Although I have quite a few interests, such as clocks and fedoras, they have changed priority throughout the years. My faith and my family will always be the top two in that list. However, below that kittens and coffee have taken the next two positions, hence the name of this blog. For the full story of my life you can check out the [about] page on my website, JasonBlairBooks.com. Hello, I am American novelist Jason W. Blair and this is an introduction to my life, that I would like to share with you, starting with this first blog entitled, Eight is enough. Yes, just like the television show with the same name that ran on ABC from 1977 until 1981, only instead of eight children we have five kittens.

When people first discover that my wife and I have five cats, the first question on their mind is “Why do you have so many?” The answer is quite simple actually. I grew up in a larger family—two parents and four boys. That’s right, there were six of us. So when I ventured out on my own at age eighteen, I really missed all the commotion and companionship of a family that size; I wasn’t ready to settle down at that age though. Eleven years later, I finally found that place when I met my wife and we rented our first apartment together. We were newlyweds and I had a new teenage daughter (we don’t use the prefix step in our family).

After some time, and several apartments, we adopted our first cat—an adorable gray and white American longhair that we named Shadow Hemingway. He was a two-year-old stray. When we went to pick him up and pay out the twenty-dollars for his re-homing fee, Shadow immediately ran into my arms as if he knew he was always supposed to be with my wife and I. The owner said he had never seen that behavior out of him before. It was meant to be. People don’t choose cats, they choose us.

Six months later, we adopted our second cat through a friend of a friend. He was practically a newborn—roughly six-weeks-old, a black American Shorthair who was born on a farm. We called him Kira Yami. There were several others we tried in-between, but none of them worked out with Shadow. However, when Kira arrived, he was so tiny that Shadow didn’t know what to think other than he was a toy. In no time at all, they became best friends.

We thought that was all the kittens we were going to have, but as they grew so did my love for kittens. I approached my wife and explained my yearning for a big family again, and since my wife can’t have any more children, our sights fell on our feline companions. We searched for our next furry buddy to no avail until an online post caught our eye. It was for a Calico British Shorthair. The price was $300, which was a bit steep, but we took a chance anyway and contacted the owner.

The cat arrived a day later, and I paid for her and brought her inside. I could tell immediately not only from appearance but from her behavior that she had been abused. Thank God, we saved her, I thought. She was extremely thin and skittish. We called her Tess Ella, and we knew that she would be a challenge. We were right, and after about two weeks, we weren’t sure if she would ever feel safe and stop scratching and hissing at us and the other cats. However, I’m not one to buckle under pressure. So I spent the next few months giving her lots of attention and showering her with love. I took a lot of scratches and was even bit on the nose once, but I didn’t back down. Today, she’s the most lovable, adorable cat in the world. You wouldn’t even know that she was a once-abused pet.

During her integration and training, we saw another post for a newborn kitten. We thought it was a boy, and we thought it was only one. When we went to pick up our final buddy, we were surprised to find two adorable gray and white female kittens, sisters, that looked exactly like miniature versions of Shadow. We called them Gizmo Riley, and Fiona Quinn. Our family had grown to eight, three humans and five cats. Our large family was finally complete.