Kitties

TJ loves cats. Curious George used to be the only television show he was interested in, but about a month ago Rob recorded a documentary about kittens off of Animal Planet; now he asks for the kitties more than he asks for the monkey. I can't remember exactly when the cat-love began, but it was prior to Christmas, since one of the things I looked the hardest for for a Santa gift was a big stuffed cat. Anyways. Sufficient to say that the cat-love has gone on for a while, and he's had time to accumulate a menagerie of cats.


You may notice he has two of the little white calico cat; the first rather mangy, the second a recent and miraculous acquisition--it's his favorite that he hauls everywhere with him, and I've learned the hard way how important it is to him: in late February the cat fell out of the car (unbeknown to us) during a long, busy Saturday of errands. We did not notice his absence until bedtime. Now if you know TJ, you know how important it is to him to have all of his precious treasures present for bedtime. The sorrow and devastation was sudden and absolute. In the face of such tragedy, there was really nothing to do but jump in the car and start searching (after an Internet search confirmed that the cat had been discontinued, and was sold out everywhere). I drove from Edmond, to the Mercy campus, to downtown Oklahoma. It took at least an hour. It was a blustery, cold day, and I'll never forget the relief I felt when my headlights lit upon a small black and white lump in the parking lot of the Indian restaurant we'd had dinner at. He'd been run over, and was definitely worse for the wear, but I'd found him. The first thing TJ said the next morning, was, tearfully, "the white kitty-cat?". I felt like a super-hero when I presented it. Just before Andy was born, I came across the second white cat at the bottom of the clearance rack in PBK. Remembering that night(and since he won't sleep without it), I bought the last two they had in stock.
TJ plays with his cats all the time.





He carries the white one around everywhere. He sleeps with all of them. He watches TV with them (George, or one of the many cat documentary and nature shows now filling our DVR). He even eats with them at the table. He likes to line them up in rows


And study them intently until he has them arranged just right















The past couple of days he's been carrying his cat around in this little red bucket


I just love this kid.



Posted using BlogPress from my iPad