Meet Mr. Otis Gray

Oof, my previous Bailey-Boo post took it out of me, but after the love that I received from a few other fellow animal lovers, it made me feel ok that I shared this story about my boy. And as my friend Laura requested, I will continue to post fun pictures I find of him from time to time since I have tons of them :)

And as I said in that post, on December 13th we adopted a little baby boy kitty who was born a mere 2 months prior and I was going to share with you the first pictures we took of him. So here we go!

I haven’t had a kitty in my home for many years (since about 1994-ish and I was living with my parents) and I always thought I wouldn’t adopt a kitty for a couple of reasons:

1. Since I adopt pets from shelters, I have wanted to pass on the kittens because I know those get adopted quickly since they are so cute, funny and goofy looking. Older cats tend to have trouble finding homes.

2. Kittens can be…well…assholes. I mean that in the most loving way possible, but they can be. I love ’em but since they are young and everything looks like a toy and they tend to not be keen on letting you sleep/eat/concentrate/work because of their need for more more MORE play time – I previously would just rather look for one that was out of that stage and wanted to not climb the walls ;)

But like my mom always says, “what you resist, persists” and so when we decided to casually look at cats who need homes and mention of a Siamese mix at the local SPCA popped up, I had to at least see him. I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to look, right?

So one day Oscar + I headed to the shelter to meet him and after a few hours worth of a fiasco that ended up happening on the part of the shelter (I won’t even get into it because I don’t want to talk bad about a place that rescues animals), we walked out with a little boy kitten. We were smitten by a kitten.

Yet this guy wasn’t acting like the other kittens I’d met from friends; instead he just wanted to be held, kissed, loved on and nuzzled. His brother was there too (who also was adopted that day…see, kittens go fast) and the brother was supposedly the hyper, playful, rambunctious one and ours was the cuddler, lover boy. He fell asleep in Oscar’s arms while I figured out the details of adopting him and even at our home he is happiest when he is being held or is laying in your arms (or on your neck like he was with me this morning) under the blankets. He is a love and he is almost fearless. So where our little boy Dexter is our little creeper who is constantly afraid of his own reflection, this one welcomes the new and strange and different. He has guts and because of all of these things, he reminds me a little of my Bailey.

I wasn’t sure if I could get attached to him quickly, but I have. He is so very very sweet. And Oscar + I made the silent agreement that I would have the final say on his name so when it took me over a week to decide on one (what? humans get 9 months to decide on a name! ;) ) I was so excited when it finally came to me. His name is Otis Gray Martinez and he is named after the great Otis Redding and is also a slight tip of the hat to the song that Jay-Z and Kanye West wrote called “Otis” which features samples from Mr. Redding’s music. I love all three of these men so the name was very exciting to decide on!

I’ll post more from little Otis Gray (oh, I chose gray because he has lots of gray and GRAY OMBRE EARS!! I love ombre!!! And because it sounds cute) but for now, you can enjoy these shots of the new man after our hearts. Sometime I need to post a video of what his meow sounds like, it is so bizarre! That’ll be for next time :)

So without further ado, meet Otis Gray

yes, yes that is a pink Christmas tree behind him. why do you ask?

One quick one of Mr. Dex who has been SO good to us when we needed him most! You can see how big he is compared to Otis by looking at the picture above where Otis is in this same bed. Dex is a BIG, sweet cat :D