Feline Friday: To All the Cats I've Loved Before

Sarah is hosting a special Feline Friday over at her blog today. She's asked us to post about all kitties past and present. I had quite a time digging through the archives. It was necessary to go pre-digital, and that was a trek back through quite a lot of time.

Mike and I married in May of 1975, and we moved to Phoenix in September of that year. I'd grown up with dogs, although I'm a born cat lover. My mother was pretty seriously asthmatic. She had a bad allergy to cats, and so we could never have them when I was growing up. When Mike and I moved to Phoenix, it was only a few months before we got our first kitty at the humane society...a long-haired orange ball of fluff kitten. We were told she was female, and we named her "Bethany." We happened to be driving on Bethany Home Road, so what the heck? We've never been very imaginative with our names.

So within a few weeks, we became suspicious that Bethany was not a female. A check with a vet confirmed our suspicions. Bethany was already answering to "Bethany," and so we started calling her...um, him..."Benny." Over time, the name was lengthened to its full potential of Benjamin. He was a great first cat...smart as a whip, and very sociable. He was our first child, but when our actual children came along, he was so good with them. Very patient. We called him the proud cat with the golden tail.

While we were in Phoenix, a stray showed up at our door. We started feeding her, and eventually, soft headed hearted people that we are, we let her in to live with us in her forever home. She was a tiny little thing, and we called her "Peanut." She was a pretty little girl, and she and Benjamin became fast friends.

Both kitties moved to Oregon with us in 1978. There were a few other cats in between, but I couldn't find any pictures of them. We had Tommy...literally, a barn cat...born in a barn across the way from us. We were one cat down in our numbers, and so we took one of the kittens. Tommy was a cat who loved snow, and it was fun to watch him romp around in it when it fell. Also, there was our Katie cat...a pretty calico. I can't believe I don't have pictures of either one. If they exist, I couldn't find them.

There was also sweet Willy. He came from a pet store, and he was too young to be away from his mother. I'm told that removing a cat from its mother too soon results in a dumb cat. That would be our Willy. He had the sweetest disposition, but he was dumb as a stump. We loved him anyway.

One of our funniest Thanksgiving stories comes from our Willy. He was such a tiny kitten, and I gave him some turkey giblets, as I always do every year for the cats living with us. Some cats love them, some turn up their noses. Willy loved them. He hung around in the kitchen all day long waiting for his giblets. But as a tiny kitten, he ate so much and his belly got too big, and he fell over. We tried pushing him away from the dish, but he grrrrrrrrrrred at us. If you've ever heard a little tiny kitten grrrrrrr like a dog, then you know it's pretty darned funny.

He never got over his need to suckle, and he liked to lie on the back of the couch behind my head and suck on my hair. He also liked to suck the buttons of a shirt.

We had the two cats...Tommy and Willy...and Mike was dead set against getting a third one. But I saw this pretty little girl in a pet store. She was the cutest kitten I'd ever seen...and I've seen a few. So I took Mike down just to see her, and he too was smitten. We had to bring her home. It was near Christmas, and we called her Krissy...as in "Krissymas."

She was the original of the Three Cats brought to the Three Cats Ranch when we moved here. She remains our longest-living cat. We had to put her down when she developed kidney disease at the age of 19. Of all our cats, she was the biggest "talker," and the cat with the most "Catitude." I'm told both are a trait of torties.

We also had this little cutie. Her name was Tabby. We had her about a year when she disappeared in broad daylight. There was a group of young people living next door to us. The day she disappeared was a day they had a raucous party, and we've always thought someone stole her. We called her Tabby. We had a housekeeper at the time, and our housekeeper was in love with Tabby. Several visits went by before I had the heart to tell her Tabby had disappeared.

When we knew we were moving to the Three Cats Ranch, we had just Krissy, but we'd committed to taking in a couple of stray kittens from a friend once we got settled in our new place. Enter cats two and three of the herd at the Three Cats Ranch...George and Gracie. They were littermates, and they were tight.

George was the sweetest cat, and he was much-written-about when I first started this blog. It's a little known fact that he was a superhero crimefighter who went by the name of Captain Cat-tastic. He even wrote a blog for a while until his crime-fighting duties got to be too much for him.

He used to go for walks in the woods with me. Sadly, he had an autoimmune disorder known as feline pemphigus. It caused our sweet boy to itch and scratch bloody sores on himself. We were able to control the disease with steroids for a good portion of his life. Eventually, however, his condition worsened, and the steroids stopped working. We had him for nine years, but he died far too young. He had a good life with us, but the pemphigus made him miserable. He deserved a life with less pain.

Pretty Gracie was with us for longer.

She won a photography contest with this next image. The details of the contest escape me now, but she won by popular vote.

She was a shy cat, timid, and she was one of the few cats we've had who would have been happy to be an indoor-only kitty. When George, Krissy, and I went for walks, Gracie stayed near the house and watched us as we went.

When we lost George, we brought home this little squirt. It's hard to believe he was ever that small.

He was a rambunctious kitten...the first kitten we'd had since Krissy came home with us. He may actually have cured us of kittens.

Gracie's nose was definitely out of joint, but she made up to him eventually.

When Gracie died, he seemed utterly stricken.

We didn't wait long before bringing home another cat...Maggie, who was about a year old when we rescued her from a local shelter. Pretty Maggie. We're still so sorry remembering Maggie. We had her only a few short months when a predator got her. If you've been reading for a while, then you probably remember when that happened.

It was because of Maggie that we built the catio for Smitty and whatever kitties come next.

We still let the kitties out in the mornings, but their time outside is limited. The rest of the day and night, they're confined to their catio for safe-keeping. We've worked out a schedule that seems acceptable to them...by that I mean, there is no whining to go outside...and it makes us more comfortable that we're giving them a good balance between safety, exercise, and the freedom to explore that most cats crave.

So a few months after losing Maggie, we took in little Sadie.

She's part Manx, which accounts for her short tail.

Sadie was a nearly feral one-year-old (we're told) when she came to live with us. She was very anxious and easily over-stimulated. This next image is one of the first pictures I took of her when we brought her home. You can see her wide-eyed look of panic.

With lots of love and attention to routine, she's settled down significantly. She loves to sit on our quilt-covered laps, but she's still uncomfortable being held. She was in poor health when we brought her home with a bad infestation of intestinal parasites the took several rounds of worming and antibiotics to clear up. Her coat was coarse, but she's soft like velvet now.

It took a while for Himself to cede some territory to her, but they're fast friends now.

And good traveling companions.

Finally, in my wanderings through the pictures of time, I came across my grandcats. These two are Cricket and Clementine. They're Erik and Mae's kitties. This picture is over a year old, and they're bigger kitties now.

I've been working at getting better "big kitty" pictures of them so that I can make their pawtraits. These are the two pictures I have of them so far. This is Cricket.

They'll do, but I'd still like to get a better photo of shy Clementine. She makes herself scarce when we're around, and so it's been hard to get a good image of her. This is my best one so far, and it might have to do.

So there you go. I hope you've enjoyed this introduction to all the cats I've loved before. For more feline fun, head back to Sarah's special Feline Friday.