The Best Cat Ever/ Manipulating Dad

When we were young we lived in Chesapeake, VA (that little factoid is not really relevant to this story, it is just information). One Sunday morning in 1998 we arrived at church and found out that someone had left a box of about 5 kittens on the door step of the church. I guess they figured that Christians would be kind enough to find homes for the kittens. After all, what would Jesus do? I think He would take in a homeless kitty. So naturally, the Sarah Margaret and I wanted one of the kittens so bad. At this point we only had one dog and one cat at home, and our current cat was really weird and not fun to play with (RIP Chief). There was definitely room in the Craft house for another animal.

Four of the five kittens were black and one was a little white girl. We knew that Dad would only let us have a female cat, that has just always been a rule. He says boys make a bigger mess in the litter box, and they are not as nice. This explanation made sense at the time because this seemed to be true of the human boys I knew as well. Most of the kittens had been spoken for except for a little black girl kitty so we snatched her up and took to the sanctuary where Dad was. He obviously did not want another cat, but he needed to give us a logical reason. He said we could not get the kitten because she was black and we had already had a bad experience with a black cat. Her name was Carmen, as in Carmen San Diego. She pooped on the rug a lot and finally just ran away. Dad was also aware that the only white cat had already been claimed by a boy in my Sunday school class whose mom had already said he could get it. He said if only the cat was white we could have her. He thought the discussion about kittens was over.

Well Marg and I would not give up so easily. We immediately found Aaron, the boy with the only white cat. We explained our situation to him. Aaron was very nice to us and agreed to trade kittens with us. He did not care whether his kitten was black or white. With gigantic grins on our faces we ran back to the sanctuary to show Dad out accomplishment. Much to his dismay our new kitten fit all his criteria and he could not say no.

We went through many names for the kitten. She started as Apricot because she had orange on her ears and tail, but that is just too long to say all the time. Then, she was Boo because she's white like a ghost. Next was just Kitty, we were not feeling creative anymore. However, after we said "Kitty" enough in baby voice (because who doesn't talk to kittens in baby voice) her name evolved into Bitty. to this day Bitty is the best cat ever. She is actually curled up beside me right now as I am writing this. I think Dad would be the first to tell you that he is glad we tricked him into getting a kitten that day.