Meet Lily & Paris

I thought I would explain my name & have you meet Lily & Paris, my girls, my cats. Lily is the tabby & Paris is the Russian Blue. Both are rescues, literally.

Tigerlily, or Lily for short, was found with her 4 other brother & sisters next to the Pepsi machine at my apartment complex. It was February 2002 & it was one of the coldest winters in a long while. We guessed correctly that the momma cat was moving them to a warmer location & had gone back to get the last kitten. I decided to take all 5 kittens for one night & give the people that rescued them a break. Every 2 hours I got up & made bottles & fed them. What an ordeal, these ferals were not what I expected, they fussed until they got their bottles & fought while they were getting them. All except for one kitten. She seemed to be hungry after her bottle because she kept trying to crawl out of the plastic barrel we were using for a bed for them.

It turns out she wasn't hungry but wanted to be held. She didn't want to be curled up with her siblings but with me. I had lost my cat of 14yrs to cancer 9 months before that & thought I would never want to get another cat or love another cat again after she passed away but here is this little bundle of fur telling me it's time. I decided my other cat, Friday, had grieved long enough & needed love too, so Tigerlily joined our house. Later that year Friday passed away. She taught Lily how to be a cat, use the litter box, groom herself, etc. Lily was an “only child” for over a year, when my mother called & told me about a kitten that had been tossed into a backyard of friend’s brother & would I take it? Of course, but secretly I was worried about Lily’s reaction.

The kitten was estimated to be about 6 months old & I am pretty sure she is a Russian Blue. Her double coat is like silk, and has purple-pink pads on her feet. She is solid grey (blue) but does have a few stray white hairs which would make her ineligible to be shown if she had papers. She’s exotic looking & truly a beautiful cat that deserved an exotic name. It was November 1, 2003 when she adopted us & Paris Hilton’s sex tape had just been released; I thought this new kitten was pregnant because her belly stuck way out. I thought she had “gotten around” a bit while being outside so I named her Paris after the beautiful city & for getting around like the other Paris. Turns out she just had food in her belly for the first time in a while all she had was a bad case of ear mites.

So the seeds for Lily & Paris were born. Jump ahead 3 years on Mother’s Day & I made a purse for my mother & put a homemade label inside that said Lily & Paris, too (the way I signed my cards with my name) Walnut Creek, CA. It was meant to be a joke but when I went downtown to my local clothing store Belinda M Designs, http://www.belindamdesigns.com/, to get a flower pin for the bag she was excited by what I did & told me to make some more & bring them in & she would sell them for me. And thus Lily & Paris Designs was born.