Memory Monday: A Day in November

I had other plans for this Memory Monday.

Then I started looking through a photo album for a picture to go with the dessert recipe I am submitting to the GeneaBloggers’ Cookbook. I started to flip through to the photos from Christmas (Christmas is when we cook the dessert and eat it) and opened to some photographs from November.

November 2003. It wasn’t that long ago, but the photographs brought back memories of the day in November when we found them, memories which had started to become dim until I caught sight of their sweet faces in the photo album. We only knew them for two or three weeks, but I don’t want to forget them, so I decided to do a photo tribute to them for this Memory Monday instead of my originally planned article.

We found them at church, right outside the parish hall:

“Mom, did you see that?”

“See what? Where?”

“There was a kitten, just there, behind the ashtray urn.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Look, it’s running behind the bushes.”

A little black shadow darted past. Then a little orange shadow followed.

I sent one daughter down to the far end of the parish hall, posted the other halfway down, and stood guard at the end near the doors. We finally captured four kittens: two black ones, one mostly brown calico, and an orange tabby. They were small and hungry. We looked for the mother cat but could not find her and could not find anyone who had seen her. Well, some people drop babies off on church doorsteps…

We left our younger daughter in our van with the four kittens and some milk in a bowl from the parish hall kitchen. My husband, older daughter, and I went to church. Afterwards the news leaked out that there were kittens in the van, so a herd of children ran over to get a look. Unfortunately, their parents were not in the market for kittens.

We took them home. Our four grown cats were not exactly delighted at their arrival. Especially Rocky, our adoptee from the animal shelter who was going to be displaced as “Bedroom Cat” for a while. For the next couple of weeks he would just have to get along with R.B., BooBoo, and Pipsqueak. We moved the kittens into our bedroom, which has a long master bathroom attached.

We cannot have eight cats. Not even five.

We spent the next three or four days in a furious publicity campaign at school and at work. At the end of that time we had homes promised for all four kittens, but would be keeping them for another week or two while the families made preparations; the very last kitten was to be driven up to New Jersey at the end of three weeks.

It was the sensible thing to do. It was not what we really wanted to do.


We will always have fond memories of the time in November when the “church kittens” visited our house.


They liked to eat a lot.





Then it was time to bathe.



And then maybe scratch…



Perhaps explore a bit…





Or get into fights…





And then be held…one at a time



Or sometimes two (one on each knee)…



Or even three …



And then it was time to sleep.