Meet Gizmo

Long before we moved into our new house, BJ has told the Little Guy that we will get a new kitten. I already have a cat. She's 9 years old and can be a bit ornery, to say the least. The Little Guy has always had a fear of her and BJ just doesn't really like her very much. He's not a cat person. He finds them to be useless fur balls. My cat, Smokey, is so sweet most of the time and she loves me and loves to cuddle with me. They have a bit of a love/hate relationship with each other. She makes us laugh and she irritates him...especially if he gets a cat hair in his food. So it came as a surprise that he would actually let us get another feline.


So we moved into the new house. And we had to wait for kittens to be in season. Then we had to wait for a free weekend that we had the Little Guy so that we could go to the Rescue place and take a look. We finally settled on a day sort of spur of the moment. The Little Guy had mentioned to me that he thought we were never going to get a kitten and I didn't want him to be disappointed so I sort of just brought it up....and BJ agreed to go and look.


We saw about 30 kittens that afternoon and we held a couple that had really cool markings. Two of them were very similar...black and tan tabby cats. I held the first one and he purred so loudly that my heart just melted. Then we saw another one in a different room that had the greatest spots and stripes but when I held him, he didn't purr.


The Little guy said he wanted the first one and the more I petted him and listened to him purring, I knew he was ours. So we went to the pet store and spent way too much money on new cat stuff and then went to lunch. We had to wait for him to get his last shot and for them to get all the paper work in order. As we sat there, the name Gizmo just came to me. All the other names that we came up with just didn't seem to fit him. We even looked online for names after we had him home. So Gizmo it is.


Now, the fun part. We brought him home on Sunday. On Monday we noticed his one eye was watering. We shrugged it off as being from stress and such. Then on Tuesday, BJ got home and poor Gizmo couldn't open his eye. Both eyes were oozing and swollen. I made an appointment for after work Wednesday. He had an upper respiratory infection and I was given antibiotics and eye ointment. I felt terrible for him. He felt bad and didn't know what was happening to him and why his new mom was putting ointment in his eyes twice a day!


He began to get more energy but his eyes were terrible still. I had to take him in the next Monday again because I was so worried. I even told my boss I had to take him to the vet and would be late to work. A different doctor (that I like much more) gave me drops for his eyes and increased his dosage of the antibiotics. Within 2 days he was acting like a kitten should...running around and playing and just being silly. I am so relieved that he's well again.


Smokey is becoming more and more tolerant of him. She doesn't like him but I think she wants to like him. She bats at him and still hisses sometimes, but all in all they are doing ok together. He is such a loveable cat. He meows (squeaks, really) to get attention and then when you look at him he rolls over on his side or back so that you can pet his belly. He finally found our bed late last week and ended up waking us up a bunch of times to get some love. BJ said that was the end of that until he learns to just sleep at night. I'm very sad because we now have to shut the bedroom door which means we can sleep, but I miss my Smokey. We snuggle together so well during the night and she greets me as soon as I hit the snooze on my alarm clock.


Gizmo then started waking up the Little Guy on Saturday and Sunday morning really early. He needs his sleep or else he just doesn't function right so when he's at our house his door will have to be closed, too. And to let you know how sweet the Little Guy is....he let Smokey into our room Sunday morning so that she could come see me. I felt her jump on me and looked and saw the door still shut so I knew what had happened. She was so happy to lay with me...I love my kitties.


So here are a couple of pictures of our new baby. He has already grown so much in the 2 weeks that we have had him. My hand doesn't cover his entire belly anymore! He won't be a baby for long.

And here are a couple of pictures of my 2 babies. I can not believe the great photo ops that they have presented me with.