Change of Plans

There's been a slight change of plans since my last update. The creature above is Manchego. This male (yes, it's a boy), chocolate-haired, blue-eyed cat is now our cat. My dad, who picked up his own male, chocolate-haired, blue-eyed cat yesterday reserved it for Jochem and me this morning and we will get him at the end of January when he is three months old (he was born on November 3). As I wrote in my previous update, this was not exactly 'the plan'. We were planning to get a kitten next year in the fall, but my family infected us with their kitten enthusiasm and after reading all of Kiran's book on cats and discussing the pros and cons a lot (I am in a couple now after all), we decided to go for it. Besides, everyone is always telling me to be flexible when life throws you a curve ball (or some other English expression). And we are really excited!!! :) More information can be found on: http://www.juffair.overijsselnet.nl/ (also: http://www.kinderlines.nl/juffair). Also, we named the cat Manchego because we (read: I) didn't feel that Parma was the right name for him. I tried to convince Jochem once again to name him after one of my favorite authors like James (Joyce) or Ernest (Hemingway), or after that crazy English king who got married a bunch of times and beheaded Queen Elizabeth's mother, Henry, but to no avail, especially not when Anna started to intervene and said we should stick to our food theme. So now our cat will be named after a Spanish sheep cheese as opposed to an Italian ham.