Mario & Captain Thunderpants

We weren’t intending to get a cat as soon as we did. In fact, Josh and I were still working on painting the spare room at his dad’s house, where we lived at the time, and getting it ready for all the bookshelves that would soon end up in there and turning it into an actual spare bedroom. We’d decided once that was done, we’d get a cat. But then one day I went to Petco, and there was this shy little tuxedo kitten named Mario. And he was just so adorable.

The next day, I went back again. And the next day and the next for six days straight. On the seventh day, I dragged Josh along and made a comment about how I’d be so sad when Mario was gone. With a knowing “Oookayyy,” Josh went to get an adoption form. Though we had to wait a few days to pick him up once we were approved, because he was a bit sick, we ended up with the sweetest seven-month-old angel kitten (light of my life, my reason for being – as Josh says) in all the land.

He was pretty terrified for a while after we got him, hiding under the bed and such. He was even afraid of the TV for the first couple days. And even after he got used to us, anytime a new person came around, he was nowhere to be seen. In the six years since we got him, he’s become much braver, going so far as to walk up to new people and let them pet him.

I felt bad leaving the sweetest angel kitten alone while we were at work and thought he needed a friend. We’d been letting Josh’s brother’s cat, Simba, come upstairs on occasion and Mario always tried to play with him, but Simba wasn’t really about it. So a few months later, after going to the local animal shelter, Josh picked out a scraggly-looking former stray that the shelter had dubbed Scootsy-Toots after telling him, “You’re kind of funny looking.” Which, he was. He was skinny with a massive head. Also, can we just talk about that name? Scootsy-Toots? What? Nope. He was immediately dubbed Captain Thunderpants.

For the first few days, he was a bit sickly and sniffly and wanted nothing to do with Mario, but eventually he accepted Mario’s attempts to play. He’s grown from not really being super affectionate and spending a lot of time meowing loudly in the hallway to ensure Simba knew he was the boss to coming to lay on my pillow before bed and demanding attention by coming to sit in front of my computer. Though he’s still not a lap cat, and most definitely not when there’s blankets involved. Captain weirdly hates blankets.

While they did at first, they’re no longer the kind of cats that cuddle or groom each other (much to my dismay), but they coexist happily. Multiple times a day they chase each other around – you can always hear them scrabbling along the wood floor – and have Wrestle-Mania sessions where they body slam each other into the ground, but otherwise they generally ignore one another.

Mario is the sweetest, cuddliest, most demanding cat who will make it known he needs attention with aggressive headbutts, and when he wants treats, he’ll make sure to let me know. And Captain is the biggest whiner I’ve possibly ever seen, but he’s so loving and adorable I’m not really mad about it (most of the time). They have both made it clear to me that any future cats I own will be boys, because they’ve been nothing but the sweetest, least aggressive cats I’ve ever had. And I love them so much that I actually can’t even.