The story of Maggie and Emma

Today is our kitties 4th birthday!  I thought I would share the story of how they ended up in our family.

Our first year and a half of marriage we lived in a little apartment in Provo while I finished college.  For the first eight months I was content being a newlywed and having Brent all to myself.  We were married in May of '05 and the following February of '06 I was offered a great job from a company based in Seattle where I got to work from home.  The first few months were great.  But then I started getting lonely (uh-oh...).  I knew what I needed.  I started craving the pitter patter of little feet, and my beta fish, Lucky, was not cutting it.  I wanted a kitten!  However, my husband said that he would NEVER have a cat.  So I tried to put it in the back of my mind.

By the time August rolled around I was going crazy.  One day I just happened to be perusing the Utah Humane Society website when I saw they were having a special on kittens.  What luck!  Brent happened to have a random Wednesday off for some reason and I buttered him up by suggesting we go to the Jordan River Temple (which happened to be strategically located near the Humane Society).  After the temple I suggested we should go look at all the cute animals.  Brent fell for it that time, but after he learned that "look at the cute animals" means look, find, cuddle, fall in love with and bring one home.  We got there and it was cats galore!  After a few minutes of looking I saw the most adorable kitten I had ever seen.  I took her out of her cage and she snuggled up to Brent (smart kitty).  After a long discussion, talk, disagreement, whining, pouting and extreme happiness we decided that this kitten was going to be our new addition!

We got up to the front to get her and the people reminded me of the deal they had going on.  It was Buy 1 Get 1 FREE!  I quickly remembered the kitten had another brother or sister in the cage with her that had been sleeping.  I walked up to the cage and at the risk of sounding like a bad mother, I know I made a face when I saw the little cat.  We all know Emma is a gorgeous cat and is so sweet and adorable.  But if you are not expecting to see what baby Emma looked like, you would be shocked, too.  Now I REALLY felt like I was saving a cat.  Emma had a really funky head.  And it made her look special.  I was scared no one would want to buy the special kitten.  Plus, who am I to separate two sisters?  So we got Emma, too.  As we were walking out of the Humane Society the lady yelled, "Enjoy your new babies!"  I couldn't wait.

Oh, I forgot to mention the apartment we were living in did NOT allow pets.  100% absolutely no way, no how, no if's and's or but's about it.  People had tried, had gotten caught, and had to get rid of them.  But I'm not someone that likes to be told what to do.  So we got our girls home and had to make a few adjustments to our apartment so we didn't get caught.  First of all we had to move my piano about 3 feet away from the window so the kitties couldn't get on to the window sill.  We could never open the window blinds, because we were scared one of them would jump on the ledge (this caused Emma to crash headfirst, at full speed into our front window at our new house the first time she saw it.  Sorry Emma!) and we had to put blankets down all over our floors to try and pad the little kitty paws running all over the place.  Our neighbors had to suspect something.

We only had a few close calls.  One time they had to paint the door to our apartment. This wouldn't have been a big deal, except for Brent and I were in Vegas that weekend.  So our friends offered to babysit our illegal family members.  The other time still makes me sick to think about.  I was NOT in the mood to go to class that day (that was normal, but I still usually went) and for some reason I decided to skip.  Not 10 minutes into the time I would have been in class we got a knock on the door.  Our apartment manager was there to change the furnace filter.  Lucky for me, I wasn't dressed appropriately to have a guy come in so I said give me a few minutes and come back.  I was freaking out grabbing the litter box, food dish, scratching post and every ball, mouse and fish toy I could find.  I threw everything, along with the kitties, in our bedroom.  He came back and I found out our furnace filter happened to be right next to our bedroom door.  So I sat in front of the door and had to have a completely normal conversation with this guy, while I was silently hoping no crash, meow or little paw sticking out from under the door would give me away.  Somehow, we managed to get away with it.  A couple weeks later we bought our house.  Oh, and Brent saying he'd never have a cat... well, he's still never had A cat :)

I can't believe the kitties are already 4 (and I still can't believe we got away with getting them!).  They have been such a cute addition to our family and we've loved every second of having them.  Happy birthday kitties!!

The actual first picture of Maggie taken at the Humane Society (Brent has his temple tie on to prove where we just were)

Baby Emma.  Enough said.

The grown up, adorable Emma

Grown up Maggie

Maggie's still not a fan of Chip (especially when he's lurking).  But she deals with it