In the Beginning...Part IV

Monty stayed forever

                Eventually it was time for the kittens to go to new homes.  We certainly couldn’t keep them—after all, five cats, who does that?  I’d take one to school with me every afternoon when I walked up to pick up my daughter.  All the moms and kids fell in love (well, most of the moms—a few glared at the blatant advertising for free kittens and hustled their kids away before they could spot the furry bundles).

                Finally we were down to Mama and her orange child.  We just couldn’t part with them.  We named the kitten Uncle Monty after one of the only nice characters in A Series of Unfortunate Events which I was reading to my daughter at the time.

                We didn’t choose Monty, he chose us.  Dominant and completely self-absorbed, he was always the first one up my pant leg in the morning looking directly up at me with his big blue eyes as if to say, “You are mine and I am staying.”  He wasn’t going to take “no” for an answer.

                Tigerlilly became wonderfully docile and affectionate.  Always the good mother, she trained and protected each new kitten that moved in.  Every evening she’d lay quietly beside me as I read alone or to my daughter and I always got the sense she was so grateful that we opened the door and let her in.  From that delivery day until the day we had to put her down due to cancer, she never made another demand on us.  It was enough just to be part of the family.

Radar and Tigerlilly became close companions