Sunday, May 27, 2012

Gary vs. the Pitney's.

Just to clarify this story is not about our  friend, Gary Witherall. ;)

 Three weeks ago Troy and I thought we would embrace life with kids here in Reichenbuch and get a cat. That night at dinner we told the kids our plan and all voted on names.
 Troy voted for- bartholo-mew
Khoen voted for- Khoen
Fletcher voted for - kitty
I voted for - Templeton
Needless to say my name won. So we set out in search for our Templeton and went to the local tierhiem (animal shelter). We all five excitedly surveyed the cats while asking to see one that might be their most calm, friendly cat. The kind lady led us to a sweet looking white cat that bore the name Gary. we thought that's ironic. Good thing we came with our own name. I wanted to see how the cat would react to the three kids. After all there's three of them and the majority of them are boys, and they are three and under. Good luck cat. However, to my surprise the cat was very calm and sweet. Despite that Fletcher thought it was funny to poke his nose and giggle loudly. we held him for a few minuets and gently put him away and told the lady we would take him. She said it was a good choice and led us to the next room where we gave her our contact information. We were told they would call us in 14-15 days when Gary would be ready for pick up. We went home excited as ever and took great care in picking out cat food and water dishes and play toys at our next visit to the markets.

 3 weeks later........

 No phone call......

 Troy and I had the opportunity to run some errands without our kids and thought we should check up on our dear sweet Gary. After waiting 15 minutes to talk with someone we were led into the office where the same gal who helped us find Gary sat. She was helping a costumer who spoke English. Her (the customer) first words to us were "don't get mad at me I'm only translating.". Ok we thought, that was weird. She then began to tell us that they thought Gary was too calm for us. They didn't think it was a good fit and that he would be very likely to snap and kill one of our kids. (yes, that is the word she used). Troy immediately asked, "wow, has this happened before with Gary?". "No" Was her well meaning response. I leaned over to Troy and asked "did Gary turn into a Pit Bull? I thought we were buying a cat". We pressed a little further saying that this was the cat that the lady led us to after seeing our kids, their ages and knowing that we wanted a friendly sweet cat. She advised us as well that having a cat and baby is not always safe. After all cats like to snuggle up to babies, sometimes laying on them, even on their faces. Causing them to suffocate and die. After realizing she doesn't know what kind of mom I am (or family we are) we left it at that and told them thank you for all their well meaning advice.

 I'm not sure how long we were silent for but it was definitely broken by laughter. And a "did that really just happen?" The car ride home was needless to say a memorable one.

lets recap...
1) went to look for a sweet kind cat
2) found sweet kind cat
3) we're told sweet kind cat failed psyche evaluation
4) left without a cat, 90 euros and a great story
5) still in search for a sweet kind cat.



 Hope you had a few laughs,
Michelle

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