Presenting: Princess Itty Bitty. Photo, copyrighted, by The Fiance, M. Dee Hamilton. (I told The Fiance I was posting his photo of Itty on the web and asked if he thought it was safe. "Only," he said, as long as I didn't publish her social security number…")

The saying goes: when you marry him (or her) you're also marrying his (her) family. When I moved into our new home seven weeks before our wedding date, I also moved in and will be marrying Steiner and Itty Bitty. I have not owned cats since that old photo I unearthed in a box the other day documented. Circa 1968, it showed a little blond girl burying her nose (ick!) into the fur of a tabby named Peppermint. Mona Lisa, a gray beauty with a large white spot on her throat, met her fate with the wheel of my teen sister's car in the driveway. Then there was another cat whose name I cannot recall and whose tail I held in a two-fisted grasp as I slung her round and round in circles. Yes. Yes. Very mean little girl I was. I confess. Little girls bullied by the six little boys down the street and her older middle sister and father also bullied and the cat was one of my unfortunate targets. (Apologies also go to my cousin Beth and Judy Morrow of Brushy Creek Elementary.)

So Karma has come home, once again, to roost. I am marrying Dee, his sweet and wacky mother and two cats that RULE our new home. I've spent a handful of nights, trying to simmer down the adrenaline inflamed as cats leaped onto the bed, glaring their green eyes at me; as they climbed packing boxes, popping and crackling the sealing tap, making a little POP! POP! POP! noise in our bedroom and the room next door. Thankfully, I've taught both that my body is a boundary that they cannot cross on the bed. Nor can they sleep next to my head (as my sinuses like to swell,) and I've given Itty Bitty my old orthopedic pillow and cover my good one when I make the bed.

I've already purchased two boxes of special litter box filling, spray-on cat nip to encourage Steiner to scratch his homemade post and NOT my furniture during the middle of the night. My burgundy velour ottoman appears to be a lost cause as it's got a covering of cat hair on it perpetually, no matter how many times it's cleaned. This week, I purchased a product to ward them off chosen furniture and only read the label of toxic ingredients when I got home and decided I could not do that to them, myself, my daughter or any of them. There's supposed to be a natural solution out there that will require yet another trip to the Disney World of a pet store whose threshold I'd never crossed over until seven weeks ago.

And then there's the mishap of having the movers block the kitty litter box and then moving it from our office when my cousin spent the night on the sofa bed in there. Bad move. Bad. Bad. Steiner has an enormous bladder and emptied it down the vent of said office. After a week of repeatedly mopping with Pine Sol and scratching our heads and gagging, The Fiance realized the source of the smell was the saturated insulation of the air condition piping beneath the house and spent a Sunday afternoon on this belly underneath the house replacing 10 feet of the cat urine-saturated material. Ick. And then there was the incident involving vomit and raw meat on our bedroom carpet last night…I introduced the Fiance to The Stain Eradicator and a rag and told him tomorrow he had a date with the Pet Bot the next day.

Despite all this pee, vomit and insomnia and property rights violations, just as lawful people cannot knock off their inlaws or married ones, I know that Steiner and Itty Bitty are for keeps. And, I've kinda grown to like them both despite their cat-ful-ness. I'm rather jealous that Itty Bitty spends 16 hours a day napping in random locations in our bedroom and great room: my plush rocker that's temporary covered in discarded clothing, waiting to be hung or washed, as I found my new J.Jill linen top the other day. It had slid and crumpled into a quite a comfy and fashionable persimmon-red bedspread for her. There's the box that was her home for two days until its contents were emptied. There's the Queen Anne chair I pass as I scurry like a whirling dervish unpacking this home in which we'll be married in a matter of days. She sleeps on it, her sweet, short nose tucked beneath her right paw, peacefully zonked out in a huge ray of warm sunshine gracing her from a high window. Lucky bitch.

We laugh at Steiner and nick name him "Spasmo." And little secret here (ssshhhh): last year, after "his" urethra was blocked by "crystals," Steiner transgendered from a he to a she by the expert hands of the vet-surgeon and has lived happily ever after since. As I write, I realize the irony of the wacky world I am entering. Just normal that one member of our family would be transgendered. And that it would be a cat.

Both these profusely shedding critters are not the stereotypical snobbish felines like rest of their species. They are friendly, feminine, graceful creatures. And, you just have to agree that the picture of my new little girl via marriage, above, is. Quite. The. Beauty. So, in Good ways and Bad. In Frustrating ways that involve precious sleep and pee, and in Joyous ways of companionship and tenderness, in sickness and in health, to have and to hold, I take thee Steiner and Itty Bitty….Damn It!