One day, shortly after my wife and I were married, as we entered a local grocery store we were greeted by two little children with a cardboard box containing a litter of kittens. They asked if we would like one. My wife begged and pleaded with me to take one home. I knew it would not be easy to get out of this. I gambled and explained that it would be difficult to do our shopping with a little kitten in our grocery cart, but if any kittens were left when we finished shopping she could have one. Two kittens were still in the box when we left the store and one was the runt of the litter, the one that she had her heart set on.

Now you know how a gray tabby named Misty was acquired and the SBSZOO was started.

Misty soon had company. My wife's friend told her about a neighbors’ litter of kittens and the runt they couldn’t find a home for. When she discovered that it was Calico, we had to “just go take a look”. Being newly married and not having learned my lesson yet, I agreed. When the feisty kitten curled up in my wife's’ arms and fell asleep I knew that we would not be leaving without the kitten we named, for obvious reasons, Patches.

From the start as kittens, Misty, a gray male tabby, and Patches, a female calico, were a couple and ate, slept and played together. As little as she was, Patches let Misty know who the boss was. If she had enough of a game or simply wanted to be left alone, she would bat poor Misty about the head and he would slink off with as much dignity as he could muster. Their antics kept us in stitches, even when competing to see who could catch the most mosquitoes and using us as the playing field as we tried to sleep.