I can’t believe I’ve been writing this blog about things that make me happy for a couple weeks and have yet to mention my cats. That just seems wrong. There’s probably somebody lurking around the corner waiting to strip me of my librarian credentials due to this omission.

I have two cats who are around six years old at this point. We got them as kittens from the MD SPCA, which is around the corner from our house. They are not from the same litter, but are about the same age. All the littermates of the kittens that were available had already been adopted, so we mixed and matched. They get along great though, and are the best cats ever (many people tell me this so I’m not just saying that because I’m biased), so it all turned out for the best.

The cat on the left is Charlotte. She was originally named Precious but we changed that because it’s way too cutesy. Although I do still sometimes call her My Precious ala Smeagel from The Lord of the Rings. She is very friendly, sometimes overly so, with us and to others in small groups. She is a little skittish though so she tends to hide when we have large parties. She is weirdly obsessed with tomatoes. It’s the one human food she goes after for some reason. We’ve learned the hard way that we cannot leave tomatoes out on the counter or she will knock them off the counter and chomp into them. She hates when people hold her, but she absolutely loves when people pet her. She will actually head butt you to get you to pet her. Every morning she races across the house to sit on the arm of the couch, which is next to our front door so that I can pet her on my way out the door to work. It’s super adorable. She also jumps to the top of her cat tree at night so I can pet her on my way up the stairs to bed. It’s our little routine, and I love it.

The cat on the right is Scout. She was from a litter of cats that was obviously named after Friends characters as her name was Rachel and the other name crossed out on the carrier they gave us was Joey. Scout is also super friendly and is not afraid of large crowds, so she loves to hang out when people come over. She is my lap cat during the winter. It’s too hot during the summer, but during the winter if I’m sitting down she’s trying to sit in my lap no matter what else I might be trying to do. She loves to be around people and gets lonely. I’ll often find her sleeping outside our bedroom door in the middle of the night, and almost every morning she’s waiting outside and rushes into the bedroom and jumps on the bed as soon as I open the door. Scout is also weirdly obsessed with bags. Her favorite are those reusable canvas grocery bags. She will roll around with them and lick them. She likes to lick straps on any type of bag though. It’s quite odd, but very cute. She’s the mouser and catches all the mice we have in the house (thankfully not that many). She is always super sad when we take the mice away and wanders around searching for what she considers to be the best toy ever.

My cats make me happy every day. Also I needed to get this blog post about them in before they wound appearing first on my friend Catherine’s new blog Cat with Cats. They can’t wait to make their debut there.