How to handle this "problem" in Python maintenance releases (2.7, 3.3 and soon-to-be 3.4) is being discussed here: https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2014-January/132101.html

In case, we are taking "backporting the full fix" road, here is the patch. I modified Larry's patch based on Serhiy's suggestion and bettered the error message, added test, and fixed the doc.

"Better error message" -> without my fix, repeat('a', times='cutecat') will throw "an integer is required". I make it as such it will throw "times must be integer or None."