Meet the Cats
There have always been pets in my life. When I was a kid, we had dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, fish, and probably a few other things I have forgotten about. But, in my adult life, there has always been at least one cat.
Mickey was the first cat after I graduated from college and was living on my own. He is the only Siamese I have ever had. I loved him dearly, but once was enough. To say that Siamese have a strong personality is an understatement. But he was smart. He figured out how to open every cabinet and drawer in the house. He is the only cat I have ever known to like V-8 juice. And he wanted his water fresh out of the faucet. He would sit beside the bathroom sink and wait for me to turn on the water for him.
There have been more than a dozen cats since Mickey in the last 35 years. Sometimes I had only one, but usually there were at least two. Nearly all of them were strays that wandered in or kittens that friends were giving away.
Currently, I have four cats. All of them were from a group of female cats that were abandoned one weekend in the late fall of 1992 at the school where I used to teach. There were about a dozen in all. There were four or five kittens, two older juvenile cats, and the rest were adults. We managed to catch all but one of the kittens and find homes for them. I ended up with four, two kittens and the two juveniles. I talked my parents into taking the two juveniles. They had been petless for about a year, so it wasn't a hard sell.
You will notice that all four of these cats have similar coloring. I think they are probably sisters or maybe cousins. The vet thought the older two were about 10 months old and the kittens about three months when I first got them.
Bitsy was the runt of the kittens. She was so small when I first got her that she easily fit into one hand. She is still a small cat, about two-thirds the size of the others. But she doesn't let her size get in her way. She stands up for herself.
For the first few years after we moved out into the country, she would go off on a journey about once a month. I wouldn't see her for a week or more. I never knew where she went, but she would always come back healthy and full of herself. She bounced in the door as if to say, "Hey, Mom, I'm home!" She was ready for lots of laptime. It has been over a year since she went on one of her jaunts, so I guess she has retired from the hobo life.
Tootsie was given her name by one of the students "because she has the colors of a Tootsie Roll." She was one of the kittens and is now the largest of the four cats. She is very broad-shouldered and very heavy, but not fat. She is my shadow. If I walk down into the woods, she follows. She is always my supervisor when I work in the yard. She even stays in the bathroom when I shower. She does let me run the vacuum by myself though.
Pretty Cat, aka PC, was one of the juvenile cats that my parents took. She and Char came to live with me after my father's death in 2000. My mother could no longer keep the cats after she moved. PC got along with my two cats right from the beginning. She is very vocal and always tells me her opinion about the situation, especially if she thinks my computer time is taking up her laptime.
My parents lived in the city and only let the cats out into the yard during the day. Both cats have enjoyed moving to the country. The first few months they were here, they went out nearly ever night. Nighttime hunting was a real adventure.
Charlotte, aka Char, has had the most difficult time since the move. Char did not like having two more cats around. She did a lot of hissing and spitting for months. She and Bitsy had an especially hard time adjusting to each other. Even now, they tolerate each other at best.
Char has gotten more loving over time. She will actually seek me out now for laptime and head scratches or curl up on the bed with me when I am reading. I used to call her "Queen Charlotte", but she is now "Miz Charlotte" since she has decided the rest of us are not so bad after all. She would still prefer to be an only cat.