The Cats

Tom was my baby. Well more of my mom's. I picked her out when I was four. She looked black with a little cream stripe on her nose. Not the cutest kitten, my parents tell me. But I insisted on her and then naming the little girl, Tom. From Tom and Jerry. She turned out to be a beautiful tortoiseshell as she grew up into an adult. I don't remember much of the years when she was young. She did have this yellow crocheted bird that she would fetch. She couldn't let you do anything on the couch either. She would crawl between me and a book or lay on the laptop. She had this way of demanding things, either by stomping her feet near her food dish or tapping your arm while you sat on the couch eating something. When she got to be seventeen, arthritic and blind, she got everything she wanted. Makes up for how we never remembered her birthday until a couple days after it. Canned food every morning and all the snuggles she asked for. She passed away in her sleep. Mom and I got matching tattoos of a drawing of mine that showed Tom at her best.

Maui was a mistake. Oh yeah, I'll admit it. He was a failed attempt at fostering. His parents and two of his siblings had been adopted out. But then his brother and him got sick from coccidia, an intestinal parasite. We lost his brother to it. Maui pulled through. He somehow then got stuck. Stuck at our house, much to my dad's displeasure. Not sue how it happened but he's here. A heavy siamese mix with a bipolar attitude. And he can be quite dumb. There are times he'll give you this meow-pur demanding pets but the next moment he'll be threatening to slap you. He also can't walk in a straight line.

Princess has the most interesting story. She was a feral cat living behind my grandparents house. She had been captured, vaccinated, and fixed by Heaven Can Wait before being released again. She then suffered a tragedy. Somehow her tail had been ripped off, we're guessing during a fight with something. But it was a bad wound. We had to catch her before she died of an infection. So taking a feral cat trap, I tossed all sorts of bait in there. Canned cat food worked to catch some of the colony but not the one I wanted. Ham, hot dogs, eggs? I tried everything. And then decided to try cheese. I was running out of ideas. With the cheese, cats began coming out of the woodwork. Including Princess. Grandma had already named her Princess even as a feral cat. Once captured she was taken to the vet to finish the amputation. We acknoledged this was a cat that we would probably never be able to touch, but couldn't let her go again. She lived in my closet while finishing antibiotics. Then spend a year confined to my room. One vet visit to work with some issues, we kept her in the downstairs bathroom for medication. Out of nowhere, she decided my mom was incredible. Princess would crawl into my mom's lap and be pet. Mom probably regrets that Princess chose her cause now Princess can't get enough of her. No matter what time of night, if mom moves, that must mean she's awake and needs to pet Princess. Princess also has a fun issue. Demented Easter Bunny. At first, she dropped hard little balls of poo everywhere. Now those were kinda fun to kick at eachother. But after several trips to the vet visit with no results, we finally went to Dr. Mason at the Veterinary Specialty Center. Her colon had lost muscle tone and was removed. Downfall, now her poo droppings are like sticky tar poo. Not so much fun to kick...