Welcome to the Fircrest Zoo and Petting Farm

If you were watching last week, you saw a hilarious semi-cruel post which foreshadowed the announcement that our niece Chelsey is coming to live with us in a couple weeks.

My sister Susan almost instantly left the following comment:

See, Alicia is another niece... My sister Linda's oldest daughter... She writes a blog that is linked in the links section over on the right side. And she and her husband Daniel have had a batch of kittens they've been trying to give away. And they've gotten pretty creative about it!

First, they named the whole crew after characters from Gilligan's Island, with Skipper, Gilligan, Ginger, and I think MaryAnn. Alicia posted pics of all of them on her blog a while back, hoping to pawn a few off to innocent readers.

Then, for Mother's Day, she took one (Ginger) over to her mom's house and tried to leave it there.

Didn't quite work.

After Mother's Day was her mom's birthday, and another attempt to unload the GingerKitty.

More fail.

Yesterday was Father's Day. The obvious ploy was that they were bringing Ginger back to Linda's house to try and unload her to Alicia's Dad, Eric.

And it reportedly ALMOST worked...

BUT...

Cindy and the girls swung into Linda's house last night to pick up Ellysa's dress for her 9th Grade Formal Dance this week. Linda's an amazing seamstress and had made some modifications to the dress. When Alicia and Daniel heard that my girls were going to be there, they stuck around for one last attempt at giving the gift of Ginger... And they weren't even playing fair! They brought out a laser pointer to show off how cute and kitten-like she is, chasing the red spot on the floor...

To cut to the point:

So now we have our existing two cats, Kitty and Tabitha, and now, Ginger. Uh-Oh, NEW problem...

WE ALREADY HAVE A GINGER!!

Yes, she's named after the character in "Chicken Run", and with good reason. She's our escape artist, our non-conformist... And she's had her name for a couple years already, so the Kitten named Ginger needs to switch to The Kitten Formerly Known as Ginger.

Since both Ellysa and Kaylee are completely hooked on the Twilight series of books by Stephenie Meyer,

they chose the name Bella, rather than TKFKAG. I guess TKFKAG is a little too gutteral sounding... kinda like a Welsh name...

So I am happy to present for your introduction, a picture of Kaylee holding Bella (TKFKAG) in her room on Father's Day Night.

And the other latest addition to our Petting Zoo, Cindy's new Guinea Pig, Rusty.

I've never been big on Guinea Pigs, but Rusty is AWESOME. He is a complete spaz, thinks he's a bucking bronco. Seriously, he spends his days trying to kick ALL the wood chips in his cage out on to the floor. And squeaking. Which is more like Shrieking. If he hears people walking around upstairs, or worse yet, the fridge opening, he goes off like a high powered smoke alarm! So he provides high entertainment...

And now you've been properly introduced to the newest members of the Fircrest Zoo and Petting Farm. Please don't tap on the cages, keep your gum in your mouth, and be sure to tip your hosts!