Butch and Sundance Ride Again

It's time for you to get a closer look and hear the story of my littlest siblings, but the story actually starts with my kitty sister, Jeannie.

Jeannie was my friend, adopted sister and great companion. We were only six months apart and did everything together. Here's a picture of Jeannie. Wasn't she beautiful?


Jeannie contracted a terrible kidney infection and almost died. This happened at about the time that there was a huge recall of pet food, and many people lost their beloved four-legged friends. Although Jeannie had a miraculous recovery, she was always going to be susceptible to future kidney problems. She had to be on a special diet, and my humans knew that one kidney had died, but didn't know how much damage the other kidney had sustained.

Sadly, my dear calico friend, Jeannie, crossed The Rainbow Bridge in October of 2008, at the age of only five years old. She died peacefully at home, with our humans holding and loving her until the end.

Jeannie was hilarious. She would play fetch 20 times in a row, constantly dropping a milk ring or toy at Linda's feet and meowing at her until it was thrown. One of her quirks was putting her toys into the water dish. Linda always got a weird look on her face when she picked up one of Jeannie's toys to toss it and discovered that it was water-logged.

Jeannie's special human friend was Philip, Linda's son. Here they are together, doing what they did best. Jeannie really loved Philip, and the feeling was mutual. Even though other family members have crossed The Rainbow Bridge, Jeannie's passing was especially difficult for a lot of hard-to-explain reasons.

So a month to the day of her passing was rough on my humans. God has an interesting way of taking care of His people and His animals. He does a great job of match-making!

Linda is a teacher. And when she went to school that day a fellow teacher sent an email to everyone on staff, saying that there was a mother cat and five kittens living under her grandmother's back porch. Apparently the mother cat was feral and had burrowed herself under the shelter of the porch to have her babies.

Now the kittens were six weeks old, the weather was turning cold, and the family was hoping to find homes for them.

Enter Linda and Keith. They emailed back and forth about it and decided to adopt two kittens. A day after Thanksgiving, the rescue was made. These kittens had not been around humans so they were very, very scared.

Within a 24-hour period they were taken from their mother, put into a large cage in a house, transported across town in a cat carrier, introduced to their new home and litter box, stuffed in the carrier again and taken to the vet, got dewormed and their first vaccines. No wonder they weren't too sure what to make of all of this!

The first several days they hid under the dresser, which is only about 2 inches off the floor. They'd slink out for food and the litter pan and then scurry back to their hiding place at the slightest sound.

Linda named them Butch and Sundance, because they quite literally crawled out of a hole in the wall and they were VERY hard to catch! Butch is the orange tabby and Sundance is the gray kitty. Since Sundance is a female, we sometimes call her Sunny.






Within just a week or two, they became great friends to Trouble, who seemed to take on a maternal role with them.

And now you can see that they are ready to enter the life of quilting quality control apprentices. They're already mastering the first step, which is making sure that a quilt is accessible on every recliner, sofa, table top and bed. This picture shows a well-deserved rest after readjusting the quilt on the recliner several times.

Now, we'd love to hear about your quilting buddies!


P.S. Despite this entry, I still don't know how I feel about the kittens. I alter between smacking one on top of the head for no reason, hissing at them when they enter a room, or allowing them to groom me. Well, I mean, I AM their queen!