The very beginning.... 10.4 years ago

I remember the first time I ever saw Brown Dog.  He was 6 weeks old and like a big sausage with 4 enormous paws. I picked him out of the litter because he had a fold in his ear and the breeder gave me a discount.  And because he was super cute.  And because there was something a little bit different about him than his brothers and sisters, he was a little bit more brown.  At the time I figured that was a good thing.

I remember the first time I ever saw Orange Cat.  She was 11 weeks old and like a tiny fur ball with enormous blue eyes.  I picked her out of the litter because she was the only girl left.  And  because she was super cute. And because there was something a little bit different about her than her brothers, she was a little bit more orange.  At the time I figured that was a good thing.

I brought Orange home one week before Brown. She did all those normal kitten things.  Things like falling into the toilet with a splash and a god almighty sound only a kitten who has fallen into a toilet can make and emerging looking like a drowned rat. Other things like barfing on the bedspread then eating it, exploring the bbq and coming inside covered in ash which only meant giving her a bath which meant the drowned rat look again.

Orange used to sleep on my head at night, I thought this was super cute until one night I woke up with a mound of fur in my mouth and realised that she was actually sleeping on my face.  Her Orange tendencies started to show then..... she was clearly evil and was trying to kill me.

I brought Brown home 6 weeks after I first saw him.  Calculating using some sort of mathematical equation his growth rate in 6 weeks, I took a box with me.   I must have used the pythagoras theorem when clearly I should have calculated with pi, because I was way off.  There was no way in hell that he was going to fit into that box.  So instead I held him on my lap while someone else drove.  It was about an hour long drive, but it felt like a year.

The only thing I remember about that drive was the stench, a god awful rank stench.  The kind of stench that made my eyes water.  The kind of stench that made me want to barf.  The kind of stench that made me want to turn around and say "um, sorry but I think you gave me a dead body disguised as a Brown Dog".  I don't know what they were feeding Brown, but he was farting up a storm!  Not just any storm, a mammoth colossal storm of mass proportions.  It was a rather cold yucky rainy June day, but there was no choice.... all windows down head hanging out the window trying to catch a tiny bit of fresh air.  It was all bad, really really bad.  So bad that for a fleeting moment I wondered if picking Brown was going to be the worst decision I ever made.

It wasn't.....