Meet my Kitties

I need to start out by telling you that I absolutely ADORE cats. All of them. I would adopt an entire houseful if my husband wouldn’t divorce me because of it. I envision myself as a very old lady sharing my dinner on pie plates with about 70 indoor cats. Or perhaps it is they who are sharing their dinner with me. I guess that will depend upon my finances in my old age, now won’t it?

Our current menagerie consists of 5 (soon to be 6) indoor felines. Their personalities are as diverse as their coloring. It seems that we collect weirdoes and oddballs, but they are the coolest cats ever. They come when we call them. They hang with us wherever we happen to be in the house. Sometimes I have 3 on the chair with me--both armrests and back. Sometimes they try to help me computerize by lying on my forearms as I type.

Meep: he actually has a number of names. “Meep” came from a little sound he used to make as a kitten. That morphed into “Mi Pasa” (an offshoot of “Mi casa,” obviously), which morphed into “Pasa.” We vacillate between “Meep,” “Pasa,” and "Pas-Pas"all of to which he readily responds.

He is a Siamese mix and, as such, retains the distinctive markings, blue eyes and vocalizations. But rather than being small-boned and delicate, he is friggin’ HUGE! His paws are bigger than silver dollars. When he stretches on the floor, he is more than 3 feet long from the tips of his front paws to the tips of his tail and hind paws. His weight is almost a hefty 20 lbs. Yeah, I know that there are larger cats out there, but he is the biggest one WE have ever had. He is also totally cool.

He can open doors by reaching up and pulling down the handle. He is a “hunter;” dragging 2-3 lb. packages of meat up and out of the kitchen sink, through the house and up into the master bedroom to present us with his “kill.” Of course, he always takes a chunk out of it first. Royally fucks up the carpeting, lemme tell ya.

For his size, he is actually a big baby. He loves to do the “kitty 2 step” in the crook of my neck. He first nuzzles, sticking his nose in my ear so that I hear his breathing, and 2 steps the pillow. Purring, he is trance-like until one of the other cats sticks her nose in his butt. He huffs off in righteous indignation, vocalizing to anyone within earshot as he streaks off the bed. The usual culprit is Boots, the terrorist to whom you will be shortly introduced.

The next 3 cats were adopted at the same time from an animal shelter we found on http://www.petfinder.org . We went with the idea of getting 1, maybe 2 cats. We couldn’t leave the 3rd behind, since she had lived in that cage for 6 months already.

Cleo: is a tabby with the most exquisite green eyes I have ever seen. She looked positively regal, hence the name “Cleo.” She also goes by “Cleophus,” “Cleefie” and “Fifi.” Unlike a certain psychic friend, this cat is nothing special in the intuition/scam department. In fact, she is as dumb as a stump which has earned her yet another nickname: “Stumpy.”

She will lie around the house, typically in any path used for foot traffic. She will lie behind me when I cook (and no, it does NOT get her treats when I step on her). That is typical cat behavior, I know. But what makes Cleo different is that she n-e-v-e-r moves when you accidentally kick or step on her. You will feel guts squish and see her intestines pop out of her asshole before she will even think about getting the hell out of the way. The only thing she will do is give you a surprised-sounding “Bleh-eh-EH?” in the form of a Scooby-Doo question. Rut-ro, Raggy! A real lap cat, she turned out to be the mother of the 2nd of the 3 cats we adopted.

Luna: Where oh where do I start with this piece of work? Oh God, she is a tortoiseshell, or “torti,” cat. You cat lovers know what I am talking about. A fellow blogger at http://catoutloud.blogspot.com described this breed best: “Tortis are totally off the wall. Too smart by half, and the other half is on hallucinogenics. They are often a challenge to tame. There apparently has actually been research linking the legendary torti attitude to the torti coat…. If you can only have one cat, and you want intellectual stimulation plus something to laugh at, and you aren't offended if your cat loves you today and snubs you tomorrow---in return for watching her chase her tail while hanging by her stomach over a ladderback chair---get a torti.”

She started out rowdy as hell, initially earning the name “Taz.” Then my son (who was probably 7 at the time) decided to dress her up and keep her in his room as he played “family.” This caused her to freak out and now all she does is hide under my bed from “THE BOYYY!” When I am home, she sits near me or on me. When I am in bed, she sleeps the same way. Of all family members, she loves me best. She is a pain in the ass and the subject of a previous post on a “Catastophe,” which is humorous reading if you like stories about flying cat piss.

I purposely left a 7-foot ladder set up in my room after painting because she has such a blast zooming up and down, and hanging over the part that holds a paint tray. I keep waiting for her to tip that part and fall, but she never does. She doesn’t seem to know why I can touch her belly when she is laying on that tray shelf. She is nuts.

Callie: A calico, she is a “special needs” cat. Personally, I thought she was one of the ugliest cats I had ever seen, with fur that looked like someone had colored it by touching her with different colored paintbrushes. When we selected the other two, my husband noticed her affectionately rubbing on her cage. She adored rubbing any fingers you could stick through the cage door. She was the sweetest little girl.

We asked what made her a “special needs” cat. Nobody knew the reason, but she shakes uncontrollably. Her rear legs are weak and don’t look as if they can support her skinny body and she can’t jump up at all. Her rear feet point outward; her hind end resembles a plant stand in this respect. There is no muscle mass in her hind area, her bony spine feels like a stegosaurus to the touch and her hips are very narrow with bony protrusions. Since there was no problem with bowel or bladder control, we took her home too.

Her previous owner was in a wheelchair and now in a nursing home. Callie had lived in that cage in the shelter for 1/3 of her life. While she was bold & affectionate through the cage door, she was agoraphobic when we took her out of the carrier. She immediately bolted under a chair, where she stayed for the next 2 weeks. She wouldn’t let anyone touch her.

We just let her “be.” When she would pass close by, we would lightly give her 1 stroke down her back. This went on for months. She finally let my daughter gently touch her after about 6 months. The rest of us had to wait almost a year. She would freak out if there was more than 1 hand at a time touching her. Her preferred way of getting close to you was to come into the bathroom as you sat on the toilet. She would stay just out of your reach, as if she was used to being touched with a cane from the distance of a wheelchair.

Callie also has what I call “monkey paws.” Her front paws resemble a monkey’s, and she has the ability to grasp and pull herself up rather than climbing like a typical cat might. Her front half is very buff since the only way she can get up on anything is by climbing. This is absolute HELL on our leather furniture, BTW. Finally, she got used to getting stroked with 1 hand and then 2. She still will not let anyone pick her up, but that’s okay. She has blossomed into an attention whore who will poke your waist with 1 claw if you sit at the dinner table and ignore her.

Boots: Also known as “Bootcita,” “Bootita” and “Booty-boo.” She is a tuxedo cat with a little Hitler mustache, which also earned her the nicknames “Ah-dolf” and “Dolphie.” Appropriately, she is the terrorist of the group. She was a farm kitten with a hard-scrabble life. A tiny thing, she was pushed away from the food dishes by the other farm cats. She regularly felt the love when they’d pop her on the top of her head. The first time I laid eyes on her, she was looking up at me with dreamy, half-lidded eyes and two-stepping in place. We knew we were taking her home with us.

She is best described as short and squat. Upon discovering an endless food supply here, she now resembles a short, stout, over-inflated soccer ball with 4 toothpicks for legs. She also has the biggest asshole I have ever seen on a cat! It appears human-sized and totally out of place on her. When she turns around & sticks her ass in my face, I sweetly talk to her in a sing-song voice and tell her, “Booty has the biggest butthole EVER!” She loves it, she purrs like crazy.

When the middle 3 cats came on the scene, Meep was totally out of sorts. He’d been King Shit for so long that he became depressed. He stopped eating and started into liver failure. A costly trip to the vet managed to save him and turn him around. But he never got beyond snubbing these 3, or demonstrating his major asshole-ness by growling and hissing at them whenever he had the chance. Be careful what you wish for, Meep. You just might get it.

The other 3 have avoided him like the plague. Now when he wants to play, it is they who snub him. I mean, who needs that asshole? Enter little Boots.

The one who routinely got her ass kicked on the farm, came into our home and kicked some serious Meep-ass. He didn’t know what hit him. He was about 3 times her size and totally surprised when she kicked his ass as he growled to show her who was boss. He started giving her a wide berth, and didn’t harass her. HAH! That didn’t stop her from harassing HIM!

And in a sweet little twist on feline ass-sniffing as greeting, Boots would nip the back of their thighs when they offered her an ass to sniff. So instead of, “Hey! Hi, how ya doin’?” They’d be all “Hey, hi—YOUCH-what the FUCK?” At least they were smart enough to make sure she was never behind them again. Who said cats are dumb?