Hello, Kitty!

Friday brought a new family member to our house.

After recently losing our sweet cat, Abigail, to old age and disease, we felt a void in our house.

But we were heading out on vacation and didn't like the idea of a new cat adjusting to our home without us.

So we remained cat-free...until Friday.

A dear friend and former colleague named Susan writes a pet blog for the newspaper and alerted us to the "Free to a Good Home" program that our local Humane Society has been hosting. The shelter is inundated with kittens during the summer months and uses the program to place older cats (ie. age 1 and up) in good homes.

Enter our cat-less family.

We'd been perusing Petfinder.com for cats and kittens since that's where we got our dog, Buster Brown. There were plenty of adorable and worthy choices available from shelters and rescues on there.

But since the kids and I were already in the city on Friday getting Emily some dance shoes, I decided to travel uptown to the Humane Society...just for a look.

Needless to say, about an hour and half later, "Jeffrey" (the shelter's name) "Chaucer" (our name), a 3-year-old, stray, tortoise-shell tabby cat, came to live with us.

He's having such a "hard" time adjusting...and spent most of his first two nights in bed with us -- on our faces, pillows, bellies, backs...anywhere he deems a nice comfy spot that might get his head scratched, as well.

Though they said he was a stray, he's extremely friendly and loves to be loved so he obviously had a family at some point in his life. He's also quite keen on the dog and rabbits.

We think he's a nice addition....and we'll definitely keep him.