My father-in-law was a cat magnet. He loved them, and they loved him. He also loved to laugh. So, it’s fitting that we got our sweet Sawyer from him.

Here’s my father-in-law, Glenn, with my daughter and my sister-in-law when he came to see Annie a few months before the “incident”.

As I said, cats adored Glenn and came from far and wide to live with him. So it was not surprising that another cat had adopted him. However, he thought this particular cat was a male. So he did not rush to get it fixed. But lo and behold on April Fool’s Day, this ‘male’ cat delivered kittens.

Aren’t they adorable? Well, a couple of weeks after Glenn discovered his error and these adorable kittens, he had a heart attack and ended up in the hospital. My husband raced to Kansas City to be with his father. Unfortunately, Glenn did not recover and passed away. As we were making arrangements for the funeral, my husband told me about the kittens and asked if we could keep one. Well, what could I say? Of course! So when we went up for the funeral, my daughter picked out a kitten for us and a kitten for my sister. They were still too young to leave their mother, so we anxiously awaited their arrival to our house in May.

They had not had much human contact because of Glenn’s hospitalization, so they huddled together. We had thought to name our kitten, the orange/blond one ‘Glenda’ after both Glenn and one of our favorite books/movies–The Wizard of Oz. But the day we took them to the vet to get checked out, we discovered that orangey kittens are 95% male. And so, we quickly changed Glenda’s name to Sawyer, after one of our favorite characters on the TV show LOST.

The pretty gray one, my sister kept, and she named her Scout.

Now here they are all grown up!

April Fools’ Day is bittersweet, as I think of sweet and wonderful Glenn, but it’s also joyous in that we have an adorable cat. Sawyer is so lovable. Our sorrow will end one day when we are all united in heaven, but until then we will remember Glenn and his sweet gift, Sawyer.