Lucky would expect us to pay it forward, especially if she knew more than 300 of her fellow felines
awaited adoption at the Vanderburgh Humane Society. So two days after we lost our beloved Lucky, our family met at River Kitty Café.
River Kitty Café is a cat café in Downtown Evansville with 10 to 15 cats on the premise available for adoption or quality playing time. Visitors enjoy their coffee in the glass enclosed cat room for $5, or eat sweets (macarons!) and savories, along with coffee, beer, or wine in the main café, watching the antics of the cats through the floor to ceiling windows. The café serves as an outreach of the Vanderburgh Humane Society, which facilitates the adoptions.
Any of the kitties would have made great pets, joining Lou, our 12-year-old gray domestic male cat, and our 7-year-old mountain cur dog Jed. My husband liked Toby, an orange male tabby. We also liked three kittens from the “fruit group.” Co-owner Annette Gries explained the cats from VHS arrive with themed names; the “fruit group” — Lime, Clementine, and Tangerine — were siblings that came in together (and recently adopted together as well!).
We spotted a kitten with a tuxedo coat sunning in a basket in the window. It didn’t take long to start her motor; she was exceptionally soft and cute. We wanted to get to VHS to complete the adoption paperwork before they closed. We told Annette we had made a decision.
“Evangeline,” our son Maxwell said.
“Evangeline!” Annette repeated, pleasantly surprised, I think.
We had selected the kitten from the window, that, turns out, Annette had babied more than a bit; cradling her on her back, rubbing her belly and chin.
The adoption paperwork was completed at VHS, and we returned to River Kitty to pick up Evangeline in her cardboard box. That night we introduced “Sunny” to her new home — Sunny, as we found her in the sun, and, the abbreviation of her full name given by my husband, Sunny Von Bulow.
