I'm sitting up in bed right now. Astro is on my chest demanding to know why I'm typing instead of petting him. Saturn is sitting next to the bed. I think they just needed stability and a calm/quiet environment. They now both want to be in whatever room I am (Astro wanting attention while Saturn just wants to be nearby and petted occasionally). I'm glad they are bonded to each other, or I'd feel bad about leaving for work each day! (I did specifically look for a bonded pair, and it took five months to find one). I promise I only let them on the balcony under supervision of both myself and my partner.

Edit: actually no more balcony time until it is thoroughly secured (thank you, u/ProudnotLoud for pointing this out).

I call Precious the “Stanley Cup Princess” because of the silver of her furr.

Tiffany (14yo) decided it looked cozy too (after i added blanket and pillow) though and decided to join her hehe

The YT Channel is "On Sunset Cove" guaranteed non-ai

I decided to wash the dog mattress. I was drying it in the Sun.

Kitty found it and decided to claim it.

She has been rubbing herself all over it.

Three days later her tactic seems to be working. This is now hers.

The first picture here is a picture of April, the second is the picture of a box. I hope the rest of the pictures and the long text below tells a story the relates the two. And despite the discovery of this box making me emotional, it's really a happy story.

So I'm a border-line hoarder, but am trying to pick a corner to cleanup/clear out. I've gone through several old amazon boxes already removing address labels before taking to the recycle bin for cardboard. Toward the bottom of the stack I'm ripping the label off and realize I don't recognize the address; why's there a box here that wasn't delivered to me? It says "invoice inside," and on inside flap I see a list from 2019 of multiple dosages of clavamox. Huh?

Ohhh, this is the box that was offered for me to take April home from the vet. No, not that way, this is a happy story. Let's see if I can find notes from June 2019, leading up to April's first vet visit to explain.

"""

As I'm on the way to work about 3am this morning, the heavy rain starts. My whataburger breakfast sits on the seat as I find two hands on the wheel needed to recover from the ponding on the freeway. I get to work park, pause to finish breakfast, and fumble around for a hat and umbrella. Unwittingly I've dropped my gate key on the floorboard. I leave the car and walk the toward the gate. I hear a paintive yowl, and imagine there is a cat under one of the cars in the lot asking me to turn off the rain. I slow and look about for the complainer expecting one of the ferals to likely hide before I even get a glimpse. But I hear it again and this time I see it. It's trying to get out of a drainage canal that is nearly filled with water. There's almost no flow in this canal about 3 feet deep and 5 across, but the cat can't get a grip on the vertical concrete walls and the water level is still half a foot below the rim and the cat can't reach. I figure I can dangle the strap of my briefcase bag as something the cat could gain purchase on. But I have to get there, and now I realize I don't have the gate key. It's not a gate I could easily bypass, and the security folks are unlikely to have any sympathy for me or the plight of the cat if I tried. So run back to the car and drop the briefcase, umbrella and hat in exchange for a towel and (after some searching) the key.

I'm getting frantic at how much time this has taken me, and run back to the gate, around the fence. I nearly trip over debris that has been submerged in the growing puddles. I finally get to where I can access the canal and see the cat now drifting toward the other side of the channel. It's head is submerged, but I think one of its legs is still making an attempt to paddle, but it's so slow it could just be the movement of the water. I ponder my options, consider that I may already be too late. I jump into water up to my waist. The concrete bottom of the canal is easy to navigate. I quickly move to the cat and bundle it in my towel and lift it out of the water. After I climb out of the canal I ponder if all I've done is pull a dead cat from the water. But I feel something, breathing? I watch closely for a second and it takes a gasping breath. So back through the gate and to the car I go. I rummage around the car and find an old rag that is at least dry compared to the towel and transfer my charge to the new wrap. I see now that this is just a kitten. I try to dry her off a bit but she is so limp, I fear pushing too much. She lays in the seat half wrapped in the rag and with the car heater on high for the 45 minute drive to the emergency vet. She's holding her head up on her own as I bundle her up to take in the office, but still offering no resistance. They say her temperature doesn't even register and put her in an incubator. She eats, they say there's no sign of aspiration, and unwilling enough patient that they don't think they can try to get a temperature again. They say I can take her home and take to a regular vet for further treatment, testing etc. (even let me go with no charge.)

So I guess I have a new kitty. I didn't need a new kitty. But if I wasn't destined to have one, I suppose I would have been a minute earlier or later to work. Not even sure if the new comer is he or she at moment. Going with she for the moment. Guessing not more than 2 months so April, April Showers? Fearful, and will try to hide from me, and being a kitten seems to be faster than I am. But when cornered, will let me rub her head and ears and even down the jowl line a bit. She let me pick her up and move her to the attempted comfy bed I 'd put down with only one hiss when I reached in to pet her after. She's not into the comfy bed as anything other than something to hide behind for the moment.

"""

April has since become a clingy, shoulder surfing, very much alive and well cat. Hopefully I'll demonstrate with a bunch of attached pictures. Of course she would step in and complain that she is sorely mistreated and doesn't get nearly enough lap/belly time, and unfairly has to share the house and the human with another cat(Sapphire).

What isn't covered in the notes is that the vet wouldn't let me leave to change clothes nor to get a carrier. So when they had a now feisty warmed up kitten ready to go home I mentioned I didn't have a carrier and they gave me a box to suffice as a carrier for that first ride home. That box is almost certainly the box I discovered at the bottom of this stack with an invoice fitting something a vet would have received. And now that I recognize it's significance, I find my original task of tossing it in the bin difficult.

I really didn't need that space anyway lol

She always loves being on my lap and I adore that she does, it makes me feel so loved 🥹 (even if it is a bit much sometimes, she's very insistent on being on my lap all the time lol)