After having a bit of a rough pet year, we were unsure how long we wanted to wait before getting new animals. On one hand, we’ve had pets for pretty much the majority of our adult lives, and needed a bit of a breather after everything that happened. On the other hand, we knew the kids would probably heal better if they had new pets to distract from so much pet loss in such a short period of time.
However, the decision was pretty much made for us when it was announced that one of the local animal shelters had such a large influx of animals that they were waiving all adoption fees. They normally get about 80 animals in a week; they received 65 on the Tuesday of that week. By the time we went on the Friday morning, they had had to put 7 animals down because they simply didn’t have the room for the animals that would require more care before being eligible to adopt out to the public (which is heartbreaking).
After some discussion, Richie and I decided that we would get 2 kittens and 1 puppy. We knew we wanted at least 1 kitten and 1 puppy, so that they could be raised alongside each other, and in my experience, cats do better when they have a fellow cat buddy.
With that in mind, we surprised the girls with a trip to the animal shelter. We dressed them while they were still asleep and headed to the shelter. Seeing a bunch of kittens was probably one of the best ways to wake up.
We were able to bring our choice of kittens home immediately since they were already spayed and neutered, but there was still a waiting list for each of the dogs, so we were told we’d find out later which one we got. We put our names down for 4 different dogs, but for our number 1 choice, we were number 3.
Surprisingly, we actually managed to get her. The first person on the list wanted to wait to pick her up until the next week when she could bring her mom to meet her (which the shelter was not okay with since they needed people to take the animals immediately), and the second person on the list got their first choice of dog instead.
We’ve dubbed the kittens Rosemary (orange female) and Moony (brown male), and the puppy Onyx. I’ll write a more in depth post about each in the future, but look at how tiny they were when we got them!!