Charlie

I am not a cat person. 

For the record. 

I do like animals, though.  And when this little guy was rescued (and shoved at us in a box- thanks friends!) at Halle's last t-ball game, I couldn't say no.

 He's tiny, and we're not 100% sure he'll make it without a mama.  But we're trying, and so far he's doing just fine.

 At first we weren't going to let the kids name him until we knew he would survive.  But after a few days of them calling him this and that (T-ball*, Frances, Grace, Noisy, etc.) I started throwing in suggestions too.  :)

So we started thinking of cats in books (a good place to start, right?) and we landed on good old Charlie- my favorite book Grammy used to read to us at her house.  Even though our Charlie isn't a tiger cat, the girls agree that he does like to play "tiger in the grass": 

And, as Cate pointed out- he's brown(ish-black) so Charlie Brown works too!  :)

 Not to worry, though- our real pet is still Indy.  (Haha!)  And she is happier than she's ever been, here at our new house where there's no fence and she gets smothered by little petting hands multiple times per day.

We have a stray dog that thinks it has adopted us too.  A little black and white thing that has been hanging out with Indy since we got back from Louisville.  He doesn't come very close when we're outside, but I'm thinking he's not leaving a place with fresh water, plenty of food, and a friend who shares the best shade.  (Sigh.)  Wonderful.

*T-ball was my personal favorite name too, but Cate was vehemently against it.  So we moved on.  :)