Introducing Anakin

It was October 2001and Mike & I had just gotten back from our honeymoon and returned to work.  We were both employed in the small animal and aquatics department of the petstore where we had met.  We both had bonded over our love of animals as our love for each other grew.  We had a tough time making room for our combined pets in our new marital home together, but we made it work.  I think we had 17 fishtanks going back then!  It was a regular menagerie because neither of us could say no to an animal that needed a proper home.  Almost everything was rescued or adopted.  We even took in unwanted fish that people would bring in to the store because we begged them not to flush them or release them into native bodies of water.

So it was no surprise when a co-worker asked me to come look at what someone had dropped off at the store that I'd end up giving something else a home.  He showed me to a quarantine room that housed a little black cat.

"Oh no. I'm not a cat person," 

I protested. He asked me just to hold it as he proceeded to tell me how he didn't want to vet him and put him in the adoption center until after Halloween because some people adopt black cats for cheap near that holiday to hurt them.  I had never thought about that and I was horrified. Mike was working so I called him over to the quarantine as well.

 I held the precious kitty and batted my sad doe eyes and asked Mike if we could take him home.  Mike hadn't even heard the story or the fact that I was only considering keeping the cat until after Halloween before he said, "Well, ooohhhkaay."  He's always been a softie.  If I asked him to stand on his head and spit quarters, he would.

So after work that day, we put the kit-kat into a box, bought all of the "temporary" supplies we'd need and headed home for what I was sure would be a perilous night.  I had only had 2 barn cats when I had lived on a farm so a housecat would be a new adventure. Mike had never had a cat either.  We were warned that he'd probably find a place to hide and be pretty scared or shy for a while.  Hopefully he was litter trained!  Hopefully he wouldn't terrorize our other pets!  He was checked out by the vets before we took him home and he was in good health and had been declawed.  I would never have a cat declawed, I've interned at a verterinarian's office and I've seen the pain they go through, but what was done, was done, and we hoped for the best.

We arrived at home and quietly placed his box in the middle of the livingroom and set up his litterbox, water, food, and a bed.  Expecting him to go and hide or not come out on his own at all, we were pleasantly surprised when he peeked out of the box, climbed out, had a look 'round, and laid down in the middle of the room.  Like, "Yeah. This is my new house.  I approve."  Then he went to sleep.

We named him Ani, short for Anakin, and as a namesake for Annie, a love that we had both recently lost.

Thirteen years later and we still haven't taken him back to be adopted...he adopted us. 

Check out this post about our guinea pigs!

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Gaming with Mom

     For the last decade or so, I would be considered a hardcore gamer.  I finally got my own PC not long after I got married in 2001, but I had been gaming on console since I was about four and playing Pac-Man on the floor on my mom's Atari 2600.  My mom was awesome that way. How many women get their little girls into gaming?  We played Frogger, Super Breakout, Combat, and Pac-Man the most.  I was also selected to be in a computer class when I was in kindergarten in Florida.  I remember playing something like Space Invaders on these strange-looking computers.  Those old computers looked as odd as the new microwave we bought that wouldn't even fit in our little farmhouse kitchen.  Instead, it sat on the back enclosed porch and set fire and sparks to anything with foil on it...who knew?!  Since then I have gamed on nearly every console produced and enjoyed it as a hobby immensely!

     These days I spend a lot of time playing games because my real passion, having a hobby farm, seems out of reach, so I sit in my dark house and, I like to say tongue-in-cheek, I am "Saving the World from Evil...Again!" as that is so often the premise to games.  I even made that the tag-line for my gaming blog, Limited Addiction.  I have been a life-long story enthusiast.  I love writing, reading, and listening to stories.  I love movies and tv because of the stories.  I really love and miss a tv show that was on PBS when I was younger where a storyteller would read a story (usually an older one) while I watched someone draw out some of the scenes in charcoal.  I loved it and am still inspired by it.  My point is, I love stories and love gaming because of it.  It is so rewarding and thrilling to play through a story!

     It is so much fun to talk to my mom and hear how she is playing Kingdom Hearts again, but this time on the hardest difficulty, or how she's stuck on a boss in Beyond Good and Evil and do I remember how to beat him?  She's in her sixties and lives in a tiny rural southern town, and the nearest game store is twenty miles away, but she is still a gamer!

What's the first game you remember playing and how did you get into gaming?