I Gave a Baby Girl a Home

Penny cuddling Bluebear.

This is the story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down...

Ok, I'm sorry for that. It just seemed appropriate. This is Penny's story.

I have always wanted a cat. My goal from the time I got to college was to own two kittens. I was going to get a grey and black striped tabby, and an all-black cat with just a tiny little patch of white on its chest. I was going to name them Bink and Bonk (I'm a big fan of silly names, and it seemed like perfect little names for two playful little boy kittens) and we were all going to live happily ever after.

Well, needless to say, once I moved out of the dorms, I realized just how little money I actually had. I couldn't even afford to feed myself half the time, much less take care of kittens. That would just be cruel. So, I gave up on my dream of having kittens until after I already had the necessary things like a degree, a steady job, and steady meal times.

Itty Bitty Baby Penny.

Flash forward to the end of my year in Germany. I've just found some great roommates and we were discussing living arrangements. I'd be living with 4 other people, 2 dogs and a cat (read: a zoo). I was looking forward to it, but I knew once again that there was no way I'd be able to bring more animals into the house. A few days later, one of my roommates told me about how she had found a kitten on the side of the road. She was only about 4 weeks old, and she was sick with pneumonia, but they had taken her to the vet and she was well on her way to recovery. She posted a picture of the kitten on Facebook, and my heart was completely melted. She was this little orange fluffball with little orange tiger stripes, and she looked so sweet, even though she was sleeping in the picture. I begged my new roommates to let us keep her (they were originally going to give her away...You know, cause our house was already a zoo), and they agreed (it really didn't take much convincing). They decided to name her Penelope, or Penny for short (I wasn't too fond of the name, but I was hopelessly outvoted. But the name suits her now, so it all works out).

Penny with Butterball and Klaus. She loves to snuggle with
stuffed animals.

I moved into the house about a month after they found her. As soon as I saw her in person for the first time, I was in love. I picked her up, and she just started purring with the loudest purrbox I've ever heard in a little kitten. She curled up on my boobs and went straight to sleep. It was so adorable.

There was a bit of drama when I first arrived involving the other cat. Aya (the older cat) was not happy about moving to a new house, and she was really unhappy about not being the only cat in the house anymore. So she took to marking her territory. It got so bad, we thought we were going to have to get rid of the kitten. Fortunately, we decided to keep Penny in the master bedroom (it had an adjoining bathroom, and since she was so little, she still had lots of room to play around and not feel confined), and the territoriality of Aya drastically reduced.

Penny also likes to read. 

Still, that was only a temporary solution. She is a devious little kitten, and loved to escape the bedroom just to play with the older cat. Eventually, we decided that she was getting a little big for the room, and enough time had passed, so we allowed her access to the whole house. The house remained free of pee or poop (except in litter boxes), so Penny was finally granted her freedom.

Another cost we didn't consider initially was annual shots and eventually spaying. Penny was not happy to have her lady bits removed, and she turned from the once happy and loving kitty to angry, angsty teenage kitty. It was a dark time in our household. Fortunately, however, she went back to being a happy kitty a few weeks after her surgery.

Despite hating baths, Penny loves to play in the bathtub.

Her favorite activities are pouncing, playing with the springy door stopper in my room, going up in my boxsprings and attacking my feet as I walk by, tormenting Aya, and lately, attempting to find out what "outside" is all about. She's discovered the trick which I like to call "the super jump". I'll be standing, and I'll nod my head or move somehow, and she somehow jumps from a standstill all the way up to my butt in an attempt to protect me... from my own hair. It's very cute, but very painful.

It's a Penny in your pocket!

All in all, she's getting pretty big now. Soon, she'll be a grownup kitty, though the vet said that she's a bit of a runt, so she'll always be small for her age. I love her to death, and I thought I should introduce ya'll to her.

Keegan napping with Penny.

Penny and Klaus got in a fight. She's winning, I think.

She's not happy I woke her up.

A hormonal teenager cuddling me.

The most recent picture. She's almost a grownup now.

I have a cold.

It always starts the same way. You wake up, and your nostril (left or right, I'll let you be creative) is stuffed up. You groan inwardly: partially because you don't feel good, but mostly because you realize how much you don't need this right now, because of your job, or school, or the big date, or because you simply don't want it to happen. You stand up, and after the initial dizziness which makes you lose your vision for a minute, you realize that your nose wasn't as sniffy as you thought it was. You force down some orange juice, and consider what other alternatives would be best for cold prevention. You decide on sheer will power.

The day proceeds, and you're feeling mostly ok, though a little off. Finally, you arrive back home and relax in your comfy chair. As you're reading / watching tv / reading my blog (I kid, I know no one ever really reads this thing), you realize that the stuffy nose is back, but you since you're wide awake, it's nothing you can't handle. When bedtime arrives, you decide to err on the safe side and take some NyQuil (or liquid hell, whichever name you may prefer). It doesn't take long until you've collapsed in your bed to experience the really weird dreams and a hope that you'll feel better in the morning.

Liquid hell.

Morning comes. Guess what? Not only has the snot moved from one nostril to the other (a phenomenon that astounds you every time you have a cold), but your cold has now gotten worse and to top it all off, you're groggy because of the bad decision that is NyQuil. This particular morning, the stuffiness doesn't go away after the vertigo of standing up. You drink half the carton of orange juice this morning, as well as take one of those vitamins that your aunt keeps giving to you because she swears they work 100% and she hasn't been sick since she started taking them even though you know she had a cold just a few months ago. Your appetite somehow disappears throughout the day, but that's probably because you're being fed a lifetime supply of goo from your nose. You finally make it home and fall asleep in your comfy chair because you weighed the benefits of actually getting to your bed and decided that death would be just as comfortable in a chair as it would in a bed (e.g., NOT).

You wake up the next day (or is it just a couple of hours later? You don't know, and you don't care), and you're somehow in your bed. You don't even question how this came to pass: you're too pissed off that you're still alive and whatever power above didn't see fit to ease you from your misery. You decide that there's no way you're moving from that spot to do anything unnecessary today (eating and going to the bathroom aren't necessary, right?), so you go to call in sick. Only your phone is in the other room, right by your comfy chair. Thus begins the debate of whether or not your boss really needs to know if you're sick or not. After what seems like an eternity (in actuality, only 7 minutes passed, 3 of which were when you accidentally dozed off and then re-awoke in a panic), you finally roll onto the floor and begin the crawl to your phone. This is the part where if you live with a spouse or a roommate, you're saved. Generally, your noises of agony and misery attract the attention of your housemate, and he or she will wonder why on earth you're lying on the floor halfway in the hallway. They will see you and take pity on you, and then force you back into your bed. If they are truly amazing roommates, they will call your boss for you, explain the situation, and then come back into your room with some soup and some medicine. Unfortunately, the only time this will work is if they're also your mom. Most likely, they might throw you your phone and will only help you out if you promise them favors which they will cash in on as soon as possible.

You don't look this cute.

A few days pass, and you're not getting any better. You've caught up on all the soap operas, know all of Jerry's catch phrases, and you haven't bathed since that first day you got sick (remember? you took that shower because you thought the steam would clear out your sinuses. Guess what: it didn't help). You have cracker crumbs in your bed, and you're very uncomfortable. You have a coherent thought through the fog: perhaps it's time to see a doctor. It's apparent at this time that the cold isn't going to "go away by itself" like you thought it would.

You call in another favor from your roommate, and he / she helps you to the bathroom. You turn on the shower and sit in the tub for a while, just letting the water bounce off of your head. After about an hour (or whenever the hot water runs out), you finally roll out of the tub, attempt to towel off, put on the nearest pair of PJs, and have your roommate take you to the doctor.

These things are heaven when
you're sick.

You wait in that waiting room for an hour with all the other sick people. You try to stay as far away from the puking kid as possible (there's always one), and at last you are finally successful at one thing. You count this avoidance as a personal victory, and are feeling proud right as the nurse calls you back. You roll out of your chair and do the zombie walk into the back room. She leads you to a room with that cool chair / bed thing, and you notice that she is trying really hard not to touch anything that you've touched, even though she put a thermometer in your mouth just a few minutes ago. You then start thinking about what kind of sickness you must really have. It must be really bad if a nurse is avoiding contact with you. Perhaps it is worse than you originally thought. Maybe you're deathly ill. Perhaps you're the cause of the upcoming zombie apocalypse. Maybe you're going to die. That has to be it...Your illness is so bad that you're going to die and the nurse doesn't want to catch it and you really start freaking out...when the doctor wakes you up.

He takes one look at you, goes "Yep, you're sick" and then orders for you to take a shot up the butt. You ask what you're sick with, and he rattles off the scientific term for what you have, and when you ask him to clarify, he says "you're sick."

I hate taking pills...

One shot in each buttcheek and a copay later, you walk out of the doctor's office to go get your meds. Your roommate takes you to the nearest pharmacy, where you pay a ridiculous sum of money for 30 gigantic horse pills. You go home, take one, and pass out from your exhausting day. After a couple of days, you realize that you are starting to feel better. You take your tentative steps out of your room to get your own orange juice for once. You don't even feel tired when you get back to your room. Your boss calls, wondering when you're going to be back into work, or whether they should start looking for a new employee. You tell him / her that you're feeling much better, and you'll be in tomorrow, and you're good to your word. You feel tired, but that's about all. You go into work, and realize that nobody really even missed you, much less knew you were sick.

As for the horse pills, once you decided you felt better and you didn't really need them anymore, you stopped taking them. That turns out to come in handy, when a few months later you wake up with one of your nostrils all stuffed up...

Just thought I'd note: The pictures (except for the paint drawings at the beginning) aren't mine. You should be able to look at their properties to find out where they really came from.