February 28, 2021. Playa Royale, Mexico. Clover the Kitten.

Kate has just gotten a kitten, a very cute little gray kitten whose name is Clover. Both Christina and Kate sent me pictures. There is nothing better than a little kitten. Kate will enjoy her company. Gray cats go back in our family to the late 70's. We lived on Old Spring Road and still spent weekends at our country place ib Pennsylvania. It was primitive but we had a good time. The folks who lived up the road stopped by to see if we wanted any kittens. Their cat had kittens and they were giving them away. Of course, the boys wanted two so when we were ready to leave for home, we stopped by and the young man put two kittens into the car. He assured us they were male. The kittens were terrified and raced all around the inside the car and finally hid in the back of the station wagon. At that point we discovered that those kittens were wild. When we got home we were concerned that the kittens would run away but what happened was the opposite. They would not get out of the car. Bit by bit over the next few days, the boys tamed them by setting out food. Eventually they would let us pat them. Ken is allergit to cats so he built a two story cat house, adjacent to the window in the basement. The following Easter, the two male cats gave birth to kittens so we were able to watch the kittens through the window. We gave away the kittens with no trouble and it was fun watching them. We had several litters of kittens born in the car house. Eventually we took the two original cats back to the country. By them we had the new farm. And we kept two kittens, one gray and one black, and we had them altered so we had no more kittens. Elvia our housekeeper, liked the cats inside the house, so eventually we had two house cats. And when we moved to Franklin Street, Elvia took the cats to her house. But for a long time, we had two gray cats. Kate is following the tradition.