




I love my little family. I'm not as keen to share it as much as my fiancee (he's the mum at the school gates with all the pictures), but I am happy to talk about them as much as anyone wants to listen.
Kimmi is our eldest. She's a short-hair domestic, somewhere around 13 years old. She's had a rough life, but we can talk about that another time. She ended up living with me when she was around 6 years old. She's ginger (as you can see in the picture), but a really pale almost fudge colour. I think she's beautiful. She's also very clever, and for a while I spent a lot of time training her to do tricks. SHe learned a few tricks quite quickly, including sit, beg, paw and high five. Kimmi is a kindred spirit for me. More on that in a future post or two.
After my fiancee and I moved in together, we decided we should get a kitten, which we named Skye. She's a beautiful black short-haired domestic. She has a lovely nature - very friendly and cuddly, a lot like a really small dog than a cat. We got her when she was 12 weeks old, and she's now just over 18 months. When we first picked her up she loved to cuddle up on our chests. She still does occasionally, which would be cute if it didn't squash my throat.
It didn't take us long to work out that Kimmi was too old and grumpy to have a kitten running about by herself. So we decided to get another kitten. This time, a family member had a number of kittens looking for a new home, so we picked up Bella. She's a gorgeous little tabby cat (possibly with a hint of wildcat) and she's about thirteen months old. Bella and Skye very quickly became the best of friends and are almost inseparable. They regularly chase each other around the house, using us as launchpads at 4am. Bella is very independent and nowhere near as cuddly as Skye, but we're working on this. She's taking time to learn to relax around us, but we're being patient. She may never be as cuddly as Skye is, but she's becoming more friendly as time goes by. She comes looking for attention (and not just at dinner time) and has started sleeping next to us in bed. I have faith that she'll come around in the end.
At almost the same time we picked up Bella, my wonderful fiancée decided we needed to get a puppy. Zoe is a black German Shepherd (or Alsatian - whichever you prefer). She was very timid when we picked her up, and looked a lot like a tiny bear cub. Her confidence has really grown over the last year, with her now chasing strange cats out of the garden and recently having learned she can swim. She has her moments, but for the most part she's a really well-behaved dog. She still needs a lot of work, but she's moving in the right direction.
Last but not least, there's my fiancée. He's my perfect match. He's funny, caring, generous to a fault and I'm truly grateful that we met. He proposed to me in the middle of nowhere while we were stargazing. It was very cheesy, but absolutely perfect. We're now excitedly planning and saving for our wedding, which we can hopefully pull together in a couple of years. More on that in future posts! (Trust me, there will be lots of surprises at our wedding.)