Meet Miley, the newest member of the McGraw family..

Meet Miley! There she is in the crate on the counter just seconds after Sami brought her into the house.

I need to give you a little background on our pet situation. I had a cat, Bridget, when I met Jason. She came into this marriage with me and I always warned Jason that she had squatters rights. We adopted Benjamin because we were both working and Bridge was alone a lot and VERY lonely. The two got along as if they were born and raised together even though they were both about 4 or 5 yrs old at the time. When my 2nd child was 2, we got a Black Lab, Kelsey. The cats and dog cohabited pretty well until we had another baby. Then the cats got mean and started attacking my baby. They had to go. We were a 1 dog family for 5 years. No cat hair, no litter box, no furniture being ruined by a cat scratching.

Then we saw Sue at the Petsmart last year and fell in love with her. We brought her home and we realized how much we missed having a cat around. However, shortly after we all fell totally in love with her, she started peeing on our living room couch (where the 2 earlier cats spent most of their time) and scratching up my living room chairs. We remembered what we didn’t like about cats. We worked hard to get her to stop peeing and for the most part, she did stop. Every once in a while she’d regress and pee on the couch.

A few weeks ago she started to do it again almost daily. We were at our wits ends and didn’t know what to do. I turned to Facebook and asked for advice. It seems that citrus and newspapers were needed to stop her of that habit. So right before we left for Florida, I put newspapers all over the couch, sprayed it down with the citrus stuff to keep cats away and put her food right by the couch (because cats won’t pee where they eat). Well it seems this dang cat must have had newspaper as her kitty litter at one point because she though the newspaper was my personal invitation to use the couch ALL the time. So now, I not only had cat pee on my couch, but also the black stuff that rubs off the newspaper. It was just disgusting.

I thought the cat would go when Jason saw that because that is usually what he says. But instead he threw the couch out and said we needed a cat proof couch (Hello!!! Where is my husband?) This was on Sunday morning. I sent him to PetsMart to get this stuff that we heard about that you pour into the kitty litter and it attracts the cats to it. It works like catnip. My daughter calls me from PetsMart and tells me that Dad is buying a kitten? I was napping and wasn’t sure I heard her correctly.

But they came home with this…

Her name was Tangerine, but we I didn’t like that. Nicky thought Miley was good and we all liked it. Then a few hours later, we were watching Hannah Montana and I realized that our cats were named Miley (as in Miley Stewart) and Lily (as in Miley’s best friend). No, it was not intentional, but we like the names.

We now have 2 cats and a dog. The dog is very interested in the cats and the cats want nothing to do with the dog. The two cats hiss at each other and stay far away. The kitten cried a lot last night like a baby. We have her in our master bathroom for the moment. The cat place suggested that we keep her there for about 10 days and let all the animals sniff each other under the door and get used to each other. Then we can let her go free.

She is quite spunky and loves to play. She will cry really loud like a baby if she is lonely and then starts purring really loudly when you come in to play (how sweet is that?)

I know everyone thinks we’ve lost our minds, but she is the cutest thing and so irresistible. I just can not figure out how we went from almost giving away the cat to adopting a new kitten a matter of hours??

Share your crazy pet stories with me!