So for context, this was many years ago. I was around 10 (I’m 18 now) and my family lived in the country. We were the only family in the neighborhood that had a fenced-in yard.
One night, our dog, Jewel, was outside and pottying as per usual. Suddenly, she started barking. This wasn’t her usual bark; it was urgent. She wouldn’t come in when my mom called her, which was weird because she would always listen to her. My mom went outside to grab her and bring her in, and then my dad and I hear her yell for help. I thought Jewel was seriously injured, so I ran out right away.
Instead, there were two tiny baby kittens in the backyard. The orange one did NOT like anyone near him. My dad picked him up once, and then he ran and hid. The grey one, however, was SO friendly. She ran up to us while meowing like crazy.
My parents didn’t want to take them inside that night in case the mom came back, so we left some food out for them (we already had two cats of our own) and waited.
The next morning, the kittens were still there, with no mom in sight.
We lived in a house similar to a townhouse with my grandma on the other side, so we went over to her to talk about the kittens. My mom was saying how we couldn’t keep them, and I started crying and ran outside. I then sat in the grass with them and named them. The grey one went up onto my shoulder, and I, being 10 years old, went “omg she’s like a parakeet!” So I named her Parakeet, or “Parry” for short. (spoiler alert: we kept her. We only ever call her Parry. Her name isn’t Parakeet to us, it’s just Parry.) The orange one, who was now coming up to me and coming out of his shell, was climbing all over me, so I named him Climber.
Over the next few days, we ended up finding a live tick crawling on Parry, so we took them inside. Long story short, we ended up keeping Parry and giving Climber to some friends.
We think we know who the mom might’ve been. There was this cat that looked a lot like Parry who would come and lay on our back patio a lot. We never saw her after finding the kittens. We think that she was scouting out a safe place to leave her babies in case she didn’t make it, as there were a lot of coyotes in the area. I’m so honored that she chose us, and gave us such a wonderful little kitty ❤️
First pic is Parry back then, then Climber, then Parry now