here kitty, kitty....

wil and lucy don't have the only starring roles in our house. they share the billing with our two cats, stone peoria & murphy. each time we add a new member to our cast the star of the show has become a supportive player. however, when you think about theatre & movies, it's the supporting roles who give the whole production color. with that in mind, today we turn the spotlight on stone & murph.

i got stone in the summer of 1996. i really wanted a cat of my own so i headed to the local shelter in sherman, texas. as always, there were so many cute cats waiting for a home but stone was a special case. she and 13 of her brothers and sisters had been found in a dumpster with their mother who was deceased. the kittens were sharing two cages and i sat on the floor and took each one out one by one. all were bouncy and playful...except stone. she was the runt of that huge litter and when i took her out she stayed right were i'd placed her. that did it for me. i paid my $20 and took her home. she was so tiny and scared. erin was my roommate at the time and in her room at the back of the house she had a bookshelf made of wood and cinderblock, very common college student furniture.stone used to go into her room and crawl into a hole on the side of the cinderblock and stay for hours and hours. she was gray and blended into the block hence her name. (i also had a fascination with stone phillips & stone gossard of pearl jam so it worked. oh, and i thought she was a boy.) she got very sick soon after coming home with ring worm. she lost all her hair after she was treated by a quack vet and almost died. she wasn't even a month old! as soon as she began to get better i started buying her canned tuna and salmon. she ate it up....and she started putting on weight...and never stopped. she has been with me for almost 13 years and i could fill a book with stories about her. she is moody and smart, loving and funny. she was my first "kid"and she has a special place in my heart. i am delighted that wil loves her above all our animals and find it endearing that she is never far from where he is. she has a crazy name (another story for another day), a full-figured bod and a tiny head. she is one of a kind and my life wouldn't be the same without her.

murphy came along in the summer of 2002. we'd discussed getting another cat as a friend for stone and murph kind of fell into our lap. i worked with a woman whose neighbor had a pregnant cat dropped in her lap. the pregnant cat, emily, was a 6-toed cat also called a double paw. (if you've never seen a double paw cat they are really cute. their hands & feet look like catcher's mitts.) my co-worker told me this story one day and i asked her to secure one of the kittens for us. we went to see them right after they were born (remember rita?!?!!?) and couldn't wait to go back and pick one out. ryan and i went one saturday, played with them all and picked murphy. ironically murphy was the only kitten that wasn't born with double paws. the woman we got him from questioned us about our decision (as if we were biased!!!) but murph was the most frisky of all the kittens and that's what we wanted. we had one laaaaaaaazy cat, we didn't want another! besides, we thought a frisky kitten might give stone a much needed workout. murphy was so cute and funny. he bounced all over our tiny apartment and gave us a ton of laughs. he still does. stone hated him (and us) in the beginning but she soon got over that. they are as close as brother and sister. murphy is a comedian. he is mysterious and longs to run away outside and sometimes does. he has become extremely loving lately and is the one animal that tolerates wil's "petting." he drinks a ton of water (we had to buy him a water fountain - seriously) and will steal a twizzler right from your hand. another one of a kind and we are grateful to share our days with him.
i know a lot of people don't care for cats but i find them fascinating. they are super smart and can be grumpy and opinionated but when they love you they really love you and it's great. stone and murphy...you're the cat's meow.