I am also allergic to cats. When they do the allergy scratch test, the cat area becomes the size of a golf ball. When I am around cats for any amount of time my eyes get red, itchy, swollen, my nose is a mess, and I sneeze all the time. This, of course, adds to my dislike of cats.
Once we had a cat named Panther. This cat was demonic. You would go into the backyard and there would be dead birds on the ground. Yes, more than one. Yes, this happened more than once. Now, I was still quite young when we had Panther, and one afternoon I stood on our front porch and looked down to see a dead rabbit. I yelled: Mom, Panther killed the Easter Bunny!
Another time, we had a different cat, and I forget if this cat was old or sick or what, but I went under my bed for some reason and there was a dead cat. Traumatic. Cats= traumatic memories for me.
So when on my birthday Jack started crying/freaking out because there was a mouse in the tv room, I said, with full confidence that no one would take me seriously, we should get a cat to get rid of the mice. All eyes turned to me and Pete said that we should because it would be the most humane way to get rid of mice, Jack said he always wanted more animals, Luke and Thomas also thought this was an awesome idea. Um, I didn't really want to be the jerk that said- haha just joking!! So I went along with it. It ended up that Jack and I (and Robert) went to the DuPage County Animal Shelter, on my birthday, and Jack picked out his top 2 kittens. One was already spoken for so that left the orange tabby. Jack got to play with him for like 20 minutes, and he fell in love. Jack loves all animals in a big way. Ever since he was, well basically ever since he could talk to us, he has indicated he wants to grow up and have a job involving animals. We were not allowed to bring him home that day because I didn't have any paperwork on me saying Tigran was up to date on his shots, which is a requirement, so we had to wait until they could get in touch with our West Lafayette vet.
It turns out that Pete has always wanted a cat. This was news to me. I have known Pete for many years, and his desire to have a cat was a secret. He told me it was his idea to get Kit, his parent's cat, and he was really excited that we finally got to have one too. WHAT?! He named it. Oh yes, he knew right away what this cat would be named---Quantum. Today we loaded up the car, bought litter boxes, cat food, a toy, and then set off to pick up our cat, Quantum. He is 12 weeks old. So far, he just sits in this box in the closet. Meg stands right in front of him and just screams over and over. Then she laughs and does it again. I think she is really excited. Tigran barks at him and then demands pets. The boys want to hold him and play with him, but Quantum just wants to chill in this box so they don't really understand. I wanted to get a picture of Jack holding him or something, but not yet. Quantum is a little overwhelmed by the loudness that comes with being a Weigel. So I will let you know how things go. Right now, we are family that just keeps getting bigger.
