Week 30

This weeks flashback theme is pets. I don't have any pictures of pets from my childhood, well, a few from my teen years, but no photos of the dogs that we had while I was in elementary school, or the rabbit that I had in middle school (poor bunny, I was a horrible owner). I had hamsters and fish and salamanders. How do I not have pictures of any of them? Cameras weren't readily available when I was a kid. And if they were, somehow the film always disappeared before getting developed.


Before we had Eleanore and Charlie, we had "Babies". Little Boy Babies, and Little Girl Babies, both of them referred to as "Babies", even when calling just one of them, not both. We smuggled them into our no cats allowed apartment complex when they were just a few weeks old, and raised them as our own. We loved these cats. They tore the place up, they got their white fur all over everything, they howled at the door like dogs when anybody would come up the porch stairs- we loved them.

And then one day... Babies... had babies.


Oh gosh. How did this happen? Oh that's right, we never got them fixed. Even though they were brother and sister, they still... had babies.

Wonderful. Heavy on the sarcasm.

They were extremely cute, those little inbred kittens, but, only 2 out of 4 survived past the birth, and the 2 that were left were a little... slow, for lack of a better word?

When Christopher went away for basic training, I moved in with my parents. At the time, I was pregnant with Eleanore, and planning a move across country. I couldn't take the Babies with me. None of them. Not the older ones, not the younger ones. None. How could I put a cat through that? Caged up in a packed car, in the summer heat? I couldn't.

Just days after Christopher left, Little Boy Babies (the Daddy cat, in case anybody has gotten confused by all the babies yet) died. It was horrible, and completely unexpected. I cried for a week straight. My eyes were so swollen shut I didn't want to go into any rooms with light. He had been my baby for so long.


Theres a picture of Little Boy Babies snuggling with his little boy baby.

Little Girl Babies, the Mama, went to live with my best friend Kalii, in hopes that she'd fly her out to us after we got settled into our new home in Texas, and after the baby had been born, but it turned out that Kalii couldn't continue to care for her either, and Christopher's sister Steph agreed to take her in. Thankfully, she found a forever home with Steph, and they've lived happily ever after, ever since. It broke my heart having to say goodbye to Babies, and for awhile I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to get another cat again, feeling like I'd be betraying her by doing so.

We've since adopted a cat from the local animal shelter, and shes turned out to be the most loving cat I've ever known. But I still think about Babies, all the time, and miss them so.

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Want to flashback with us? Post a picture, this weeks optional theme is pets, from way back when- your childhood, a year ago, last week. Write a little bit about your photo, grab our button from the bottom of our blog (waayyyy down past all of the posts) and center it somewhere in your post (or you can just link us the old fashioned text style way), and then add your link to the link list below. If you've got a minute, browse through some of the other flashbacks, we've got a great little community going, and seeing treasured photos and the stories that go with them is a great way to get to know somebody.

Next weeks optional theme (seriously, if you don't have a photo that works with our theme, post any old photo, we love to have you play along no matter what), is going to be black and white photos. Any old black and white photo will do.