I am going to introduce The Brothers today. They are Emmitt and Onslow. They are both butterscotch tabbies. They were born late spring of 1999. Their mother kept them in the insulation under an old house behind us. My neighbor heard the kittens crying and realized that their mother had died. Their mother was a stray and did not survive internal parasites. My neighbor waited until she saw the older couple leave in the car. She climbed over their fence with a box and got the kittens out and took them home. She fed them several times a day for about three weeks. By early summer, they were able to come outside. I used to garden at 5am, before I had to leave for work. The kittens would come over and help me. 
One afternoon, I brought the whole litter in the house after we had gardened and we all took a nap on the couch. My husband came home early and busted us! Tom and I used to walk the dog around town every night. One very cold winter night when we were walking, I kept hearing a cat talking. I stopped and saw Onslow trotting along behind us to catch up. He had followed us. I put him under my coat and asked my neighbor Gayle if we could keep him. Of course, she said yes. Later that winter, Emmett kept coming to me when I would be in the yard. It was so cold that winter. I would pick him up and tuck him under my coat until he stopped shaking. By the end of the winter, I couldn’t stand it any more and we brought him in the house too. Emmett started working Tom early on. He would fall on Tom’s shoe and lay upside down looking up at him. He still does that. He is our most affectionate cat. His knickname is Scan –Man. He loves to have his whole faced rubbed. If you hold your cupped hand out, he will jam his head into your hand for a ‘cat scan.’ His brother is very protective of him and will still come over and get between any other cat or dog that looks like it might hurt him.
His brother has grown to huge proportions, as did one other cat in that litter. (The neighbors took that one). Onslow has the knick names Two-Ton and Uncle Onslow. Two-Ton for his weight; and Uncle Onslow because he loves kittens. All the other cats hate young kittens. Onslow is always the first to adopt a new kitten. He trains it and lets the kitten play all over him. Once he teaches a kitten some manners, the rest of the cats will acquiesce and accept a kitten. Onslow’s favorite tactic is to lay on a kitten until it becomes submissive. At his weight, that seems to be very effective. We know that Onslow used to eat at both neighbors houses as well as ours. We had hoped that he would lose weight once we built the cattery and was only eating at one place, but that has not happened. For a large cat, he is very graceful. I watch him play with the other cats and jump high up to catch a bug. The brothers are the only two cats we will let out of the cattery to be in the yard with us if we are outside. They still love to garden. 
Of course, Onslow will first go to Gayle’s frot porch in case she left food there! Tom says he was a Hobbit in another life. He has first breakfast, second breakfast, a snack, lunch, a snack, supper, then late supper! The brothers are named after two of the male characters in the British comedy Keeping Up Appearances, for those of you who may recognize the names.
