Hoover

We adopted a kitten from the local shelter (Friends for Animals in Acton) last month. He is around 6 months old and is the sweetest cat ever. He likes to be held. He is a male, orange, and tabby. He has beautiful long hair especially on his tail. I saw him for the first time in February, at the shelter when my sister and her girls came to Texas for a visit. My two girl cats Shelly Bear and Reagan didn't like the human little girls. Sam was getting bothered too much. So I decided to take them to my favorite hangout. The animal shelter. The people who work there seem to encourge people to come in and pet the cats and dogs. They have a cat and kitten room. We spent much of our time in the kitten room. Clem (his shelter name) was my favorite. He loved to be held, purred really loud, and loved everyone who picked him up. It took all of my will power to leave him behind when we left. I told Mike about him and he gave his normal. I bet he is cute and I am sure he is great. I knew that we had too many things going on. Sam was still alive and needed so much attention at this time. And I just knew Shelly and Reagan didn't want another furry creature in their house to disrupt things. About a month later I went to play tennis with Becky and afterwards like so often I stopped in to drop off my aluminum cans in the recycle bin. A lady in the parking lot asked me if I was coming to pick up the orange kitten. I told her that I wasn't. But I asked if it was Clem and she said yes. I couldn't believe he was still there. So I went inside to pet him and see why he didn't have a home. I picked him up and he was a rag doll and purred loudly as before. I told one of the ladies that I wanted him and they seemed to be surprised. One of the gals had raised him and she needed to talk to me a bit to make sure I was going to be a good cat mom. She told me about his hard beginnings and how he lived at her house with her fleet of cats and dogs while he was recovering from fleas, malnurishment, etc. Clem loved her husband and her husband liked Clem. I had adopted a pregnant Mother cat (Reagan) in 2004 and had to give away four kittens. It is difficult to say goodbye to your babies. I was happy for them and sad for me everytime. Mike and I still talk about our kittens that we gave away. We love to talk about how they probably turned out. We kept one and that is Shelly. She will always be our special girl because we were there from the beginning.

I brought Clem home and didn't even tell Mike about our newest member of the family. I was afraid and I didn't want him to talk me out of it this time. Mike walked in from work and looked down the hallway. Clem poked his head around the corner and Mike saw him and they both looked at each other like, "who are you." Mike shook his head and put down his briefcase and went into his office. He didn't say much for a while. He eventually decided that Clem was awesome when Clem jumped up in his lap and helped him with the computer. We finally have a lap cat. Sam our 22 year old cat was Clem's best friend. They did everything together. Ten days after we brought Clem home Sam died. Sam was our best friend who moved all over with us since we were married. He was the coolest cat around. He taught Clem the ropes and what the Reisz household expected of a cat. He jumps in the fridge when the door is open. He begs for food when you are eating. He is crazy for canned food. He is different than Sam because he loves to be carried around. He doesn't talk much. His mouth moves but not much sound comes out. We are trying to encourage talking. He is totally into play and will grab his feather toy and prance around the house until someone will pick up the toy and toss it about. People like to tell me that all Cats are a certain way. I have three of them and they are all different. Even the Mother/ Daughter are night and day. My opinion is most people don't spend much time with Cats so they tend to see only highlights or traits. Mike works at home and we spend a fair amount of time with our cats/kitten. The personalities are strong and different. Mike wanted to wait and name Clem when he knew his personality. So here we are over a month later and he has quite a few names. Jr(Sam look alike), Prancer (he prances about with toys), Tribble (cute animal from Star Trek makes the same noise), Clem( shelter name short for Clementime), and Hoover(sucks down the food and of course Bob Hoover is a famous aviation name). Mike asked to be able to name this kitten. I am calling him Hoover because it is the name that we come back to the most often. I am thankful this is not a child without a name for 6 months. I hope Clem/Jr/Prancer/Tribble/Hoover knows his name someday.