What every cat needs...

Getting ready for our kitten (the carrier on the right is legal for under seat in planes—
we have a larger one for ordinary travel)

Meeting our Katzenbaby

T1 with her soon-to-be new "sister"

Ever since we lost Felix (the cat we brought with us to Germany), we have been a cat-less family.

This has been the longest that I have been without a cat since I turned 5 and got my first. We have been putting off finding a new family member for several reasons:

• it's so easy to travel spontaneously without pets!
• my in-laws don't like pets, so visiting them becomes more problematic
• we visit the US for weeks at a time, make a petsitter necessary, expensive, and worrying
• we are never certain how long we will be here, in this apartment, city, state, country
• adopting a pet as an expat family in Germany is actually quite onerous and adopting is really quite expensive.

All these combined to leave us pet-less for almost 4 years by now. And it's been too long.

When we visited Grünewoche this year, we once again visited the cat section (and were disappointed at how small it was compared to last year). But this time, I visited with the desire to actually look at and compare different cat breeds: I have never had a pedigreed pet before, always adoping from animal shelters, kitten give-aways, or feral animals on my property (as Felix).

Because this time, since no kitten is at my door, I decided to actually choose a breed and a kitten for the pet that will share my life for the next 15-20 years. We chose a Somali, which is basically a long-haired Abyssinian. The type is ruddy: to me, little Feuerflamme (tentative name) looks exactly like a cartoon-cute fox. She is absolutely charming. I did a lot of (internet) looking around and exploring, both here and in the US, and FF's dam and sire were, to me, utterly charming exemplars of the breed and type that I wanted. So we are waiting until she is old enough to take home and the children are looking at pictures of her as she grows and counting down the days.