Over the weekend we brought home our little 12-week-old Chartreux kittens. Two sisters, although one is darker with pale tabby stripes, and the other is a lighter grey. They are still very timid, and spent most of the weekend hiding underneath the filing cabinet. They will now eat in front of me (they go crazy for sachets of Hill’s tender tuna), and nervously sniff us, but are still very shy. At night we hear them exploring the apartment, and this morning I saw one of them on the cat tree before I scared her off.

Names? The shortlist is getting shorter, but no final decisions yet.

Even though Adrian would love a couple of Saint Bernards or Dachshunds he has compromised by giving me exactly what I want – two little kittens. I am super excited. I now have four large boxes from the ever-generous Internet that contain all the food and equipment to make our house cat friendly, including a kitty back-pack to bring them home on the train. As they will be living on the 11th floor, they will not have access to any actual trees, but I hope that this structure will suffice:

Image from zooplus

I am in contact with a Chartreux breeder near Charleroi using Google Translate as my intermediary. If Google is correct, the breeder has two female kittens who are currently nine weeks old, and we can go and pick them up in three weeks and bring them home. I may be visiting them this weekend to make my reservation. So now Adrian and I are currently working on potential cat names. He has vetoed names derived from television or movies, and technically Chartreux kittens born in 2009 should start their names with ‘E’. The naming of cats is a difficult matter. This is my current list:

Blauwe Kat and Kattebelletje
Pepper and Mint
Socks and Mittens
Misha-Penguin and Misha-non-Penguin
Hopscotch and Peppermint Whiskers
Moppet and Mittens
Smudge and Sage
Pickles and Pattycakes
Dot and Dash
Hocus and Pocus
Buttercup and Daisy
Midge and Middles
Medley and Mopsy
Bubbles and Buttons
Puddles and Pumpkin
Stardust and Teapot

We haven’t seen our little ones yet, but they should look something like this:

Images from annonces-animalieres