This Land is Nerlens

Paul and Betty at Alix’s house on our post-wedding drive up the coast, 2009

We’ve had mice in our house for a few weeks.  We thought they were confined to the guest room (sorry Jen, didn’t tell you about that.)  We put a bunch of (humane) traps out for a week with no luck.  Then last week Paul’s mom stopped by and called Paul to let him know we had mice in the kitchen too.  When Paul called to tell me, I was like, “(Big sigh). We really just need to get a cat.”

And he was like, “OK.”

Some background: Paul is deathly allergic to cats.  Even though they love him (see above).

He did live with a cat, Tayshaun, for a year in college (named after Tayshaun Prince, UK basketball star circa 2000.)  He said he just vacuumed like 4x a week and it was fine.  Plus, he said, this is going to be an outdoor cat mostly (our garage has god knows how many rats in it), so it shouldn’t be as big of a problem.

So that same day, we headed over to the Woodford County Humane Society.  The people working there are really wonderful, and they had about 3 million cats up for adoption.

30 minutes and $30 later, we drove away with a cat in a box.

Impulse buy.

Paul especially liked him because he thinks he looks like a wildcat.

Sticking with tradition, the cat is named Nerlens after Nerlens Noel, the top freshman recruit playing for UK (and top HS basketball recruit in the country) this year.

 …who does not look like he just got out of high school.

The cat and the dog have spent the past few days getting to know each other. So far it’s gone pretty smoothly all things considered.

This cat is super super friendly.

…but he’s also 5 months old and can be a total spaz.  So far he’s fallen into the toilet, knocked a whole bucket of kitty litter over into the sink, clogging it, and gotten stuck behind the washing machine, wedged between the wall and the machine about 2 feet off the ground (Paul had to dangle a dish towel over him, he clawed onto it, and we pulled him out.)

He also sleeps in the garbage can in the guest bathroom.

That’s his safe zone.

We’ll see how this goes.