Hello everyone. My name is Katrina. Very nice to meet you. I would also like to introduce you to my wonderful husband Eric. Our life had a few adventures before Kittystead – mostly we will skip all that but would like to touch base enough to explain how we came to be Dad and Mom to 10 fur-babies.

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Eric and I married in 2010. In 2011 Eric deployed to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army and after that, in 2012, Eric was stationed in Alaska. I met up with him in Alaska. Our son and I were delayed moving as Brady was still in school. As per Maggie’s story, we adopted our Maggie Mae while Eric was in Afghanistan and I was in Tennessee, via internet and lots of phone calls. Soon after, in 2014, Eric honorably retired from the Army, and our little family drove a 4000 mile, week-long road trip -great adventures for us and Maggie to tell later.

Life is amazing with lots of ups and downs and bends and turns. Eric and I decided to move back to Tennessee in my family’s homestead. My grandparents bought the old wood-frame house way back in 1949. Records show it was built in the 1830s. As life does, time moved on. Over the next few years, we had over 300 appointments at Nashville and Murfreesboro’s veteran’s hospitals and clinics. The world of the VA required a lot of time and energy with paperwork and trial and error.
It was not always our plan to have so many fur babies. Life with Maggie, our dog, Brady, our son, and ourselves was wonderful. Then, one day a cat showed up – sweetest baby. We tried to find out if she already had a family but could not find anyone to claim her.

We named her Molly. All of us loved Molly. Molly loved it here but also loved the outside. One day she got out and never returned. We were devastated and for months looked for her. Unfortunately, at that time, we were not micro-chipping our cats -lesson learned. After months of no sighting of Molly, I had an ache in my heart that something was missing. Also, my father passed away and that ache grew. Eric suggested we get another kitten.
I would only consider this if whoever we adopted needed us as much as I needed her. (at this time I was only looking for girls) I saw an ad in the newspaper for kittens born to a stray cat in an old house that was being renovated. For sure, they needed help. Eric immediately fell in love with the runt of the pack. Decision made. We named her Missy.
After several months, Eric wanted another cat. This time around we decided on going to our local animal shelter. There he found Joey and loved her for being a lap cat – little did he know her split personality. (a must-read in Joey’s story)
A few hours later, we received a phone call that Aria‘s adoption did not go through and asked, “Did we want her too?” as we had inquired about her but she was in the process already of being adopted, As you guessed, Eric was on the way in seconds to – YES, we want her!
So now our brood is three cats and a Corgi – life is great. We are very thankful for our big ole farmhouse for space for all these little ones to run around and hide and play. Then another newspaper article. It was close to Christmas and someone paid all the adoption fees at the shelter but you still had to qualify for the adoption. I knew we had big space and big hearts and knew all the kittens would go quickly. I had the strangest desire that I wanted to adopt the oldest cat there.

Of course, Eric agreed. Secretly, at this point, I’m realizing he would allow us 1000 more if I was open to that. As we walk into the cat area, immediately Eric saw two solid black kittens named Abra and Cadabra. He was in love. I saw Sabrina with her big orange paws sticking out of her cage begging, crying to be released. Sabrina was so pitiful and we came for the oldest, but the twins had been there since birth with no options for adoption – especially to go together… so we adopted all three.
I know crazy, right? Now we are six cats and a Corgi. From there we decided we could not adopt any more but life has a way of changing our plans. We have always been night owls and foodies – not so much the gourmet cooking meal kind of people but the kind that LOVES food ALL THE TIME. One late night, midnight-ish, I agreed to Taco Bell. A few minutes later, Eric surprised me with a phone call stating that he “did a thing”… I could hear a cat meowing in the background. Eric told me a tale of a poor, pitiful, all alone kitty, in the rain, and how he could not leave him/her. I was not too happy with this at the time but came around as he/she was SO CUTE! In case you were wondering HOW we name our babies, well, if they already had a name we did not change it. Thus, Missy was the only one we all had to name in the past. It was an ordeal for 3 humans to decide on a name and I avoided that with this new rule. Now for this new, sweet baby, I made a quick decision. If a girl, we were going to name her Bell, and if a boy, we would call him Taco. I still think that was brilliant of me. Now we were seven cats and a Corgi.

A few months later, we hired a crew to remove an old porch. On a Saturday, one of the crewmen was off as he had his child that day. Since he lived near us he decided to walk to visit the rest of the crew. As they were walking, the child, noticed a cat was following them. This cat had the most amazing tail and of course, Eric loved him immediately. This time our son, Brady was in love immediately as well. What is a Mom to do?… I tried finding the previous parents and we tried finding him a home. A month went by and after all that, I gave in. We officially never named him. We kept calling him “Buddy” because he was so laid back and friendly. I could not imagine him being called any other name. Buddy officially became part of Kittystead. So now at eight cats and a corgi, we decided we were crazy cat people – not that there is anything wrong with that. For sure, we were not going to adopt or allow anymore.
Along came Thomas. Several months later, more construction. This time a new roof. There was a black cat outside. He was sweet and funny. He was walking around and near people and talking. Eric for some reason started calling him Thomas. I found out later, Eric remembered a movie called “Odd Thomas” and the cat reminded him of that. To me, it hit home quickly as Thomas is also a family name. But, I was still determined we could not adopt any more nor move anymore inside while trying to find them a forever home. I learned from Buddy -Buddy became part of the family while looking for a new family. So I built the cat already named, Thomas a home in our little back porch. This was great – warm and near us for food and water and an opening to go outside. Well, within a few hours, we heard the most awful catfight. Thomas had been beaten up and ran off by another cat. The sounds were so horrible and not knowing what happened with Thomas broke my heart. I was so upset by all this, that when Thomas returned he was immediately welcomed into the Kittystead clan.
And that is the STORY OF US, how we came to have nine cats and a corgi.

Dad note: Because Molly left and us never learning her fate, we now are firm believers of micro-chipping our fur babies. Also, we highly recommend all cats and dogs be spayed or neutered. All of our cats are indoors. We have 3 (Aria, Missy & Buddy) that love the outside so we randomly walk them on a leash. We could not have imagined our life with so many animals, but now can not imagine our life without them.