Happy Anniversary

My parents have many anniversaries. Some of them I understand. Some of them are a mystery to my wirey mind. The ones I understand are things like: the anniversary of their first date....April Fool's Day, the anniversary of their wedding in June, the anniversaries of the birth of their children, the anniversary of my arrival in Decemeber. But they seem to have another "anniversary" coming up! How many anniversaries can two people have?

They have been talking about this "anniversary" thing that happens today for quite some time now. I couldn't quite figure out what was going on. So, I have been lurking in the corners and listening in, and now I can tell you "The rest of the story!"

My dad teaches at the University, and last year he had a sabbatical. My muzzer and father planned to spend the year in New Orleans, where he was going to be doing research at Tulane. Here is a picture of their house in New Orleans. I am sure it was a cute place, but one of the things I found out while lurking about was that there were TWO cats who lived there also! Whew.

Anyway, they left our home in Arizona and arrived in New Orleans on August 15th. They unpacked, they bought a few extra things for the house, and they were going to start working on muzzer's list of restaurants and Dad's list of things to research and write about.

One Saturday, 12 days after they arrived, they heard the mayor of New Orleans say that there was going to be a very bad storm, and people should leave.

Muzzer and dad said "Hey, wait, we just got here!" But they filled up the car with gas and went grocery shopping. The television said that it looked like a BIG storm. Dad thought they should leave, but muzzer was worried about the cats! So they went to bed and slept a while and then muzzer got up very early and dad got up very early too. And they listened to some more radio and watched some more TV and they said..."OK, let's get the cats into the car and get outta here!" The neighbors said "no way, we're not going. We stayed through Betsy and we will stay through this one." Then they made some disparaging remarks about newcomers.

But, they didn't know muzzer. When she makes up her mind, she usually makes it happen. So, one cat went into the cat carrier that came with the house, and the other went into a wicker basket with a big towel, and they left very early that Sunday morning, and they drove NORTH!

They saw lots of other cars on the freeway. In fact, ALL the lanes of the freeway were going AWAY from New Orleans! And there were a lot of people who had their pets with them, so muzzer told me one time that it looked like a big family picnic when you stopped at a rest area. But all of these people had to stop somewhere, and so there were no hotels that had rooms along the freeway. So they drove a long while, and they came to Tennessee!

"Aha!" muzzer said. "We have ollld friends who live in Tennessee. Perhaps they can help us find a hotel or motel that will let us stay with two cats." So she opened her little address book and they called their ollld friends from college. And these old friends (who didn't know what they were asking for) said "No, you can't stay in a hotel. You must come and stay with us. We have a whole upstairs you can have!" But muzzer tried to explain about the cats, and about how they didn't know how long they would have to stay, and .... But still the ollld friends said "Come"

So my parents and the cats stayed with these friends and their very tolerant pets, Miss Gracie and Serena, until the Murphy Institute found a temporary home at Washington and Lee. And that is the story of how my parents got to Virginia, which is next door to Maryland, which is where they went in December to get me from my foster mom. So I guess this is kind of my anniversary too! Maybe I'll get a treat from the dinner tonight!

Oh, and those cats. Well they had a happy ending too! Their forever family flew to Tennessee to pick them up one weekend. They brought another cat carrier, and they all flew back to New York. And then, just a couple of weeks ago, they went back to New Orleans!

Happy Anniversary Parents
Happy Anniversary Steve, Sue, Miss Grace and Serena
Happy Anniversary Alex and Elijah
Happy Anniversary Gus

ps:
Muzzer is cursing Blogger because it won't upload her other picture! Ooh, new words for Gussie