Trippy was born on March 21st, 2022. We had talked about getting a cat, but I was resistant. However, when our next door neighbor was cat sitting a pregnant mama cat, I told my wife we could keep a kitten if she ended up giving birth while they were there. Our neighbor wasn't supposed to have her that long, so I didn't really think it was going to pan out, if I'm being honest.
But before we knew it, 3 kittens were born, and I had the privilege of meeting them just minutes after they were born. It wasn't long before we picked Trippy to be ours, she was the most rambunctious of the litter and showed her personality early on. She stayed with her mom and siblings, but we got to visit her and when she got a little bigger would come to our house for short periods of time. Finally, when the kittens were old enough, Trippy got to come home with us to stay. We were already so attached and she was our perfect, beautiful baby.
We had limited funds so we took her to a mobile spay and neuter clinic that provided her vaccines, spay surgery and a tag when she was a few months old.
Trippy stayed inside with the exception of supervised trips outside either on her harness, or within an enclosed area where she couldn't get out. We wanted her to have a chance to explore, but also worried about the dangers of her being outside so she was never allowed out without us watching her.
When we moved to a new apartment, we no longer had the outdoor space we had previously, which meant Trippy spent almost all of her time inside, as even taking her out on her harness became challenging in that environment. She never was in contact with other cats. While it wasn't necessarily a conscious decision, we didn't keep up with her vaccines. It didn't seem like it needed to be a priority because her risk of exposure to anything seemed so low. In retrospect, I wish we had chosen differently.
