Please Mom, can I have a kitten?
“Jimmy’s cat had kittens! Can I have one?” Jimmy being a kid in my 1st grade class that I don’t remember at all. I do remember Miss Cox and the big paper mache horse we made in that classroom and got to take turns climbing on and I remember how terrified I was when one of the classroom lights started to smoke.
The Commander, in a *very* weak moment, decided it was okay. We already had a dog and I don’t think she is much of a cat person. Although she used to delight in letting Muksaslooie into the cabin early in the morning when I was 20 or so because he would walk on my head and wake me up. But she adopted the kitten I named Twinkle Star Finlayson. Twinkle is up on the refrigerator in this picture and you can’t really tell but she was a beautiful tortoise shell cat. And she actually got along with the dog, Tigger Blondie Finlayson (I didn’t get to pick Tigger’s first name but I definitely picked her middle name). They would play-fight and Tigger would get Twinkle’s head totally into her mouth and shake it around on a funny little rock that was in our back yard next to our garage.
Twinkle grew up and, for I don’t know what reason, we didn’t get her neutered and one morning, in our horrible Michigan basement, she became Mooma Cat. She had four in her first litter. Puff and Spot lived (yes, I named those too, not totally sure about Spot’s name though). A little calico kitty was born sickly and died shortly after birth. And, if I remember accurately, there was a fourth “monster” that was born dead. I remember seeing the calico kitten but the “monster” wasn’t shown to us kids.
She had her second litter in a big wooden box at the cabin. Five healthy kittens this time. Butterball appeared first. We knew Twinkle was pregnant and close to delivery but we were still surprised to find a little orange tiger kitten in the box with her. We ran like heck down to the Mullin cabin to alert our friends Kevin and Kathie and they came home with us to watch the rest of the kittens be born. I forget exactly what the rest of the names were but I got to name all of those too. Tigger the dog was involved too. Her role was to bark, growl, and nip ferociously at anything that got anywhere near the kittens and she did it well. Butterball got adopted by Bugs and Horsey and was renamed Butterscotch. My cousins Terri and Sally took *two* other kittens. And by then The Commander had had just about enough so Twinkle Star Finlayson and her two remaining kittens became barn cats somewhere over on old US2 or wherever.
The End. Hey, mom, keep me honest with the details here!
June 10th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Hm. You were *definitely* better at naming cats that I got to be. My first (all-black) was named “Pretty”. #2 was a Seal-Point Siamese, named “Tippy” (no, I didn’t name him). #3 came along when Tippy “ran away”; he was a white Persian-Angora named (appropriately enough) “Fluffy”…. and I don’t think I had the pleasure of naming him, either. Tippy and Fluffy both seemed to have already been named when they came into my life, somehow.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Frankly, I never knew that all those cats and Tigger had middle names as well as first . Bubs named Tigger – out of Pooh- and “because she was so quick and jumpy. Twinkle was hard on the furniture – she insisted on sharpening her claws on our relatively new davenport so I advertised her and the kittens as giveaways. I don’t remember the woman’s name who took her but she was a farm girl and she told me several years later that she was a good barn cat and that they had really enjoyed having her.
duh commender
June 10th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I love it when moms can tell you a happy ending to a story. I’m glad that someone really enjoyed having her. It sounds so much better than, “Twinkle was a big pain in the neck so we had to get rid of her.”
June 10th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
I should metion that our neighbors in Troy had a cat named PITA. One day they told me it was short for “Pain In The Ass”. I thought it was appropriate because that cat was a PITA.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Bugs and Horsey actually got two kittens – Butterscotch, the orange tabby we had for years, and Shelley, a tortoiseshell female that did not stick around very long. I don’t recall the circumstances, but Butterscotch was with us for a good long time. Butterscotch was followed by Charles (Chaz), also an orange tabby. Then I had Frodo and then Sam (both orange tabby’s). Frodo travelled from Colorado to Michigan with me on vacation one year. He learned to hunt at the cabin during a year when there were lots of skunks around, and even walked down the beach with me. We also had a 1/2 Manx 1/2 himalayan long-haired, long-tailed, white-socked, siamese looking female cat.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:56 am
Yeah! I do remember Shelly. Fergot you guys took two kittens.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Well, wordpress no longer lets me edit comments, even my own, it seems. There was also a Silk and Satin in those last kittens and still one I’m forgetting. I think Silk became Gigi and changed from a small black silky kitten into a big fluffy cat.
And Tigger’s middle name was *sometimes* “Goldie”. I did like the name Tigger overall — it fit — but probably would’ve chosen another name left to my 6-year-old self.
Okay, done commenting on my own blahg now.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:14 am
I discovered that I couldn’t COMMENT on my own blog and wondered, “What the eff?”, so I logged OUT of my WordPress, tried again, same thing: could LOOK at comments but not ADD comments. Arooo??
Checked my settings, all seemed OK. Finally, *edited* the entry I couldn’t comment on and 😯 found that under “Discussion” it had spontaneously/randomly UNchecked “Allow Comments”! Checked the box and – voila! – I could comment on my daggone entry.
So…. check your settings. I dunno what happened, but guess WordPress got hit with something this week….
June 11th, 2008 at 8:05 am
I don’t think I really knew that Butterscotch was a ‘family’ cat. But I was either not born or very little when this all began.
I definitely remember Tigger though. good dog.