Welcome Mitzie!

We are happy to introduce our newest family member Mitzie. She is about 10 weeks old and we adopted her from the Cherokee County Humane Association at Petsmart this past Saturday. We think it's important for children to have a pet to grow up with. We have talked on and off about getting a pet for a long time now. The kids have been begging for one for even longer. Honestly, it's hard to resist your children tag teaming you on a pet when you long for one yourself. Almost every weekend when we go out, whether it's to the Publix down the street or the local Target, it seems there's always an adoption event we have to drive by (usually it's right in the same parking lot)and the kids know they're there and ALWAYS ask to go look at the puppies and kitties. Most of the time I say "No," but once in a while, if we don't really have anything special planned for the day, I'll agree to "just look". There are always a lot of "Oooohs" and "Awwwws," but up until now we have always left knowing we hadn't found the right pet yet. And then there was Mitzie and we all knew she was the one.

Yes, there is the matter of Jack's allergies and asthma. We found out Jack was allergic to our black cat when he was about two, I think. It was just about the same time we learned the reason she (the cat) kept getting violently ill all over the house for days at a time and then making a miraculous recovery only to get ill again soon after, was because her kidneys were shutting down from old age. They were simply worn out and she was suffering. I got her when she was only 4 weeks old, much too young to be taken from her mother. She was so small she could sleep in the palm of my hand. I had to feed her with an eye dropper at first. It was hard for me to let her go. The kids were still so young we decided at that time it was best to be pet-free for a while. But I always felt an emptiness. After a while we began to talk about getting a dog. Jack's allergy test said he wasn't allergic to dogs and eventually Lucy came into our lives. Lucy was a great dog and we loved her dearly but Jack's asthma continued to get worse, we were having a hard time controlling it and he had chronic sinus infections that's when he had him tested again and found out he was now allergic to dogs too. For those of you who don't know the Lucy story, that's also about the same time our neighbor let us know they wanted to adopt a dog. They had taken care of Lucy a few times for us while we were out of town so they already knew and loved her and we got to keep her right next door. Sadly, Lucy got some of the tainted dog food from China that was in the news a while back and she died. So again we were petless, again there was emptiness, but we thought for Jack's sake maybe it was better this way.

So why then do you have a cat now? You might ask. Well, a few things have changed. We've ripped almost all the carpet out of the main floor and replaced it with (non-allergenic)wood floors, we've replaced our filthy old fabric couch with a leather one (doesn't harbor dust mites), both of which can be easily wiped down to keep any cat dander to a minimum. Our HVAC died and we replaced it with a heat pump outfitted with a whole-house HEPA air filtration system which means MUCH cleaner air. In addition to having a cleaner environment, Jackson is now taking Zyrtec instead of Claritin (Zyrtec works much better) and getting allergy shots every week . Even though it's still early in the treatment, his reaction to the cat will continually get better. The kids are at an age now that they will probably get more fulfillment from a pet now than ever. As a precaution, we did inform the CCHA before adopting Mitzie that Jack is allergic to cats and we may need to bring her back and they agreed to it. Which, by the way, Jack has not had any problems yet!

So that's our little story and our little news. She's the sweetest, gentlest, most loving little kitten, and we love her right back!