Kitties basically had the run of the house by the time October hit.
They really liked hopping around behind the books. Fortunately that seemed to die down by the end of the month. This is Hades.
We had decided to adopt three of the kittens by the point but weren't sure which. The initial plan was to keep Medusa, Aphrodite, and Hades so I took lots of pics of Persephone and Athena to send to people. This is Persephone.
Athena on left, Persephone on right.
Athena was such a doll. The kids were ecstatic to be adopting kittens but then everyone struggled with giving any up. Like I said, it wasn't like there were any duds in the bunch.
Look at how cute she is saying hi to Callie.
Juliet learned how to ride her bike! Nathan was a champ and taught her one morning while I was gone at tennis or something.
She picked it up pretty much instantly and biked all the way to the school!
Proud Patrick biking with her!
Then I drug everyone out to the pumpkin patch. They went somewhat willingly. Eleanor and I are always ready to eat our way through the Louisburg Cider Mill.
Eleanor is the tallest child in this photo.
Just Patrick and Juliet for the air pillow
Eleanor begging for treats in the shop
Meanwhile Patrick and Juliet enjoyed the corn crib
Eleanor and I discovered fried pies. Eleanor liked hers okay, I was pretty obsessed with mine.
So sweet, so tasty. I don't really care about candy but I would eat things like this forever.
So happy to get her donut and cider. And Nathan is such a good sport about going to this because he gets zero donuts.
Climbing around on hay bales.
Annoying that Eleanor is basically as tall as me in seated pictures. I got the shirt she's wearing in this photo from a thrift shop in Capitol Hill in Seattle in my early 20's. I would have been very impressed to hear that my daughter would someday wear it.
Being cute and playing with Juliet in the corn crib. Juliet was in heaven.
A willing picture before entering the corn maze! It ended up being a very nice outing.
Then we came home to kitties
The introduction of collars to help tell the kitties apart! Here is Aphrodite in the bookcase
Tired Aphrodite
Athena in the bookcase
Tired kitties cuddled on me
Girl Scouts in off to a great start! We've done a couple meetings and we're at 17 girls now. It feels a lot more manageable than 21 kindergarteners did. All the kids love it, we do interesting things and have fun.
Leaf impressions
I had to take Juliet out of school for an appointment and we decided it would be a good idea to stop by McLains for a treat before heading back to school
Juliet had her friend Nora over for a play date
It ended up being a very important play date because Nora absolutely loved the kitties and begged her mom to adopt one or two. Her mom couldn't adopt the kittens (the dad is allergic) but they shared pictures with family and Nora's aunt ended up adopting two of the kitties!! She has two boys and it's been an absolute love fest.
I ended up taking a lot of fancy pictures around this time in hopes of getting Athena adopted, even though she might have been my favorite if she stuck around.
Having five cats was definitely too much, I kept on walking around and counting cats to make sure no one was trapped in a closet or something. One day I couldn't find Medusa anywhere, until I happened to spot her in a cozy spot behind the lamp on Nathan's side table by the bed.
Five kittens are in this photo
It was easier to give up Hades. He was sweet but oh so wild. And it actually was perfect to have him and Athena go together, they had started pairing up quite a bit and playing together so it felt good to have them adopted together. Really that was the goal - to have two cats go together to a good family that would send us occasional updates.
So many cuddles with all the kitties. We had to wait for Persephone to make it to two pounds which took forever. Hades was probably at three pounds before Persephone was two pounds.
Medusa adores Callie and would love to cuddle and/or play with her. Callie is so excited and so afraid of the kitties.
Hades' glamor shot. He was a very sweet kitty. And handsome! But also very curious and wild.
Another pic of the adoptable duo.
Eleanor had a band concert! I can't ever hear her individually but the band sounds good.
We were in the front row and we were barely embarrassing, we're sure.
Eleanor with just a few kitties afterwards.
The majority of this blog post is of children with kittens
Poor scared Callie with Persephone
Athena and Hades may have also liked Callie the least of all of our kitties. Poor Callie.
Juliet went to our neighborhood fall festival and came home covered in temporary tattoos. She modeled them for me before going upstairs to take her shower.
Marching band. WOW. We finally got to watch them perform their routine and it was amazing.
We were relieved when Athena and Hades got adopted because we needed them out of the house, the longer they stayed the more we bonded and the harder it was going to be to say goodbye.
Aphrodite with a smoothie faced Eleanor.
All five kitties!
I think this is Persephone. Why did I pick a litter of identical looking cats??
Juliet has been an absolute champ at rock climbing. She's making it to the top of the tall wall!
These cats are SO nice. Being grabbed around the neck by a 2nd grader while being sniffed in the bum by a dog and just accepting it as a matter of course. I think this is the day they were going in for surgery and Juliet was saying goodbye to Hades here.
And saying goodbye to Athena
My friend Corinn came over and helped me to take some witchy kitten photos. This is Athena
And here I have Aphrodite
It was weird to not have any kittens for one night. Callie got some extra loves.
We successfully adopted our three kittens and got the other two adopted by Nora's aunt! Although it was rather exciting - I didn't realize that after a cat got fixed it would be a bit loopy and hiss if it was near any other cat. The cats had to come home in three different carriers and slept in three different rooms their first night home. We were relived when they were back to liking each other the next day.
The surgery actually didn't go as smoothly as it could have gone. Apparently Athena almost died, they had to intubate her when she didn't react well to the anesthesia. And Medusa had some pain medication for us to give her the next day, they didn't give me details but said that she didn't do well with parts of the surgery either. She threw up a few times the next day and so did Katniss.
On that note, we had a series of family discussions after we decided to adopt and knew which kittens we were going to keep. Medusa kept her name, because it's obviously a cool name. Aphrodite became Katniss or Kit Kat, because Juliet was desperate to have a cat named Kit Kat and Eleanor was sure that was the stupidest name she had ever heard in her life, so the compromise was naming her Katniss and Juliet could call her Kit Kat if she liked. And then Persephone just seemed like a Mochi, Eleanor said she should have a food name and as soon as the idea of Mochi came up everyone liked it.
Another reason it's good we didn't keep Hades was we couldn't agree on a name for him. Bradley wanted to stick with Hades, Eleanor liked Romeo, Nathan liked something else, and I had formed a group with Patrick and Juliet voting for Shark. Naming with so many people involved is very difficult.
Bradley was very proud to have Medusa come find him for cuddles when she finally got full run of the house.
Eleanor set herself up in quite the position on my bed to do some schoolwork and cuddle cats. She actually fell asleep for about half an hour like this, which was very good because it was before her second performance as the White Witch for the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.
She was so proud of her costume even though the kittens kept trying to attack the bottom of it when she first tried it on
Beautiful! She got this role after I tried to squash her theater dreams because I told her she was quiet and wouldn't get main roles and it takes up too much time. Oopsie. Maybe achieving your dream against adversity makes it more impressive?
Patrick was in the play too. He was a wood nymph. So cute!
This was after the first performance. I had to leave early to pick up Bradley from band practice, right after Eleanor killed Aslan. I told her that I thought it was actually the perfect time to leave, as far as I was concerned her character won and it was a happy ending!
She was SO GOOD as the white witch. She threw everything into it. I'm biased, but I'm also more inclined to judge my children more critically, and she was the best one in the play. She was amazing. So many people came up to me to talk to me about her.
Juliet got to bring along Stella as her buddy for the second night.
You can see both Eleanor and Patrick in this photo!
Deliciously evil
Oops, she's dead. She got carried offstage by a few kids and they almost dropped her both nights.
Patrick was so cute as a wood nymph. He bounced around with a goofy smile in-between scene changes, which is what he was supposed to do, but he was so hammy we all started laughing a bit in the audience. On the second night they had the lights down between scene changes, so weird.
Curtain call!
Juliet was just a little excited about her actor brother
He was so cute. I was proud of him.
Eleanor's friend Elise came just to watch her perform, she goes to a different middle school. And we love Ainsley, she was in the play and she and Eleanor have become really good friends.
With the white witch! I got her this bouquet from Costco and she ran around and gave all her friends flowers and kept just one for herself, which I thought was a rather lovely thing to do.
Post play kitty cuddles
Nathan is happy about these kitties too, which is great because I definitely sprung this on him. My favorite part of this was me telling him I wanted to go pick up some foster kittens and him saying, "No, we're going to end up adopting them," and me telling him how foolish and wrong he was.
I'm just over the moon about how much the kittens like the kids. They'll climb up on Juliet for cuddles all the time and our original cats really didn't want to have anything to do with her.
And they love everyone, it's pretty equal opportunity loving so far.
So many cuddles all over the place
Medusa is so pretty. I looked it up and she's a marbled tabby.
I made a Facebook post about us adopting the kittens and Eleanor saw me doing it so she asked, "are you posting pictures of me on the internet without my permission?" I proudly handed over my phone so she could see the post in which I had purposefully not included her or Bradley because I don't post pictures of them unless it's a family photo or something along those lines. She then said, "Why am I being excluded? My feeeeelings!" and I have to say, it doesn't seem like I could win with this one.
