My sweet little girl, Adora, got sick and we had to put her to sleep.    It was so hard, because she was such a young kitty.  John adopted a kitten in March, shortly after returning from the funeral of his brother-in-law, Dan.  He named the kitten, Nickles because he gives high fives.  He chose the spelling because of the book we read James when he was little called The Fire Cat.  The cat in the book was named Pickles, and he had big paws because he had big things to do.  Nickles has big paws too, and he's grown into them.  A friend came over this weekend who hadn't been here for a bit, and was shocked because of how big he's grown. 

Snow, the bichon frise, seems to think that kittens are toys.  He jumps at them to play, and they respond with fear or flashing claws.  If they run, he chases, and chases.  Mishka, who has been ours for 8 days now, is a very frightened kitty.  She's a medium haired tuxedo kitty.  She's only about a year old, and was taken as a kitten from a hoarding situation.  She went to the county animal shelter, where she was rescued by a group called Friends of County Animal Shelters (FOCUS).  They put her in a foster home, and I adopted her from a PetSmart store.  She was there for 6 months until last Sunday afternoon.  She has a cloudy spot on one of her eyes, and her back legs are misaligned.  I think the volunteers there thought she would never be picked.  She spent the first two days at home under our bed, and in the far back corner of it, totally out of reach.   Then I remembered Feliway Cat Calm and went to PetCo and bought it.  I sprayed it in the room, and lo and behold, out she came from the bed.  Snow still scares her, and she retreats under the bed for a while of safety.  I'm not sure what kind of kitty she'll be yet.  She's been rubbing every surface she encounters, and it is cute to watch.  She is very deliberate about rubbing each side of the stair rail, going in a circle around them.  My hope for her legs is that they will adjust since she has a big house to run around in now, not just a little cage and a small room.  She's jumping up to surfaces more easily.  John doesn't think she likes her name, but she hasn't given me any other ideas for names yet.  And a coworker who came from Moscow said Mishka means Little Bear in Russian.  I like that.