A simple plan to surprise her husband with a single cat turned into a full house of fur when she “accidentally” acquired seven cats.
Kelly Beattie and her husband, Adrian, are no strangers to pets. She told Newsweek via email that they have two German shepherds, two miniature goats and 14 chickens. Adrian adores cats and has always wanted one, but since she’s allergic, they never had one.
Beattie thought that since they converted an old workshop into a barn for the goats and chickens, they would be able to have a barn cat that would mingle between the two buildings. With his birthday coming up and him being out of town for a business trip, she figured it was time to return the favor after he had gifted her goats for her birthday.
In a March 21 Instagram video posted to her account @thefeatheredporch, Beattie shared the story of how her one-cat idea quickly turned into seven. She said she found a cat on Kijiji, a Canadian online classified advertising website, that needed immediate rehoming, as the person’s roommate had left them behind, and she was allergic. The caveat was that Beattie needed to take the cat’s sister as well, to which she agreed.
The day after bringing the two cats home, Beattie said, her son went to the barn to feed them, but he came running back.
“I was afraid something was wrong, so I ran and met him at the back door,” she said. “He was screaming, ‘There’s kittens!'”
One of their new cats had five kittens. Her plan to surprise her husband quickly spiraled into joyful chaos.
“I was in disbelief but also laughing as this is very ‘on brand’ for us—we are magnets for chaos and funny moments,” she said. “All I wanted was one cat for him, and of course, I ended up with seven that my husband doesn’t know about.”
She said it was impossible to keep the news from him when he called later that day, especially since it was his birthday and he now shares the day with these kittens.
The clip shows Adrian’s reaction in full: complete shock, followed by back-and-forth looks between her and the basket of kittens. He tried to make sense of the surprise as Beattie began telling him how they came to have seven cats. She said once the initial shock wore off, he wasn’t even fazed by the kittens and was so happy.
“He has told me no more animals after this and my reply was, ‘You knew who you married,'” she said. “He fears all of this publicity is going to encourage me to surprise him again.”
She even teased about wanting a miniature donkey next, as her dream is to have a hobby farm. But for now, she’ll embrace the extra felines.
Viewer Reactions
The shocking video quickly took off online, racking up more than 1.7 million views and 1,600 comments on Instagram as of Monday.
A user commented: “I love a ‘buy one, get six free’ situation.”
Another said: “The cat distribution in bulk.”
Someone else, who knew this story all too well, wrote: “‘What’s one more?’ is how it starts.”
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