Beech Tree News Network

Garey took his mom, Aggie, back to her home in Alabama this morning.  She has been staying with us for the past three weeks.  Her dog, Angel, passed away right before Christmas, and since Aggie lives by herself, she was very lonely.  We went to see her over the New Year weekend and convinced her to come back home with us to stay for a while. 

Our daughter, Nikki, and her husband, Thomas, came to visit while Aggie was with us.  They brought their dogs.  Natalie, Scott and Sabria also came over several times and brought their dogs.  We cooked and ate and played board games and had a really good visit.  We don’t have a dog, so I was glad the kids brought theirs, because I thought it would do Aggie some good to have dogs around. 

You remember those two kittens Garey and I had to bottle feed because their mother died, the ones I was going to find a good home for when they got big enough?  I still have them, and we still call them Brother and Sister.  I fed them formula for a long time, and they are very healthy.  Brother started eating solid food way before Sister.  After Garey announced that if it were up to me, Sister would still be on a bottle when she graduated high school, so I let him work with her until she ate solid food.

The time is fast approaching when they will need to be spayed and neutered.  I told Garey I was going to have to make up names for them for their medical charts, because I didn’t want to tell the vet that we called them Brother and Sister.  It sounds too redneck.  Garey told me that was not necessary, and I should tell the vet we called them Bubby and Sissy.  Oh yeah, like that’s better.  My son-in-law Thomas suggested we keep the names Brother and Sister and tell the vet we found them in a Baptist church parking lot.  

When Aggie first saw the kittens, she announced that she wasn’t really a cat person, but if you know anything about kittens, you know they will have none of that “not paying attention to them” foolishness.  They sat in her lap and purred and reached up for her face when she rubbed them.  When she got up, they got up and followed her around like little puppies.  They ran along the top of the couch and wrestled with each other at her feet.  She laughed out loud at their antics, especially when one of them hid and the other one ambushed him.

One morning, Aggie told us that the night before, unbeknownst to her, the kittens had gotten into her bedroom before she closed the door.  After she had settled under the covers, she heard a racket in the closet and realized one of the cats had gotten into the room and was now in the closet.  It was Sister, opening cabinet and closet doors is her particular skill set.  Aggie was about to get up when Brother started walking on her legs, so she had to throw back the covers and put him to one side before she could get to Sister. 

Aggie got Sister out of the closet, closed that door, opened the bedroom door, set Sister in the Hall, reached down to pick up Brother, and Sister ran back into the room.  Exhausted from the whole ordeal, Aggie decided to just leave her bedroom door open and wait for the kittens to get bored and leave her room.  They didn’t—get bored or leave her room.  Sister got the closet door open again—I really need to set up a Nanny-Cam to see how she does that—and both cats decided it was time to party with all the miscellany the closet contained.

Aggie got out of bed once more.  This time she picked up Sister and walked out into the hall with her.  Brother followed.  Aggie quickly set Sister on the floor then stepped back into her room and closed the door before the kittens could turn around.  That was quite a feat for a ninety-three-year-old woman.

I have a hard time getting them both out of a room at the same time.  The thing that was most amusing about the whole kittens-in-the-bedroom story is that Aggie was laughing as she told it. 

Before Aggie left for Alabama this morning, she hugged both kittens, one at a time, and told them she loved them.  Brother and Sister are a handful, but they helped a lonely woman “who isn’t really a cat person” be a little less lonely for a few weeks.