YOU CAT MAKE THAT UP

BY ALLI SCHUCHMAN

Islander Ione Shepherd stepped in to help her friend JP, a contract worker from San Diego, when a job took him to Alaska, where he sadly couldn’t bring along his beloved cat, Beloved. “She arrived at my house on a Monday at 1:30 a.m. in the morning,” she recounted. “We got her settled, and the next morning I went to work.”

When Shepherd arrived home that evening, she and her daughter, Winona, were stunned to discover that Beloved, less than 24 hours after arriving, had unexpectedly given birth to two tiny kittens, one a grey tabby and the other all white. “She was an indoor cat, so it was just like a crazy whoopsie happened somewhere.”

What makes the story more interesting is that Shepherd, the night prior to Beloved’s arrival, had dreamt about the kittens’ birth. Stranger yet is that in her dream, the cat had three babies, including a gray and white one, in addition to the two others she had correctly conjured. Her visions were quickly reconciled the following day, when JP’s mom called to let Shepherd know that her lost gray and white cat had miraculously returned home. “I was like, I already knew that,” she said. “I realized that the kitten in the dream I saw was really the missing cat.”

So, the question on everyone’s mind…. “Yeah, we’re keeping the kittens,” said Shepherd, who added that their working names are Twig and Tweak. That may change after she gets to know them better. “They’re only four weeks old now and I want to know their personalities a bit more.” Their eyes are open, they’re starting to play with one another, and she believes one is a girl and the other a boy. Beloved will be ready to be spayed soon, and the other two will get fixed sometime around Christmas.

“It’s been quite an experience,” said Shepherd. “I’ve only had like two cats in my life prior to this. And now I’m a crazy cat lady.” Shepherd is a speech therapist assistant in the Bremerton School District. Born on the island, she returned five years ago and lives here with her daughter.