Happy National Cat Day!; or, Yoga with Cats is the Best Yoga!
Boo Boo’s first photoshoot!! The day that Phillip found Boo Boo, Butters, and their two siblings!
Discovering Butters and Boo Boo
An approximately 5 month old Butters enjoys sitting on her own yoga mat.
On this date last year, October 29, 2019, my husband was out doing a photoshoot for his company, Cutaway USA, which designs and produces cycling clothing. One of the cyclists in the shoot ended up with a flat tire, so everybody agreed to meet up at a little pull off further up the road. While they were there, my husband was the first and only one to notice a squeaky “meow, meow” coming from the nearby trees just off the road. Lo and behold, there was my future cat son, Boo Boo, also affectionately known as Boo Boo Cat, a little black poofy ball of squeaky meows trying to get Phillip’s attention. In the nearby vicinity, they found 3 other kittens that had been abandoned there just off the road. (Boo Boo, the only squeaker of the his litter then, is still very much a ham and loves to be the center of attention!!) So, the cyclists and Phillip scooped up all 4 little poofy kittens into one of Phillip’s plastic bins, and took them back to one of the cyclist’s houses. When Phillip returned home, the first thing he did was show me photos that he had taken of the kittens, and I basically insisted upon going to see them right then and there.
So, I’m NOT allergic to cats!
A little backstory: my mother is extremely allergic to cats. My sister and I basically grew up assuming that we were also allergic to cats—maybe we had heard one too many things from my mom suggesting as such. Jill and I had a good laugh over this during this past year; we basically concluded that my mom, whether intentionally or accidentally, semi-brainwashed us as children into believing we had a cat allergy. (Side note: I love my mom, and my cats actually love her too, and she loves them now that she has met them though indeed she requires a lot of Benadryl and a 3 day stay in my house is about her limit, haha!) Jill had gotten allergy tested recently and was negative for cats and basically couldn’t believe it! I actually had allergy shots for 10 years because I was so allergic to ragweed and I still am super allergic to dust, but back in the day, I was negative for cats and honestly just didn’t believe it (certain dogs tend to bother me), and when I was retested back in February, my mom was convinced that it was going to come back with a positive (“paws”-itive? Sorry, haha!) for cats—though, very thankfully and gratefully, it did not. (I would have kept them anyway!) So, to make that sort of long story shorter: I had originally thought I could not adopt any cats because of being allergic, but, as it turns out, I am not at all allergic to cats, alleluia, alleluia! Yay!!
Adopting My Cat Children
Butters and Boo Boo keep me company for Yin Yoga 4, part of a 16 class yin yoga series where they frequently appear!
Throughout the fall, I was honestly a little nuts (to put it mildly) about these kittens. I basically kept trying to get one of my siblings to adopt one of them because I thought I was allergic and thus couldn’t keep one myself but I really wanted so, so badly to keep at least one of them. When I first went to visit them, they were all still in the plastic bin, and my future cat daughter, Butters, looked kind of scared and was definitely the most shy of the four. I took note of this and took care to pet her specially—she then immediately calmed down, and right then and there, I just felt connected to that cat. Everyone, from my husband to my mom to my siblings (maybe except for my little brother Dan) told me I was totally crazy and had way too much going on to get a cat, but truly I would not listen to them or their arguments, however reasonable. My dad even called and left me a couple voicemails telling me not to take a cat, etc. etc.! The most challenging part of this was not dealing with family members telling me to not adopt my cat children, it was waiting to see whether the cyclist who was fostering the cats was going to keep any of them himself: he sort of had first dibs (and I knew he liked Butters the best which was honestly giving me minor heart attacks at random intervals throughout the fall). Thankfully for me, his housemates did not want a cat (alleluia, praise be to Jesus!), so I got word that Butters would be my new cat daughter!! I remember exactly where I was: I was in the middle of working my Runners Love Yoga booth at Martha’s Market, an annual holiday shopping event here in Charlottesville that raises money for women’s health initiatives at Martha Jefferson Hospital. I was totally and utterly exhausted from manning the booth (which was quite honestly more tiring than my final marathon training long run of 23 miles the weekend before!), but I was miraculously reenergized when I learned I could adopt Butters. In fact, I was so reenergized that I left my student helper in charge of the booth for 35 min. while I went on a run (which I had needed to do anyway as I was going to run CIM in just 3 short weeks!)!
Meanwhile, now that I had Butters, I really kind of wanted the black poofball cat too. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I would be very heartbroken to not have him too, because he was just such a little stinker!!!! To me, he and Butters were the obvious choices to anyone wanting to pick out of the litter because they had such personality, though very different: Butters was the shy little loveball who would let you pet her for an entire hour, and Boo Boo was extremely curious, vocal, and you just kind of knew he would probably be a little bit of a troublemaker but would be also extremely entertaining all the time. I found out from Phillip initially that one one cat was left, and this was very disappointing to me as I thought there was no way someone had not chosen Boo Boo. However, either Phillip or his source of information was wrong: there were two cats remaining and only one besides Butters had been accounted for. This made my heart skip a beat a little bit: the chances were a little better now that Boo Boo was still available. After confirming with the cyclist foster dad that Boo Boo WAS INDEED STILL AVAILABLE and that the other adopted cat was one of the other grey ones, I immediately told him that we wanted to take Boo Boo too, and that I had been reading about how it is better if a cat have a friend (which I had, as I had been reading every cat care book I could get my hands on), and that Phillip was good with us taking both of them. In fact, Phillip had very much not agreed to take two cats (yet anyways!!!! LOLOLOLOL), though he was good with me taking Butters after much persuading, convincing, and pleading on my part. That said, I knew I could talk him into two cats and I just could not risk losing my other cat child. If it sounds like I was very emotionally attached to these cats already, INDEED, INDEED I was, but everything in this instance anyways really did happen for a reason. In September 2019, I would not have even really considered myself a cat person (though, when I was a child, I did love visiting my grandpa’s neighbor who had about 15 cats including one orange tabby named Patrick who loved me in particular and the feeling was mutual). By the end of the year, that would all totally change. I would be proudly displaying photos of my future cat children to anyone who would listen to me!
December 2019 was an excellent month which would provide sustenance in many, many forms for months to come. First, I qualified for the Olympic Trials Marathon by running my 2:44:45 at CIM on December 8, my cousin Ian’s birthday. Then, less than a week later, I took my two cat children home. The former of these events has provided a unique form of hope and belief throughout a challenging 2020—a belief that I can do things that I formerly thought impossible, and a memory of what was perhaps the most perfect race experience and qualifying experience that I could have imagined. The latter of these events, adopting my two cats, has provided me an endless source of comfort, companionship, and love. I formerly did not “get” pet people. Pet people, I now totally get it.
Adventures with Butters and Boo Boo
I could write a small book on how cute, smart, and affectionate my cat children are (everyone is surprised at how interactive they are!). My entire camera roll is basically all cat photos (I delete yoga videos left and right but 100% refuse to delete anything with the cats!). Instead of a small book, here are just a couple good little stories about what they do every day.
Boo Boo is the king of the rolly pollies: he loves affection and multiple times per day will roll over onto his back with his paws tucked in while he purrs super loudly and gets you to rub his tummy! He knows when I get my swim bag out that I am about to leave the house, and he does not like that, but he is the most excited creature alive when I return from any workout. Butters is the queen of sitting in my lap, whether I am eating breakfast or watching a show after a long day of work, or attempting to type on my laptop. She also loves to sit and sleep behind my laptop while I work; I always move my laptop so she has the right amount of space!
Boo Boo alternates between four sleeping spots: his favorite drawer, my husband’s suitcase on the top shelf of our closet, his special cat couch near the window, or sleeping on the bed close to my feet. In all of these places (except for the suitcase which is his least frequented spot), Boo Boo actually waits for me to tuck him in with his blankets before he goes to sleep. Butters sleeps every night in a little “nest” of blankets directly between Phillip’s and my pillows. She does so much kneading of her blanket nest before she goes to sleep that I often think she is giving herself a little workout!
In the morning, Boo Boo waits for me to wake up, or if he is elsewhere in the house, he comes running when he hears my voice, and then he and Butters follow me around as I get dressed before the three of us go downstairs together. I actually can’t remember the last time I went down the stairs in the morning by myself!
Boo Boo loves food. What is really pretty funny is that he loves certain fruits far more than cat specific treats, which he could honestly take or leave most of the time. He has loved blueberries from the time he was a small kitten: we have a routine in the morning where I yell “blueberry” as I toss a blueberry to him which he will then catch and otherwise “hunt”. Even more than blueberries, he LOVES pumpkin. All I have to do is say “pumpkin treat” and he comes racing and will lick clean both sides of the spoon where I’ve put a little pumpkin for him. Butters, on the other hands, only likes cat treats (and will just sniff blueberries or pumpkin and walk right away), but wow, does she ever love cat treats! She also has a greater non-food vocabulary than Boo Boo; she knows “here,” “up,” “down,” and “through the tunnel” (I’ve taught her to run through her cat tunnel). Boo Boo and Butters adore these little mouse toys from amazon: we throw them up and down the stairs and all around the house to play catch with them. (Often this happens after I have done a long run and my legs are cracked, but Boo Boo especially loves chasing the mouse toy up both flights of stairs!).
Both of my cats love when I do yoga. They are not quite sure what I am doing when I do my nightly backbends, but they always keep me company and frequently make guest appearances in the classes I teach at Runners Love Yoga TV.
If you have the time and love to give to some future animal children, and are currently on the fence about adopting a cat, adopt two. They have truly brought so much love and joy into my life that I never thought was missing until I had them. Happy National Cat Day!
