Livia

About two weeks ago we got a new, unplanned, addition to our "family" in the form of a kitten. Ryan came home from a business trip to find our neighbors out talking. They'd found this kitten by their old house and had decided to take care of it. Well upon bring it back to their house, their cat ran away. When she finally came back they decided they had to find a place for the kitten. We'd talked about getting a pet before, but it was usually a dog and we didn't want to have to worry about it all the time. I'm not a huge fan of strictly indoor pets, but we decided we'd give it a try for a few days and our neighbors told us to bring it back if it wasn't working out. So armed with a carrier, litter box, food, and some toys we brought our "baby" home. Well the next morning when Alli woke up to meet her new friend there was no going back.


* Apparently there is no pride or shame on this blog as you are seeing us in our lovely morning glory with beautiful hair and a prego belly that looks far better in real clothes as opposed to pajamas, but folks that is the reality of our life-we are not morning people and we were way too excited to let Alli play with her new friend to wait til we'd gotten ready.

We let Alli decide on the name all by herself. The first suggestion was "Allison-like me." We told her that would be a little too confusing.

Next she suggested "3" and we reminded her that is a number, not really a name, and we kind of gave up on the naming thing for a bit. A few minutes later she walked out of the mudroom and said "Olivia" and we figured that would be a do-able name so Olivia or Livia it is. And they have been such great friends (whether Livia wants to or not) since then. For the most part Alli does a great job being soft with her, but there is a fair amount of squishing going on from a certain energetic, demonstrative little 2 year old, but Livia is super playful so for the most part she does really well with all of her attention. There is some hiding under couches and beds, but that has lessened as she's gotten more used to Alli and as Alli's gotten better at playing and holding. Livia loves playing outside in the flowers and bushes and finding grasshoppers. She loves a mouse toy that she has and will catch the mouse really quickly so we're hoping that if there ever were a mouse (hopefully not in our house) that she'd be a good "mouser." All of her "stuff" is in the mudroom and the garage so she is only in the rest of the house when we are playing with her or she's playing outside, but she seems pretty happy with the arrangement and likes to play. As soon as she hears someone in the kitchen in the morning she starts meowing to come play with someone. And for some odd reason as soon as she hears the bath water running she runs into the bathroom so she can supervise Alli's bath.

We definitely hear a lot of "where is my kitty" from Alli and today she was pointing out Livia's "cute little paws". I am hoping that this will help Alli when the baby comes because maybe this practice holding a live animal will minimize the picking up of our baby by the head or appendage (which the cat has so "patiently" endured-don't worry it's always been a quick thing and she's yet to be actually hurt by any of the treatment) or dropping of the baby. We aren't exactly sure how old the cat is, we're figuring a little over 3 months?? She was already potty trained when we got her :) so thankfully we haven't had any extra messes and her shedding is virtually none!! So while we haven't ever really been pet people, we are now happy pet owners to a fun lil' Siamese cat.