Welcome Home, Indigo!

They call it a “foster fail” but how could anything this wonderful be seen as a failure?

No, we weren’t planning on adopting any of the kittens from the litter we rescued*. There were many reasons for this, and we listed them over and over to anyone who asked why we weren’t keeping one, two, or all of the babies. “It’s not the right time to grow our pet family.” “We’re just renting right now; we should wait until we buy our next house.” “We already have two elderly pets we love very much.” Blah, blah, blah. I’m going to stop here because you’re not listening anymore anyway. No one was. Everyone nodded at us, rolled their eyes, and told us we’d end up with a kitten. But we really really REALLY weren’t going to. Really.

And then… we had three kittens left, and two of them got adopted together. That left one.

The last kitten was truly the last kitten. He was the one we didn’t catch until five days after the rest of the litter. He was the one who spent most of his first day in our house exploding in tiny spits and hisses if you looked at him. He was the one who we named Will because, in our Stranger Things-themed litter, he was the one who had been lost in the upside down, separated from the others.

This solid blue, fuzzy little hot pepper had been in our house for five days when his siblings left for their forever home, and I’d already managed to get him from extra spicy to medium spicy via the use of the purrito and other methods of forced cuddling. (The little guy was never vicious, just scared. Once you got ahold of him, he never bit or scratched. It was just the being picked up part, or rather the THOUGHT of being picked up, that unnerved him.) So, on Sunday, when Eleven and Dustin went home with their new family, he was all alone again. And he started crying.

Your heart is probably already melting at the idea of a lonely kitten mewing, but let me make it even worse by telling you that his tiny cries sounded more like a screech owl than a cat. They were truly pitiful. That night, I let him out of the crate and played with him and talked to him and snuggled him and showed him the beauty of belly rubs. We bonded, and he purred against my chest as I hugged him. Then I (uh oh) gave him a real name. The next morning, I told my hubby, “We need to keep this cat.” He agreed.

Foster fail? Um, no. Indigo William Juettner was always meant to be ours, we just didn’t know it yet**. Sometimes that’s just the way life works.

Indie has been an official member of the family for two days now. It’s been a busy two days of feeding him constantly (I think he’s part Hobbit), cleaning up after him (eating constantly = pooping constantly), and helping him feel like part of the family.

Indie is currently romping around the bed as I type, falling off at regular intervals and pouncing on my back occasionally. It’s only a matter of time before he hits a button on my laptop and deletes this post or translates it into Italian or something. Any typos you find are his fault.

Indigo is such a joy, and this whole process of kitten fostering has been so rewarding. I want to thank everyone for helping us find homes for these sweet babies and for believing, all along, that one of those homes would be ours***.

Now to figure out how to live life with a growing kitten in the house. Wish me luck. (Indie just zoomed around the room, bowed up at nothing, and then hid under the bed.)

* I just asked my hubby if “rescued” was the right word for what we did, since the kittens weren’t actually in danger at the moment. He suggested we “absconded” with the kittens and told me I had to include a Willow quote, so here:

** Everyone else knew it. My big announcement that we were keeping one of the kittens was met with a lot of laughter, eye rolls, fake shocked looks, and “I-told-you-so” comments. People think they’re SO smart.

*** Yes, yes, you were right. There, I said it. Happy?