OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED: Kitties and Kids

OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED

In the beginning, JD adamantly only wanted two children. I thought that four would be perfect. Once we caught God's vision of putting orphans into families, our plan was multiplied by God. We are currently blessed with 12 children; five biological, six adopted and one more waiting in Ethiopia. Our first adoption was from the U.S., the next three were from Liberia, West Africa, and our last two were from Ethiopia. We are supporting our 12th child in Ethiopia after her adoption could not pass court.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Kitties and Kids

Meet Leon Guster -

Although Elijah is holding "Gus" in the picture, he is actually Moriah's early birthday present. Gus is a special kitty, since he gets to live in the house and sleep with Moriah. Moriah's last indoor cat was a rescued feral kitty several years ago. Angel was gorgeous and spent the entire month of December sleeping in the Christmas tree. Although she lived in the house a full year, she chose the life of a wild cat and currently sleeps in a wood pile that we need to burn. We see her streak in and out of the barn for food, but won't let anyone near her. It seems you can't really take the feral out of a cat, so Gus came from friends and was born in a house!

The humorous (now, not Sunday) Gus story I have involves Julia. We surprised Moriah after church on Sunday by taking her to their house and letting her choose the kitten she wanted. After stopping for kitten supplies, we brought Gus home and everyone competed to hold him. After a bit, I took the little guys out with me to help spread grass seed and straw. After a while, Tori came in to get a drink and left the front door open. Seizing the opportunity, Julia came outside and announced that Tori let Gus out and he ran in the woods. I started the woods searching party, but also sent Alei and Moriah to search the house as it seemed unlikely that he would actually tear across the yard into the woods (since he was born in a house!) Moriah was near tears as came out to announce that they couldn't find him in the house. While the kids and I were searching, JD was questioning Julia, since she has a habit of doing unpredictable things and not necessarily answering questions honestly. She stuck with her story, UNTIL Alei found Gus locked in her closet. Then the truth came rolling out...It turns out that Julia decided that if she hid him, and told us that he was in the woods, she could keep him for herself and not have to share him. She actually planned to just keep him in the closet, no food, water or cat-box. It seemed like a good plan for a four year old.

Julia instead got dinner, a bath and an early bedtime. As of today, she is allowed to hold Gus again. Never a dull moment with her!

We hope that Gus turns out as cool as our favorite cat, Hunter. Hunter spends a lot of time outside with the kids and dogs, but makes the rounds in the evening to see who'd like to hold and pet him.