We never planned on having a house full of cats. It just happened. As Hemingway said, “One cat leads to another”. And that’s very true. A cat lover can’t resist, “just one more” cat.
As a child, I was around cats all the time. My grandmother had a gorgeous Persian female that I just adored. Every time she had kittens, I’d want one. However, our family moved around a lot, so that just wasn’t feasible. I had to content myself with enjoying the kittens at her house before they left for new homes. But I looked forward to the day when I had my own home and could have my very own cat.
After I was grown and married, we decided to have children right away, so I put the idea of a pet on hold. Then one summer when my children were one and three years old, a neighbor’s cat had kittens. The mother was a Siamese; the father was an ’alley cat’. So the kittens ended up looking like alley cats but sounding like Siamese. That was quite a combination.
The kitten I picked out was a tiny black female. I named her Baby. She had a tiny white spot on her throat, but otherwise, she was pure black. She was about eight weeks old when I got her.
Baby was the sweetest kitten. She loved sitting on my lap. At night, she would sleep next to my pillow. And she loved having the kids play with her. I always say that Baby grew up with my kids. They could practically sit on her and she didn’t mind. She never once scratched or tried to hurt them. As she got older, I learned that if she tired of playing with me--not the kids, mind you, only me--she would gently put her teeth on my hand or arm, to warn me to leave her alone. But she never actually bit anyone.
When we moved into our new home in 1983, Baby decided she loved the fireplace. She’d curl up in front of the hearth and nap for hours. Sometimes, when I’d reach down to pet her, I thought her fur was overly warm--but she refused to move away from there. My husband or I would sit down next to her and pet her--until we decided it was too warm for us to stay there.
At first, Baby was considered ‘my’ cat; but after a while, she’d jump up on anyone’s lap the minute you’d sit down. She’d sleep on the bed next to one of us, usually beside my pillow. In winter, she’d slip underneath the blanket and sleep by my feet. I always wondered how she could breathe under there; but she seemed perfectly content. She seemed to really enjoy the warmth of the waterbed.
For years, Baby was our only pet. Oh, we had kittens come and go over the years: being soft-hearted, every time I’d find a stray, I’d want to keep it. But for various reasons, I always ended up finding homes for the strays. And by then, we were spoiled--we had gotten used to having an adult cat and didn’t really want to start over with a kitten. Or so we thought.
In May of 1984, we decided to get a second cat. My husband said I could get one ‘for Mother’s Day’. So we went to the local Humane Society to see what was available. I wasn’t looking for a kitten--and I certainly wasn’t looking for a male cat; long before, I had decided that female cats made the best pets. (I know…totally illogical!) But one look at this adorable gray kitten with the prettiest blue-green eyes changed my mind.
So we brought home two-month-old Muffy. He was officially named Muffitt--after a character in my kids’ favorite tv show at the time, Battlestar Galactica; but we always called him Muffy or Muff. He was very friendly; Baby adopted him at once.
Muffy soon dwarfed Baby--she was never more than six pounds in her life, while he soon grew to almost twelve pounds. He went from being able to fit inside a Puffs tissue box to filling up a cardboard box bigger than one square foot.
For a long time, Baby and Muffy were our family pets and all was fine. However, having read that the average life span of a cat was about seventeen to twenty years, I started preparing myself to lose Baby about the time she turned seventeen years old. However, she reached twenty-one years and seemed to be doing just fine.
But one morning in late July of 1992, two months after Baby’s twenty-first birthday, my husband woke me early to tell me that she was acting strange. I got up and sat down on the couch with her. Somehow, I knew we were losing her. I held her for the next two hours, petting her, trying to be of some comfort to her. I hope she understood that. Eventually my husband said something to the effect that she was gone. I knew that; I just didn’t want to accept it yet. I held her for another few minutes, then I gently put her down.
At first, I didn't want to get another cat. Obviously, Baby could not be ‘replaced’. But after a while, Muffy seemed so lonely that we decided to go back to the Humane Society and see about getting another cat. This time I went alone.
I decided to look for an older, mature cat. I found Tasha. She was two years old, a lovely ticked tabby; she’s two-thirds white, with patches of black, brown, and gray. You don’t really see the brown till you ruffle her fur or brush her. Then you see lots of brown.
At first, Tasha was rather skittish. I’d wanted a ‘lap cat’; but she didn’t really like being held. It took a lot of patience, but by holding her for a minute or so at first, then slowly lengthening that by a few minutes at a time, she got used to being held. Eventually, she decided she liked sitting on my lap. Now, she’ll jump up on my lap and sit for hours.
Tasha and Muffy got along very well together. Again, we were a happy two cat household. Then in early 1994, we learned that Muffy had a terminal illness. This time, I thought it would be best to get another cat before we lost Muffy. Somehow, I thought maybe it would help. But, of course, it didn’t.
Anyway, both my husband and I went to the Humane Society this time. My husband immediately fell in love with this lovely, two-year-old white female cat, who had medium length, silky hair and blue eyes. So we brought home Snowball.
Snowball likes to jump up on our laps every time we sit down. She likes to sit on my husband’s legs as he leans back in the recliner. In the mornings, she likes to paw at the blanket or sheet to get my attention. If I nap on my right side I might wake up to find her laying on my left side, with her paws & face hanging over my shoulder. She's also very playful; she's the only one of our cats who likes to play with toys. If she feels she’s being neglected, I’ll hear her ’crying mournfully’; when I look up, she’ll have her favorite toy in her mouth. Then she promptly drops it and waits for me to throw it for her to catch.
When we first got Snowball, she was very shy; it took her a while to get used to being around the other cats. I had to fix her a separate small bowl of food, since she was too timid to eat when Tasha did. She is still like that at mealtimes. She’ll hang back and let the others eat first.
By that time, however, Muffy had nearly no appetite at all. He quickly lost weight, going down to five pounds. So to get him to eat, I tried every kind of gourmet food I could find. Nothing worked. We had Muff for two more months after his diagnosis. I’d sit with him for hours, petting him--just being with him.
Every time I looked at him, I cried. I knew there was nothing we could do; but still, it wasn’t easy. On Mother’s Day in 1998, Muffy died. As with Baby, I was with him till the end. He had gotten to the point where he just didn’t have the energy to move. So I sat down on the carpet beside him and petted him. And then I just sat there a few more minutes before I got up to tell my husband he was gone.
Earlier that afternoon, I had told him I knew it was near the end, so he had already started preparing a final resting place, near where Baby is buried. It seemed fitting that they be near each other. And it was also fitting that Muffy died on Mother’s Day…since I had gotten him ’for’ Mother’s Day back in 1984.
So that left us with Tasha and Snowball. And that probably would have been the ‘appropriate’ number of cats to have. However, in June of 2000, I decided I’d like to have another cat. So I went to the Humane Society once again.
At first, they showed me an older cat, which is what I thought I was looking for; but that one just didn’t seem friendly to me. So then they brought me a nine-month-old tabby kitten. When the shelter manager handed me the kitten, she immediately put her paws around my neck and snuggled her head under my chin. I was totally lost, even though I really hadn’t planned on getting such a young cat.
I named her Sammi. Sammi is the most friendly, affectionate cat I’ve ever seen. Every time I sit down, she jump up on my lap and puts her paws around my neck. She even naps with me--with her paw curled around my neck, just like a child. Sammi is now four and a half years old and still snuggles like that. And she’s still just as frisky as she was when we got her. I have a feeling she’s one of those ’frisky’ cats who never settles down--even when she’s twenty years old.
Well, that would have rounded out our cat family just fine. However, in the summer of 2000 we had an unexpected addition to our family. A neighbor down the street was moving and had decided not to take their cat with them; they were going to take him to the Humane Society. Well, my husband thought that cat--an eighteen-month-old male cream colored purebred Persian--was the most beautiful cat he’d ever seen. So we took him in.
We called him Fluffy--or Fluff--after the lion of the same color in the old Tony Randall movie of the same name. He was adorable. He was totally laid back and got along great with the other cats. However, being a Persian, he needed a lot of grooming--as does Snowball, actually. So that kept me pretty busy at times. I even learned to ‘thin’ his hair to keep him from getting matted hair balls. Fluffy was more of a man’s cat, I guess. He would follow my husband from room to room. He would lay on the bed or the couch next to my husband. Oh, he also would lay next to me as well; but my husband was the one he would follow around the house.
We truly loved Fluff. We had him for almost a year and a half. Unfortunately, we learned that it was a bit too costly to keep four cats. So when my sister found someone who wanted Fluff, we reluctantly gave him up. From what we hear, that family totally adores him--and he’s being spoiled rotten as well as being very well taken care of.
So now we’re back to three cats again. Which is really all we need. Between keeping them healthy, fed, groomed, and loved--they keep us pretty busy.
UPDATE: In September of 2007, Tasha started going downhill. The last week, she stopped eating…seemed to have no energy. She spent most of that last week laying on this rectangular footstool that was in front of the small table with the fountain. She’d always loved drinking from that fountain, so I kept it going…and she’d stand up long enough to get a drink before laying back down. I called our vet, took her in…& they agreed that it was time to let her go. At the age of seventeen, Tasha was gone. I really miss her. Those of you who have been to the Group called Pet Memorials…she’s shown in the gallery there.
So now we have Sammi and Snowball. You can see their photos in my gallery. Sammi is healthy and still frisky at age nine.
Snowball has a few medical problems. For now, she’s okay; but I have no idea how much longer we’ll have her with us. We’re just loving her and caring for her--and taking it one day at a time. That’s all you can ever do.
