Cat and Dog

After school on February 1, 2008 when I was eight years old, my family and I went to the animal shelter next to my house to look at the cats and possibly adopt one that day. When we walked in, we entered the room that held all their cats, there were about fifteen or twenty that day and I immediately saw this orange and white tabby that I loved while my brother say a grey and black cat (who had been meowing since we walked in the room) that he liked. A worker came inside the room and got the orange and white cat out of his crate and said, "This is Louie." My parents talked to her for a while about him and when she left the cat finally stopped meowing and my dad said, "The next cat who meows gets to come home with us," and Louie meowed. We took that as some sort of sign that he was meant for us to have him and we got him. When we were at the counter for him, the worker told us that he had a little cold and we would have to give him some medicine for it. This made it worse for him when he came home, he was in a brand new place and on top of him not knowing us we had to hold him (when he wanted to be left alone) and give him the medicine.

He is not a very social cat. He doesn't really like to be picked up unless he is in a good mood and he won't really let you pet him unless he chooses to sit right by you (which isn't too often). When he was younger he liked to go outside for a few hours and explore but now that he has gotten older he just wants to stay inside and sleep in his bed. He is 11 years old now and has started to become more friendly towards us but has taken a particular liking to my dad and will lay with him on the couch for a little while almost every night. He got a younger (dog) brother almost two years ago and they decently tolerate each other now but I will save Bentley's story for later.

While I was at school one day in the fall of 2016, my mom texted me a picture of a litter of beagle puppies, so young they couldn't open their eyes yet. She said that they were for sale and we might get one, a boy. I immediately went online and started looking up names for dogs and one stuck out to me which was Bentley. When I got picked up by my mom that day after school, she showed me a list of names for him but I told her the name I already had in mind for him.

A few weeks went by with me asking almost every day when we could go pick up Ben and finally one day in late November my mom told me that we could go and see him after she gets off work. So I waited anxiously all day for school to be over so we could go. The drive wasn't very long but it seemed like a year because of how excited I was. When we got there we went into the basement of a house to see a tub with 4 puppies no bigger than my hand. There was only one boy left and I put him in my lap and pet him for a little while before my mom asked me, "Ready to take him home?" I didn't know that we would be able to take him with us that day so I was surprised when she said that we could. We were able to take him home before he was eight weeks old because his mom had passed away and he was weaned.

We got in the car and took him to Petco to get a few more things we needed for him and I had to put a blanket in the cart so his paws wouldn't fall through. When we got home, Louie was curious but only smelled him and walked away. That first night I freaked out because I thought he was going to crawl under my bed and get stuck or lost so I had to put him in my mom's room.

Bentley will be two years old on Saturday and he has grown so much since we got him when he was six weeks old. He and Louie get along mostly but there are times (at least once a day) where they chase each other for a minute, which is normally caused by Bentley. I love both of these boys so much and I don't know what I would do without them.