When I met Lucy, it was LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. I wanted to cuddle her, hug her, feed her, and tend to her.
“Take care of for the next 17 years?"
"No problem?”
Our first week back in Brooklyn, my infatuation with her continued. I bought her toys, made her toys, and would take breaks during the day to play with her.
DH would look at her wistfully and say things like, “We didn’t do her any favors taking her out of Georgia. She needs another cat to play with.”
“Another cat? Really?”
Guilt would set in. I was an only child and I always wanted someone to play with. I would look at her playing by herself, and I would feel lonely.
Along with worrying about Lucy's emotional well being, I spent our first week in Brookly back very worried about Frankie. The first 24 hours back in Brooklyn, he was very sick. He had a litany of symptoms ranging from frequent urination, to athritis in his legs, to blood in his stool. The symptom that worried me most was when he got really lethargic. Frankie has been hobbling around since he was 4. I had taken him to the down in Macon for the arthritis. He has never been a particularly athletic or active dog, but he’s always been a lover and a fighter.
When a 24 hour period had gone by where he hadn’t barked at anything, I knew it wasn’t just exhaustion from the trip, or him getting into something foul, I knew there was something very wrong. It turns out he had a pretty bad infection and the vet also thought it could be diabetes.
“Dog diabetes? Really?"
"Oh God, didn't we just go through the BC, and the loss of Beanie. This was suppose to be the summer of fun."
Around this time my vet also told me about a little kitten that they were fostering. “Hmm, sounds cute. Really though, I don’t even like cats, I mean I like Lucy, cause she’s Lucy, but overall I am a dog person. I really got Lucy, more for Frankie, and now he's sick. I can’t think about another animal until he’s doing better."
About a week and a half later, I brought Frankie back in to re-check his blood work, and to see if the antibiodic was working. I also brought Lucy in for her first round of shots and to make sure she was healthy. I had pulled about 100 fleas of her, when we first got her. She had been leaving outside behind a dead refriegerator, so when the vet said she had ear mites and worms, I wasn't surprised.
Although Frankie, was doing a lot better, for the most part he still wasn’t that interested in the kitten. I played with her, snuggled with her, slept with her. It turns out like me, she loves all things knitting and spinning, which is fun to watch but also doesn’t exactly make for much in the way of project completion.
On a side note, I joined the Bridge of Roses KAL on Ravelry. It’s a gorgeous kit, and $2 goes to BC research.
For the most part, she ignored Frankie but she loved us, and she wasn’t afraid of him. Overall, she just seemed to adjusting pretty well.
The vet again asked me if I wanted to see the kitten. “Yah, I'll look at him.”
The vet tech brings in this little black thing. He has one yellow eye and one blue eye. The blue eye was clouded over because at 5 weeks old he had a bad eye infection. He was only 7 weeks old, and he had ready been flawed. He looked like a tough little street fighter, and he was as ugly, as Lucy was pretty.
“Hmm, let me call my husband.”
I called DH. “The vet has a kitten they want to give me. They will pay for his first round of shots, he’s all black, he has one blue eye and one green eye, he looks like a pirate. He is the same age as Lucy.”
“Well, do you like him?” DH asked.
"I'm not sure yet, but I do feel bad for him, he's been at the vet for over a month, waiting to be adopted."
(This was a pix, the vet took when they first got him.)
In my heart, I thought he was an ugly kitten, I don’t like black cats (never have) and this one was even scarier looking that most. When I first brought him home he meowed, and kept meowing. He bit me and clawed into me. "Lucy was so quiet, and so pretty. If I hated him, could I return him? If it was just Lucy and Frankie, we could just hop in the car and run down to Macon. Two cats, yikes! it was a lot more responsibility."
For 24 hours, my brain went into kitty overdrive. How did I go from being a dog person to a cat person? Beanie had been my other half, the kittens well they were cute and all that, but “you can’t walk them, they don’t stay on the couch when put them on the couch. Now that they have discovered each other, they are completely ignoring me.”
About 2 days into my relationship with the black kitten, something shifted. It turns out Captain Jack likes to lay on the couch and he loves to snuggle. He also likes to lick fingers. He also likes to push Lucy out of the way to get to his food bowel, and it turns out, he also likes the fiber arts, especially plying.
On another side note, I have been doing Tour De Fleece this year. Since I don’t typically spin a lot during the summer it’s been a good motivator. Even with the kitten distraction, I am getting some spinning done. I should have one of my wheels emptied by the time the tour is over.
It also turns out that Frankie likes the having both kittens around. He barks at them as they go flying by. He will even play with them a little which is huge for him.
As for me, I like that everywhere I look there is activity. I like that there is life in our apartment, after the “spring of sadness”. I like knowing that Frankie won’t be alone during the day when I am at work. I like knowing that Lucy has someone to play with. And well, I love knowing that Captain Jack has a home.
