Carol’s Cat Chronicles

Volume 2

“The Kittens Arrive”

Volume 1 ended with our decision to purchase three ragdoll kittens from a breeder in Minnesota.  Now the question was, “How are we going to get them from Minnesota to Kentucky?”  It is common practice to ship live animals on the airlines, but this idea sort of frightened me.  I had no idea of how they handle the animals, so we discussed this with the breeder.  We wanted to know if she was comfortable with it, since we had never done anything like this before.  I guess I began to imagine that I was the kitten, and to me, it was just too scary.  The seller told us, after sensing our reservation, that you do not have to ship them like a suitcase, stored in the baggage area.  She had a “to your door” option. It was possible, for the price of a ticket, for her to fly down with them.  That way she could actually take them on the plane with her.  At first, I thought, “If I am going to buy a ticket, I’ll just go there, meet her, pick up the kittens, and then fly back the same day.  So I began researching the cost of a round trip ticket from Cincinnati (the closest airport to me from which to fly non-stop) to Minneapolis (the closest airport to her).  I was ready to take this option when I realized that I would be the one on the return flight, with 3 kittens in crates.  I felt better thinking about HER being the one on the plane with the kittens!  So I called her up and told her that I would buy her a ticket.  She asked me to let her talk to her husband about it and said that she would get back to me.

To my surprise, when she returned my call, she said,” I told my husband what you want to do, and he said why don’t we just drive down to Kentucky and bring them?”  I could not believe my ears…she was talking about driving at least 16 hours to deliver these kittens.  But, hey, I was not going to say “NO”.    So I told her that since I did not have an extra bedroom at that time, due a remodeling project still in progress, I would put her and her husband up at a local motel for the weekend.  This was going to be great, because this way, we could spend some quality time with these people and ask all the questions we wanted.  We set the date, and I began getting ready to receive our three kittens.

I bought litter boxes, litter, toys, and we had already purchased a large (5’x6’x2 ½’’) cage with 2 levels to house them in.  We knew there would come a time when the male would have to be contained.  Now, I only have one area of my house that has linoleum, and that was the kitchen.  So the cage was set up at the far end of that area.  This meant that I had to move my three parrots (2 African Grays and a Conure) to the living room.  But it really did work out fine.  It might have looked strange to those entering the house, but it was going to be “workable”.  After all, if I could live with it, it didn’t really matter what anyone else thought, right?

So, we got the house arranged to accommodate three cats and three birds.  Litter boxes were strategically placed throughout the house, so that no matter where they were, they could find the “facilities”.  It was going to be awhile before any of the cats would have to be caged.  But with the birds in the house, we figured that at night or when we were gone, the cage would be the safest place for all concerned.  So that was the plan.

On September 17^th, 2000, our visitors arrived.  We had been expecting them to call when they were an hour away.  But they made it all the way to Owensboro and had already checked in to the motel when we received the call.  Of course, they were exhausted after making the trip.  But I had planned to have dinner ready when they arrived.  After some arm-twisting, they agreed to come over and eat, but they did not want to bring the kittens because she wanted to have them freshened up and a bit more relaxed before she introduced them to us.  Although we were disappointed, we understood.  So we spent the evening with them and just “heard” about our cats!  This that made it all the more exciting the next day when they pulled up in the drive with three carriers in the van.

Because we had taken three cats, we had agreed to wait until the youngest of the three was old enough to be weaned before they brought them.  So our male was almost 5 months old, the first female was 4 months and the youngest female was 3 months old when they came.

The male is a blue mitted.  The older female is a lilac bi-color, and the younger female is a seal color point.  When the breeder reached in to take the male out of his carrier, I was somewhat surprised because of his size.  He was  not a kitten in my eyes, but of course, he was already 5 months old!  The older female was a surprise because of her facial markings. Bi-color means that she had a mask, which reminded me of a raccoon.  I thought she was adorable.  And then she brought out the younger female, and I fell in love with her sweet little face instantly.

When we had reached our decision to go into the cattery business, we started to think of names not only for the cattery but also for our breeding cats.  We live in Kentucky, and although that is not soooo far south, everyone else in the nation considers us southern.  So we picked names for our cats that we thought  had that “Old South” flavor.  Our male is named Blake, one female is Savannah and the younger female is Dixie.  Can’t get much more southern than that!  And even though we had picked these names BEFORE the cats arrived, they seemed to fit each cat to a tee!

Blake is definitely the dominant male.  He walks around the house as if he owns it!  On the first day he was here,  it was as if he knew what our plan was.  We have a picture of him in bed with Savannah, his arm thrown around her as if to say, “This is MY woman!”  And the feeling is mutual with Savannah – she is crazy over Blake.  Now, with Dixie being so young when she came, the first day here, all she did was sleep.  All the cats went into the cage on the first day and declared it their “safe” place, so that worked out perfectly.  They did all eat and drink, which is good when arriving in a strange place, so we felt that we were going to have smooth sailing from day ONE.

Our visitors stayed with us all that day and gave us wealth of information.  In fact it was more than we could possibly remember at one time, but they are only a phone call away, whenever we need a question answered or some advice.  We feel that we were very fortunate to find them.  They returned to Minnesota the following day, leaving us with our three new members of the family.  In my next volume, I will share our “getting acquainted” stories.