Cotton’s Origin Story | Blog Post #4

Cotton the cat (I promise, we really don’t try for alliteration when we name our animals – see blog post #2 for reference) is our newest and youngest family member. We got her almost a year ago as a pet for our younger, 8-year-old son (let’s call him R). 

Getting Cotton for R is a little bit of a fate story! From the time we got Dusty for K (our older, 11-year-old son), R had been asking to get a kitten. We told him that we would get him a cat, but only after our older, 13-year-old dog, Onyx (yes, she is a black dog – and no alliteration in her name!) had crossed the rainbow bridge (we were trying to keep our total pet count to two and wanted to give R a little more time to mature before giving him the responsibility of owning a pet). 

But fate decided to take its own course one day when I was scrolling through Facebook. The day before, while thinking about how we name our pets after their colors, R told me he wanted a white kitten, and that he’d like to name her Cotton!

This declaration was a little out of the blue. We hadn’t talked recently about him getting a kitten (we assumed it was still a couple of years off) so I was surprised when Riley made this statement about his cat’s color and name. But I told him I thought this was an excellent idea!

So back to the following day when I was scrolling through Facebook: a friend, who often fosters cats, posted a photo of two kittens she had just picked up, and of course, they were the cutest, little white kittens!  Well, we couldn’t pass up on that sign, so I contacted her, and a few weeks later, (once Cotton was old enough to be separated from her mother) we had our newest (and third) pet!

She is the best cat (she has SO much personality, but is also very sweet and has the best purr) and R has lived up to the responsibilities of having his own pet, despite his young age. We are so happy that we jumped at the opportunity to get Cotton (despite it being before our original timeline) and so thankful that we followed the signs that she was meant to be a part of our family.