Our Adoption Story - cat adoption that is

There is a hilarious commercial that I see every once in a while that explains our pet adoption quite well.  I tried to find a video link for it but sadly could not, so you will have to deal with my poor explanation.

Basically, how things go down is a newly married couple has just bought a house.

Husband: "Now that we have all this room and a yard we can have-"
Wife (cuts husband off): "A baby!"
Husband: "No, I was thinking a dog."
Wife: "A baby..."
Husband: "You mean a puppy?... Like, a baby dog?..."

I kill myself laughing to this every time I see it because it is sooo true.  I wanted (cough... want... cough) a baby so bad.  But thanks to school, it really isn't the perfect time for us to have kids.  So to try and ease my baby fever, and give me someone for company when I was in the city at school, we decided to get a cat sometime after we got back from our honeymoon.

How can you not love that face?

 Brett wasn't totally sold on the idea of a cat at first.  I think that a big part of him was doing it to appease me (as he is a self-proclaimed dog person).  But that lasted a whole of about 5 minutes after bringing George home.

 We weren't sure what age of animal we would want.  We were worried about bad habits if we got an older one.  But we were also worried about litter training/destructiveness if we got a kitten, so we tried to go into the shelter with an open mind.  That ended up being the best decision we could have made.

He loves his cuddles (and so does George... haha).

We got to the shelter around lunch time on July 20th last year.  The girls at Moose Jaw Humane Society were really friendly and helpful and took us into the back to see the cats.  They discussed with us what we wanted from our pet, etc. and took us to see the kittens first.  The first thing I saw was about five kittens clawing the screen to their room.  With visions of our brand new leather couches in shreds dancing through our minds, we asked if we could maybe take a look at the adult cats.

George on our way home from the animal shelter.

I thought I wanted a black cat and Brett thought he wanted an orange one, and we had both decided that a short haired cat was the right move because we didn't want to deal with too much shedding.  A couple of cats jumped out at us right off the bat.  Then there was the dilemma of choosing.  If you have never experienced the torture of trying to choose one animal to take home with you from an animal shelter, let me tell you, it's not easy.  Even though Moose Jaw Humane Society is a no kill shelter and they treat their animals really well, you just can't help but feel the need to save them all.

Austin was complaining to me about her chemistry course... This was my very witty response.

 In the midst of trying to make that difficult decision I was pacing around (also known as trying not to make it obvious to the girl working there that I was nearing tears... I was worried she would think I was a crazy person).  I noticed one cat that we hadn't seen before.  He was in the last kennel at the very end of the row, sort of hidden.  He was looking around with curious eyes, but seemed very calm, just hanging out.  I asked the girl if we could see him and pet him.  She opened the kennel, Brett and I gave him a few pets and he started purring.  We looked at his info posted on his kennel door and saw that he had been in the shelter since the beginning of March - months longer than all of the other cats.  At that moment we knew.  There was no way we could leave him there.

Less than an hour later we were on our way home with a new little being in our truck.  As it turns out, he was the most perfect addition to our family.

George was the perfect cat for Brett particularly, as I would say he has more of a dog like personality.  He greets you when you get home, wants to cuddle and be around you, and plays fetch.  Yes people, our cat plays fetch.

Our house feels so much more like a home with George in it.  It is kind of silly how a cat can become such an important thing in your life, but he is.  Thank you so much Moose Jaw Humane Society for uniting us with our first "baby".

He says he's not a cat person...