The three year anniversary of Cooper’s adoption was last Sunday. Which is pretty amazing that it was also the day where over a million people met him on the internet. I love to think about that weekend when we met him. Michael and I flew down in Medford, Oregon for my grandparent’s 60th wedding anniversary weekend…

When we arrived at my grandmother’s house Saturday morning, I was in charge of making the flower arrangements. She directed me to the garage, where she’d set up a card table for me. She also directed me not to let the “little yellow cat” into the house. Apparently with the temperatures in the low teens all week, he’d been hanging around their house crying to be let inside. Michael and I got set up in the garage with the flowers and noticed that there was a small bag of cat chow on the work bench. Grandma had been feeding that little yellow cat for some time.

Later that night, with the party in full swing, I looked outside to see baby Cooper up on the table eating directly from a shrimp platter. I shooed him away, and not 15 minutes later, he was back up there eating shrimp. One of the party guests headed outside to get him off the table. Adorable as he was, it wasn’t much longer before he was being passed from hand to hand eating exotic cheeses and more shrimp, and then into the house. He spent the next few nights inside sleeping on the couch with Lindsay.

Each day, Grandma booted him back out onto the back patio. We all came and went from their house for the next two days and Cooper was still out there crying. From the amount of time he’d been hanging around, it was clear that he didn’t belong to anyone. Grandma had checked with all the neighbors – nobody was missing their little yellow cat. Grandpa said that somebody’d better take the damned cat or he was going to take him to the mill and drown him in the pond.

Michael and I were the last ones remaining at Grandma’s, and the only ones who didn’t have a reason to say no. It was one of those “are you thinking what I’m thinking” moments. Assured by the rest of the family that nobody leaves a 3 month old kitten outside for a week in sub-zero temperatures, we called the airline. Seventy dollars would get us a kitty plane ticket.

The next day we flew him home to Seattle.

Cooper is currently curled up tight like a pill-bug fast asleep.