29w5d: Celebrity Profile: Trouble Maker Whitten

For those of you who don't like cats, I'm sorry, feel free to skip this entry.  Trouble is our big kitty, he is a beautiful orange tom cat.  He weighs somewhere between 15 and 16 pounds, and if you ask me, most of it is muscle (other people have used other words that I'm not going to say here because I don't think Trouble needs to have a complex about his weight).  I think Trouble is essentially the supermodel of cats.  He really has it all, the body and the face!  He is so handsome.  I also say he is like Tom Brady, totally built and pretty damn cute.  His nicknames are Doggie, because he always meets us at the door with his tail wagging, and Oedipus, because he is very devoted to his mommy (see picture below, no I am not sick or dying but merely very pale and without makeup).  He is very loving and sweet and is wonderful to hug because he is so solid and soft.  His favorite foods are watermelon, popcorn, yogurt, and peanut butter.  Trouble is the kind of cat that makes dog-lovers think they could be cat people.

He had an interview over the summer to be a therapy pet.  That means that I would take him to nursing homes and residential facilities to visit people and bring some fun into their day.  He has a wonderful temperament and is very friendly.  In his life, he has never scratched or bitten anyone.   He passed the interview, but he was unable to tolerate the car ride there and home.  The interviewer suggested I get him acclimated to the car, but I found out about a week later that I was pregnant, so I have not dealt with the stress of carting him around.  I would love to do it one day in the future.

Where does his name come from?  Well, Trouble and Peanut came from the Pennsylvania SPCA.  One very hot day in June, they had an event in downtown Philadelphia called the Dog Days of Summer, and they were in a crate together.  We instantly loved them both, but thought we only wanted one cat.  We couldn't decide between the two of them!  The SPCA people kept saying, "it's a two-for-one special today!"  We started to think about it.  Two cats?  The SPCA people said, "two cats are better than one, they'll play with each other and keep each other company while you're out of the house."  Being the suggestible people that we are, we began to see their point of view.  And that was it, we decided we would take both of the adorable orange kittens.  We paid $75 and were given a cardboard box to take both boys home (let me point out here that $75 for two neutered cats with up-to-date shots is a bargain! Thank you, PSPCA).  And as I might have mentioned, it was HOT that day.  We got into my black car with a black interior and started to drive home.  The car was not cooling off at all, despite our running the air conditioning as high as it would go.  Our poor new kitties were overheated and completely stressed out.  We kept smelling something foul, like cat poop, and kept peeking in the box, but everything appeared fine.  Until it didn't.  Trouble had had some terrible diarrhea all over the tiny box, and Peanut was stuck in the bottom trying to keep out of it!  So we lifted Peanut out of the box to keep him from getting in the poop, and then held Trouble with his head out of the box but bottom half hanging down.  I said, "This one's a real trouble maker!" and that was it.  Peanut then threw up all over the adoption paperwork, so he isn't exactly trouble-free, but Trouble had already gotten the name.

At times he lives up to his name (like tonight when he appeared on our bed chewing on the ear bud from Eric's iphone headphones), and at other times he is so sweet and adorable that we forget the bad times.  Overall, he is our big love bug and he makes us feel loved and admired.  I really hope that we can still give him the attention he deserves when the babies get here, even though everyone tells us that he will get pushed aside.  I think he'll let us know what he needs... a 15 pound cat generally makes his presence known!