Oh god. I think a cat just adopted me. I had nothing to do with it, I swear. It was just there in my backyard, and it came up looking for pets and snuggles.  It didn't even want food!  You see, I know all the cat tricks - the ol' "Give me food and I'll love you forever" ploy doesn't work on me - I know you're just going to ignore me after I feed you.  But this one wasn't even hungry...it just wanted to come in the house, hehe.

So here's the whole story: my next-door neighbors just moved out.  They'd been "fixing up" the house (it's like Frankenhouse over there...it was fine before, but this guy, who is a pastry chef by profession, had to go and chop it up and try to put it back together again), but now they're finished (not sure how they knew they'd come to a stopping point, but okies), so they rented it out to some poor unsuspecting lady.  Anyway, while they were still living there, they had a cat.  A grey cat.  And all of a sudden, a grey kitten and a black kitten show up from nowhere. We hadn't had any stray cats in the neighborhood for years.  Hmm, where could these two have come from?  Especially the one with the grey stripes that looked exactly like the neighbors' cat?  We just assumed it was theirs since SOMEONE was at least sort of taking care of them because they were getting food and water, and they seemed to hang around their house.

Then one day they ask US if the kittens are OURS.  Really?  Do I look like I was born yesterday?  It's not my fault you didn't spay your cat - now deal with the consequences instead of trying to look innocent and pawn them off on somebody else.  Didn't happen.  Fast forward a couple years, and guess what?  Now it has kittens! A grey striped one and a black one, just like the last generation! Jeeeeesus. The kicker of the whole thing is when they moved out, they took the original cat with them, and left the rest of the whole mess to fend for themselves. Never would admit that they had anything to do with it.

I was willing to give the neighbors a bit of the benefit of the doubt because that's some hardcore denial right there, but check this out.  These two third-generation kittens (3G? Well, they definitely make noise like a cell phone) must have come from two different litters. The black one is pretty young - it's really small and afraid of people, like you'd expect (and was probably born right around the time the neighbors moved out).  The grey one, on the other hand, looks older and is not afraid of people whatsoever.  In fact, it followed us right in the house before we could shut the door and proceeded to try to make itself right at home.  Gee, could that be because it's used to being in the neighbors' house?  Plus, this cat has eye problems.  If someone else in the neighborhood was taking care of it and letting it in their house, they wouldn't have let its eyes get all infected.  I'm guessing the eye infection started sometime after they left, and nobody's been around to notice.

So yeah, that's the cat drama.  If those aren't my old neighbors' cats, I don't know where they came from or how they got people-friendly.  Anyway, we're thinking about keeping the grey kitten.  My at-least-23-year-old cat (no word of a lie) finally met a not untimely end last year, so we've been catless since then.  As much as I miss my cat (I've had him since I was 6 or 7), I can't say I miss the cleanup, so I'm not sure how I feel about adding the litter box and the extra vacuuming back in, but...gosh, he's cute!

I've been thinking about cat names, so you what side I've been leaning toward.  There's the usual boring-but-nice-sounding names like Smoke, Shadow, Storm, etc., and then there's a couple I thought of once I let my inner geek go wild.  One is Castiel (Cas for short, of course) after the angel from Supernatural, and the other is Thor, which isn't quite so nerdy, and goes well with a grey cat since he's the god of thunder and all.  Hey, at least I'm not going to name him Earl Grey, like I've seen on a couple of websites.  Honestly, people.  Of course, that's not as bad as all the ones like Mr. Shmoofles McShmoofington III and crap...I know cats don't understand English (and if they do, they're not very literate, are they?), but come on, surely the poor thing has got to feel a little humiliation every time you call him.  It's like when two people are speaking a language you don't know, but you're pretty sure they're talking about how your ass crack is hanging out or something, and not about what they had for dinner last night or the movie they just saw.