The Hopkins Family Furballs: An Update and In Memoriam

 Somer's a total Daddy's boy

Soooo.... recently I had a comment from a reader curious for a kitty update, and...

well...

I've been avoiding blogging about cats for about a year now because we had quite a lot of heartache in a very short span of months. See, the last post in which I blogged about my pets was on New Year's Eve, 2010, and incidentally that was the last time we saw our kitten Ollie.

 

After hoping he'd merely run away and found another family happy to have a rascally little stray, we learned that he wandered into the yard of the vicious dog next door.

We were all so heartbroken, so when a sweet little grey kitten followed us home from the bus stop about 2 months later, and waltzed right into our living room - to be perfectly well received by all four of our other pets - we figured we had another chance to help a stray kitten with a warm home and tons of food and even more love. She instantly decided Annelie was her mama, and the two of them were inseparable.

 

Boooo. Just thinking about our kittens makes me cry. These little cats were the BEST CATS IN THE WORLD.

Josephine was nothing but gentle and sweet. After Ollie died, we wanted her to stay an indoor cat, at least until she was a LOT older and faster. But she wanted to be with her mama Annelie, and after only having her for a couple of months, Josephine sneaked out the back door when the girls went out to play, and the next day our neighbors (after lying profusely when I asked them if they'd seen her) admitted their dog got her, too.

I'm not sure if the neighbors moved because they wanted to buy a bigger house or if they couldn't handle Gracie and Annelie bursting into tears whenever the girls saw them and their dog... but I wasn't at all sad to see them move away, that's for sure.

Nowadays, we're stray kittenless, but we still have all these guys!

Willie the blind German Shepherd
Hannah the neurotic chihuahua
Sophie the calico
Somersault the tabby

Sophie still thinks she's a tiny baby kitten who needs to be personally escorted to her food dish any time she's hungry, even though the food dish has been in the same spot since we adopted her in '09.

 Our cats both adore all visitors, especially curious babies.

Somer can be found wherever there is food. Or a roll of toilet paper or paper towels to shred. We call them Somerpaper - and wouldn't you know it, the girls prefer their paper cat-shredded to not.

Sophie is determined to keep me from folding laundry at all times so clearly she's high on my list of favorites.

And that's our cat update! We don't plan on adding to our household.... but if a stray kitten walks through the door and makes itself at home - like Ollie and Josephine both did - well who knows. We might find there is a little extra love to share.

xoxo,