First comes love, then comes marriage...

...then comes a kitty? Yep. The best part of moving to our new place isn't really getting all our stuff out of storage, although re-opening those boxes is like an early Christmas. Nor is the best part my new ability to decorate for Christmas even though I'm super excited about making some ornaments tonight. Nope, the best part is our ability to get a cat.

You may remember back in October when we talked abut working with the cats at PetSmart. We highlighted one cat in particular whose name was D'Artagnan. Now, we never had any intention of getting this cat because, one, it was October and most cats are gone after a couple of weeks, and two, it said "needs home without small children." While we don't have any small children in our home right now, the info card also said "about 4 years old" and sometime in the next 10-15 years, we are planning on having a small child or two living with us and I didn't know what prompted the small children comment, but it sounded potentially scary.

But time went on, and every week we liked him a little bit more. When last Thursday came and it was time to pick out the cat we would take, we had to choose him. Except when we checked his card again on Thursday, to double check that he had his shots, was neutered, etc we noticed something odd. It said - Spayed. Wait - I'm confused, spaying, doesn't that involve ovaries? Then we checked gender and sure enough, D'Artagnan was a girl! This is not the first time that those 4-Paws namers, whoever they may be, have made a gender-confusing name choice, although I'm not sure if "sugar puss" would have made a good name for a cat, even if it was a girl. But D'Artagnan would have been a cute cat name - for a boy! As you can see, back in the original "Blog Post of Destiny" that we obviously thought it was a boy back then.

But even with the confusing gender switch, we knew we wanted him her. I was still a little worried about the kid thing but figured we would worry about it later. Saturday after we spent the morning unpacking, we headed over to PetSmart to pick her up. As Craig filled out the paperwork, she just sat on my lap and enjoyed being petted. Then two little kids, probably about 4 and 7 walked up and asked if they could pet my kitty. Nervously, I said yes. The both started petting away and despite my nightmares of her turning into a killing machine whenever she came into contact with anyone under 4 feet tall, she was fine. She didn't even try to jump off of my lap. After they left, the cat adoption said, "Yeah, it says "home without small children" because a family tried to adopt her a while back but their two-year old chased her around pulling her tail until she wouldn't come out from under the bed." That eased my fears and I signed the adoption papers without hesitation.

She has been slowly adjusting and I think she likes it. We had to change her name, of course. Her new name is Zeeba. It was Craig's idea, as are most questionable ideas in our relationship (see previous post). It comes from his favorite comic, Pearls Before Swine.
I also like it because in Iranian it means "beautiful."

And she is very pretty if I do say so myself. Plus, being long haired, she kinda looks like she could be part Persian so it kinda works. Okay, that it is a stretch, but I feel better with that excuse than saying I named her after a zebra from a comic strip.

CRAIG ADDS: I wanted to name the cat Mohammed to spite Sudanese Muslims, but MacKenzie said no. She's so PC.