An Unexpected Blessing (though my cats might disagree)

Hi friends, 

Happy Wednesday! Thanks for popping by the blog and spending a little of your time with me. 

Most people associate us as “dog people.” We’ve had dogs, actually black dogs for whatever reason, for years. The most recent was our nearly two-hundred-pound Newfie named Griffin (after Griffin McCray, hero of my Chesapeake Valor novel Cold Shot). But we all just called him Griffy. He was the sweetest dog with the biggest personality we’d ever seen in a dog, or in a person, for that matter.

Griffy

Having Griffy was having a kid that was taller and weighed more than I did.  And, he was that way as a toddler, which made training really interesting. 

Griffy and my youngest daughter at Starbucks…Griffy always loved a pup cup!

When Griffy passed last year in June, we didn’t know what to do. We live in Florida but travel nearly every other week for my husband’s work. We didn’t want to leave Mike’s parents watching a rambunctious, quickly growing, and likely bullheaded puppy every other week. 

Our youngest daughter and her husband rescued an abandoned husky puppy, so we had a dog in the family again, but not having a pet in the home was hard.

My daughter and son-in-law’s husky, Blaidd. They named him after one of their favorite video game characters.

Fun Fact: His name actually means Wolf in Welsh.

Other than a very short period when we were renting a townhome that didn’t allow pets, we’ve always had a dog since I was a young kid. Our home felt…empty. I hadn’t realized how much so until Griffy passed. I had no one I could blame my talking-to-myself conversations on anymore. I’d always just said I was talking to the dog and half the time I really was ☺ 

We went on, but I really missed not having a dog. They bring love, laughter, warm cuddles and cold noses into a home. But then I got to thinking (this is the part where my hubby says uh-oh) and I researched cats. We’d had one, very feral cat when I was like five. That was my full knowledge of cats, but I recall Melissa being very independent and easy to care for. Maybe we could have a pet, and my father-in-law wouldn’t have to walk it in the rain. I researched some more, and I read that two cats do better together than one alone. 

I ran all the particulars and all the objections I thought Mike could offer through my head and made my plan of attack. My husband relented…faster than I imagined. He was finding the house missing something too. So we adopted two cats from a rescue. Kaya is the mom and is two.

Kaya

And Layla is one and, in a word, is trouble. She’s always, always, always looking for ways to get into something.

Layla

Having been through a shelter and in different foster homes, it took the girls some time to adjust, but they finally blended right in, and we adore them. 

Then…(you saw that coming, right?) and then we took our grandsons to northern Georgia for a fun-filled week at a cabin in the woods.

Whitewater rafting fun!

Tubing adventures

A remote cabin, and who should we find always hanging around the cabin? A young, male cat. And when I say hanging around, I mean 24/7. It was a no-pet Airbnb, so we couldn’t bring him in, but he stayed. Sat right on the porch at night, facing the darkness and bears. Seriously. We had bears knock over our trashcans and rip open the locks, but Tux, as my youngest grandson named him (you know it’s bad when you start naming animals), because he looks like he’s wearing a tuxedo. 

Tux enjoying the ride home

So, Tux stayed while we drove to every house in the wide area, and nobody knew him or had seen him. We fed him, and he was famished. We brought a little shelter out of the back porch for him, and he cried at night to get in. Trust me, it broke my heart. I almost joined him on that porch. 

But don’t worry. I write romantic suspense novels. I adore happy-ever-after stories, and this one fell into that category. We brought Tux home with concern about how our other two cats would feel, and it hasn’t been easy going, but it hasn’t been hard. Definitely not as hard as listening to Tux wail at night to get in. 

Now, he is in. Now, he’s home. 

Tux making himself at home

Question for you:

Do you have any pets? Would love to hear about them.

Blessings, 

Dani