Special Bobby's Bulletin: Along Came P(H)olly Part 1

No, not this Polly came home with us!

This post is long overdue and it also comes as a surprise - because I did not ever think we would have seven cats at the same time again! But, on May 19, 2014, we brought home PHolly Shubin, the 7th member of our cat clan.

PHolly is our 3rd resident black cat.

First, her name is PHolly -- now you can call her Polly, Holly or PHolly (like Folly) but we pronouce "PHolly" with a silent P...! Essentially the easiest explanation of PHolly's name, is that her name was Polly at Animal Outreach of Cape May (where I volunteer in the summer). We always name our cats after Cape May, and for as long as I can remember, we would eat at Holly's Restaurant in Grasonville, Maryland on the way to the shore. So since Polly & Holly were pretty similar sounding, we decided to create PHolly!

Now, for the background on how PHolly came to live in our house...

When we adopted Bobby in December from Cape May, NJ, we knew he had a brother Charlie and two sisters, Polly and Meredith (who had previously been adopted). We felt bad separating Bobby from Charlie and Polly, but we were not planning on taking anyone other than Bobby.

But in the months we had Bobby, we realized that he was still quite a kitten and really didn't have anyone to play with. Despite having four other cats, they were a few years older than him and not as active. Bobby is a bursting ball of energy and the other cats could not keep up with him.

Bobby was lonely and had energy that bounced off the walls. His high activity level was the biggest motivating factor to bring home his sister (why not Charlie, you ask? Because he is bonded to anoter cat there, Marmie and they are a pair).

So when we took a trip up to Cape May in May for a 3 day weekend, we went to Animal Outreach to volunteer & visit - not expecting to bring PHolly home, because mom wasn't convinced.

On the ferry with PHolly.

But dad and I were convinced that PHolly needed to come home with us, and she was in good health, so we decided to take her home. Of course this was the day we were leaving and we were not expecting to bring her home. But even so, dad had an emergency carrier in the car and we popped her in it and off to Virginia she went!

To be continued...

In the car!