, where she had a farm, and she loved it there. The 3 kittens remained with me, and the kids had named them, and loved them, and yea, we never got rid of them. Hubby reminded me constantly, we were supposed to be finding them homes. (Never happened.) Youngest is in 10th grade now, so my oldest kitties are now about 10 years old. There are only 2 left, the 3rd one became very ill, and had to be euthanized. =( I wasn’t home for this, nor were my children.. hubby had to run her to the vet, he gave me daily reports until the day that he found her in such bad shape, he wasn’t sure he’d be coming home with her. He called to say he held her as they gave her the needle, and she died in his arms, and he actually cried for her. A cat he never wanted, and reminded me constantly that we weren’t supposed to be keeping.

Forward a couple months.. we found a stray that was much too small to be away from it’s mom, but it was outside our house, crying, and we took her in. She ended up dying about a week-two later, and it was very hard on the girls, after having lost the other one. My oldest bawled, and said she never wanted another cat again, she kept losing them. (The one that had to be euthanized just a couple months prior, had been “hers”.) But, this tiny orange kitty that they’d named Sherbert had won hubby’s heart from the moment we introduced them, and she loved all over him. When she died suddenly, he was upset too, but then he said maybe it was fate, and he had something to show me. He took me to his computer and pulled up an email from a day or 2 prior, and there had been a co-worker with 2 orange kitties that they had found and were caring for, but couldn’t keep due to severe allergies. He asked me if I wanted him to bring them home. I was shocked, that he would even consider it. We had 2 cats still that he still never wanted, and the 2 we lost tragically, and he is asking if he should bring home 2 more. So, he did. And they were HIS. He loved them so much. Go figure, it took an orange kitty to break him. Forward a couple of years, he has been looking at videos on youtube of kitties. Fluffy balls of fur that are very chatty- the breed – Maine Coon. He had to have one. He searched and searched, and finally found one, and BOUGHT a kitten. BOUGHT. We have never purchased a cat before, they have all been “rescues”, but he was set on this. So yea, It took me about 20-25 years, but I think I finally can say, he is a “cat person” now. And we currently have 5 of them- the 2 we have left that we rescued from the warehouse, the 2 he took in from the co-worker, and the Maine Coon he bought. Daughter is still allergic, but we keep them mainly in our basement / family room, to keep them away from where she sleeps. She is way more allergic to dogs than cats now though, and they don’t bother her too much, unless she spends a LOT of time with them over a few days. She loves them though, and doesn’t care if they do trigger her allergies some.