The Kitty Girl

We have a new family member, who we met in October. I have to admit, we have not been good furbaby parents to her. It has been a difficult adjustment period for her, and the adjustment is far from over. She needs far more attention than we have been giving her. I think we've finally gotten into a decent routine over the last month or so, where she is getting maybe a tad less attention than she needs, but enough that she is making some progress, and feeling more comfortable here. Today was a great day for her.

A little history here...Kaluah Kitty came from my friend, Nancy. Nancy was moving into an apartment, and couldn't afford the pet deposit. She left her kitty at the old house with her ex husband for awhile, but kitty was getting no love, beings that no one was really staying at the old house except a couple times a week. Kitty needed a family. So, she came here. Now, before she joined our family, Kaluah was a huntress. She came and went as she pleased, and she brought her Other Mommy wondrous gifts on a regular basis. Unfortunately, Kaluah Kitty has been afraid to go outside since she has been here. I opened the door one day awhile back when the weather was nice, and she promptly jumped off my lap and ran. I was sad for kitty.

Well, today I decided to try it again. The last thing I want is to frighten her, but I do want to keep giving her small challenges so that she can slowly feel more like family here. So, after a lovely nap, I picked her up, and cuddled and cooed while I slowly walked out to the dining room. I had already opened the back door. I stopped in the dining room so that she could see that I had opened the door. She was curious, but not freaked out. So, I slowly stepped over the threshhold and sat down on the stoop. I held her and talked to her for a good 5 minutes before she slowly and tentatively made her first steps.

I was so proud of her! She went exploring for the first time! She was very timid, and when I tried to sneak inside to get my camera, she ran. But she slowly came back out again when I sat on the stoop. I was able to get some good pictures of her first foray into The Outdoors. Enjoy!

This is the kitty running back in the house when I got my camera.

Exploring.

If you look really closely, you might be able to just see the outline of the Kitty in the jungle that is our yard.

And here she is reminiscing after her travels.

Free Stuff!

Check out what I got in the mail today!

The book on the left came from bookmooch (I prefer paperbackswap, but this time, bookmooch did come in handy).

The book on the right was a freebie from Jiffy.

The Old Spice, Metamucil, and Prilosec were from shop4freebies.

The coupons on the left came from the inside of the freebie packages, except for the white ones. Those came directly from Iams. I was hoping for the $5 off coupons everyone was talking about, but these were only worth $2.

The rest of the coupons came from Hot Coupon World; two from trades, and one Random Act Of Kindness because our dog has a cool name.

And now just for giggles, here's the story behind the RAOK. Someone posted that they were giving away a stack of pet coupons. She wanted to know the names of our pets, and she would choose who won based on the pets' names. Now, I'm sure I haven't told you all about Kreaux, so here's the story of our sooper cool dog, and how he got his name (FYI, I won the RAOK because the person offering it is a big MST3K fan...you'll find out what that means in a minute):

(That's him doing his, "I'm bored" face, resting his nose on the window. He looks vicious, doesn't he? But he does this every time he's bored...he puts his nose up against a surface and sighs repeatedly.)

Not long after I started my job, one of the teachers brought in this adorable dog who kept laying his head on my arm and looking up at me with these big, sad eyes. The teacher said that if he couldn't find the dog's owners, he would be looking for a home for him. I talked to Jason, and we decided to bring him home. Rowdy wanted a brother...he was lonely.

It took us four days to come up with a name. We wanted to honor his most prominent feature:

Look at those ears! Finally, it came to us...he looks like Crow from Mystery Science Theater 3000!

But we - being the dorks we are - couldn't just leave his name as "Crow". On one episode, Tom Servo decided that his name was no longer Servo. He would only answer to Serveaux thereafter. So, our awesome Pit Bull/Dingo puppy, Kreaux, is actually named after Crow T. Robot, and Tom Serveaux.

Rowdy doesn't care what we call him. He just likes having a brother.