To Make a Short Story Long...

Hannah said something really cute today at the pool, but to get the full effect, you have to have some background. Well, truth be told, you really don't, but I'm going to give it to you anyway.

My kids love cats. They really, really, really love cats. Unfortunately, they don't have the greatest track record with them, which is, at least initially, our own doing. We brought a kitten into our family when the children were simply too young to have a pet. I won't go into details; it is too painful to relive. But you can imagine what a kitten might have experienced with two boys aged not quite four years, and a girl just turned two. I will say that the kitten survived, and has grown big and healthy and happy under the care of my sister.

Then there was the mulch incident, here, last summer. My neighbor had a large pile of mulch on her driveway, and she was letting my kids help her with her gardening. During a break from landscaping, my neighbor and I stepped inside and allowed the kids to continue playing on the pile of mulch. When we went back out to check on them, we both had to suppress laughter at the sight of the mulch monsters. I was going to get my camera when we realized that the kids had not been throwing mulch at each other, but rather at Momma Kitty, who was sitting atop my neighbor's white Blazer.

Now, when you add in the bathroom fire from the winter before that, you can see why "serial killers" kept ringing through my head. Meanwhile, my other neighbor's dad is selling his house and moving into a condo. He won't be able to keep his cat anymore. So our neighbors, in a roundabout way inquired whether we would be able to take the cat. I hemmed and hawed, kind of sort of telling them the kids aren't really ready for live animals, too young, blah blah blah. Bottom line, there was nowhere else for the cat to go, we'd give it a shot, if there was even the slightest indication it would not work out, the neighbors would take the cat in their own home.

Back on topic. They love kitties. They just have earned a bad reputation. So we gave them cute little stuffed animal kitties. They take those kitties with them everywhere, even to swim lessons, and after the lessons, into the pool with them.

One day they were playing with their toy kitties, pulling them around behind their bikes in a kitty carrier. Our neighbor (looking to find a home for the cat) saw the kids playing through the trees. The kids called out to him, "We have a kitty in there!" Skip, our neighbor, watched as the carrier was whizzing around, whipping this way and that, rolling and thumping and bumping. He quickly came over to further investigate, finding, to his great relief, that the kitty in the carrier was just a toy. However, I wish to add at this juncture that we have not heard from him again about the possibility of fostering that cat.

ANYway, Skip has his own cat, named Buddy, and my kids love him, and Buddy has warmed up to them pretty well. Buddy wanders over every now and then, and the kids feed him special kitty snacks, and they treat him gently. Buddy is a great cat.

Fast forward to the whole reason I'm telling you all this: it was basically to introduce the character of Buddy the Cat. I suppose I could have just told you that our neighbors have a cat named Buddy, but I haven't been writing much lately, so I thought I'd really drag this one out.

At swim lessons, the first thing they do each morning is review safety rules. Miss Julie asks all the little kids if it's a good idea to swim with a buddy, to which all the kids but Hannah answer with a resounding "yes." And every morning Hannah shouts out, "No! Buddy is a cat! He doesn't like to swim!!"

I did notice this morning Miss Julie changed her question to "Is it a good idea to swim with a friend?"