HiJenx

On October 25th, Chris and I decided to attempt to take the Humane Society up on their offer of no fee felines. We called ahead to ask how early to be there and the woman on the phone said 30 minutes before opening time should be fine even if we were interested in specific cats. She had clearly not looked outside as when we arrived 30 minutes before the 11 AM opening time, there was already quite a queue. One woman had arrived as early as 9:30. Basically, it looked as though there was going to be some kitten competition. This was a bit stressful as we don’t really live especially near a humane society. The nearest one is about 20 miles from us, so no fees aside even, we couldn’t just keep coming back and forth very easily.

It was, reasonably, first come first serve, so we knew one of the kittens we had seen on the website that interested us was ‘claimed’ from the time we arrived. The woman at the front of the queue had decided to split up a set of siblings in favor or taking one with another unrelated kitten. Fortunately for us, more kittens had actually arrived since the day before. This was good as we had three primary criteria in mind. As we had never had pets as adults, we wanted them to healthy since we didn’t feel up to immediately caring for a sick animal.  We also both very much wanted actual kittens, i.e. not especially near adulthood for both the challenges and fun of kittens compared to adult cats. Finally, we ideally wanted to get two from the same litter so as to have the greatest chance of them getting along. More than that, I don’t like the idea of splitting up siblings, so it seemed kinder to the kittens themselves to keep them together.

We were able to meet all three criteria in two near identical kittens. Here are a few photos of us meeting them at the shelter:

Here is Chris with the kittens ready for their 20 mile car journey home:

This is the kittens getting to know their new surroundings:

Being a shoe:

Not understanding/respecting yoga:

And sitting on Chris for the first time:

After a few days, we did name them once we figured out some of the very subtle differences. This is Kasia, which is short for Katarzyna. It’s a Polish name. The ‘si’ is ‘sh’, so say it Kasha more or less. As for the ‘formal’ version of her name, the rz is sort of like the g in beige, but further back in the mouth. She is very slightly more grey than her sister.

This is Zosia, same ‘si’ rules applying, so ‘Zosha’. The formal version of her name is Zofia. She is very slightly browner than her sister.

Here’s the video: