In September 2006, we bought the house – Crooked Acres – where we lived until November 2018. Not long after we bought the house, a black female cat who’d clearly recently given birth showed up in the back yard. She came around regularly, and we made sure she always had food and water. A while later, she showed up again, this time with a buff tabby male cat. And then finally, in mid-October, she showed up with four kittens in tow. We made sure they didn’t belong to anyone, and had them spayed and neutered and caught up to date on their shots.
The kittens – Fezzik, Inigo, Princess Buttercup, and Westley (Fred named them after characters from The Princess Bride) – were with us for about three weeks, and then went to Petsmart and were adopted soon after. Their mother became Maxi and the buff tabby male became Newt. Maxi and Newt were originally supposed to go to a neighbor, but they decided they liked it with us, and they’re now permanent residents. (The vet theorized that Newt might be Maxi’s kitten from a previous litter. At first we thought he might be the father of her kittens, so we referred to him as “Daddy Cat” before he was named.)
You can read about these kittens beginning here.