From the time I was a very young child, I grew up with cats.  My family’s first – Blacky, a neighborhood stray – adopted us when I was in first grade, and we ended up letting him in the house mostly as a hunter to clear out mice.  Others followed after that (though most remained outside, where we fed them on our porch and let them sleep in a box we kept for them there), and over time we also had, Midnight, Caramel, and Cinnamon Sugar and her kittens, Applesauce, Butterscotch, Vanilla, and Licorice. (She became pregnant so soon after she came to us, we didn’t have a chance to get her fixed first.)  All of them were wonderful, and even beyond our own pets, I loved cats generally.

In the end, however, they all either adopted new families or aged and died.  And some time after that… I found myself allergic.

It was exceptionally interesting, then, the day I first found reference to hypoallergenic cat breeds.  Now, I understand they don’t necessarily work for everyone, but the idea of possibly being able to have a cat without constantly suffering allergies or taking medicine was too tempting to ignore.

Long story short, after much research, consideration, and waiting, my husband and I now have a kitten of our own!

She is a Russian White, so my husband and I decided it would be appropriate to look for a Russian name.  We decided on the name Verusha, which is the diminutive of the Russian “Vera,” which means “faith,” though it is also sometimes associated with the Latin for “truth.”  We loved both the sound and the meaning, and after all, what more can you ask for in a name?
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