We Almost Owned a Pet

I had this great idea one day when I saw a neighborhood cat walking on our fence. Sophy was very excited and has been very interested in cats lately and it has been so cute that I almost wanted her to have a pet...almost (it's hard enough changing her diapers and cleaning up after her, to add more to that would be trouble!). But I had a *brilliant* idea. The neighborhood cat wanted milk, so I figured if I put a bowl of milk out, we could have a cat without owning one. My plan worked out a little differently than I anticipated. The a few days later, Prince William (Cori's son) came to visit and was playing in the backyard when he wandered over to a box (we should have thrown out last summer) with weeds in it and kept saying "Cat! Cat!" We didn't believe him because there is NO CAT living in our backyard...that we were aware of. We walked over to prove him wrong and saw our black cat friend hissing at us profusely. I told Troy about it when he came home and he scared her off. Until the next day we revisited the box and found out that she was hissing with a purpose...she'd just had 5 baby kittens and was protecting them. The next few days I was worried because the weather was cold and windy after nice warm weather. We checked and the mom was gone that whole cold day! The kittens had been left huddling together for warmth. The next day we checked and all except for 1 (the cutest one) were gone. We figured that she'd been so afraid when Troy scared her that she realized this was no place to raise kids (I wonder that all the time, he is quite vulgar, as anyone who has met Troy can vouch. :)) and uprooted her whole family--minus one. We waited for her to come back and get the last one and bet that she was just waiting for us to stop watching. Much to my dismay, she never came back to get the baby and by the time we checked again, the kitten was...no more shall we say. I was very sad. Now when Sophy says "kitty!" I think of the week that we almost had a family of cats and now ended up with a dead kitten instead. Sad!