Cats always know!

Cat 1 - wondering what's up! 

She and her sister are going to our friends who are going to look after them (and our two dogs) while we are gone.  Yep, we've got some great friends who are willing to take all four of our pets for the entire summer.  That's pretty amazing.  But, animal people are like that! 

When Ethan was born (12 short years ago), he was 10 weeks premature (he weighed in at a whopping 2 lbs 9 oz).  He had to stay in NICU for 10 weeks while he grew and added weight.  When he finally got to go home (at an incredible 4 lbs, 2 oz.), I was not thrilled about having our dogs around him yet (we had two wonderful German Sheperds at the time...Fritz & Sis).  With all the breathing issues, dog hair, etc. (plus the fact that he definitely looked like a small chew toy), I thought our dogs should go on a little vacation.  That's where our wonderful friends Barry & Liz came in.  They agreed to take Fritz & Sis for as long as we needed (and it turned out to be a long time before I was able to have them come home).

Of course, when we started planning this trip, I thought of them (lucky them!).  Now, they've not only agreed to take in our two dogs (Sophie & Sierra, our loving labs), but the two cats too (affectionately referred to as Cat 1 and Cat 2 because when they were young I couldn't tell them apart or remember which one was Leia and which was Padme (yep, Ethan named them...as he did the dogs too).

For many home exchanges, your exchanging family will take care of your pets, while you take care of theirs.  While I would have been fine with that for a couple of weeks, I thought two months of taking care of our brood would be a bit much (plus, our French guests are going to do a bit of traveling and I didn't want to have to call upon delightful Susanna to house sit on a moment's notice.)  So, the pets are off to Liz & Barry's today.  We are all a little sad to say goodbye for the summer.  Hopefully they'll still love us when we get back (the pets as well as Liz & Barry)!