My family has always had cats. My dad grew up on a farm that had 4 house cats and 60 healthy barn cats so he was obviously a bit of a cat person to begin with so obviously when he moved out and eventually met my mother, he had cats still. Lets see, Crackers I think died a few a year after I was born, she was a barn cat that turned into a house cat and eventually had a litter of kittens. We kept one of the kittens which we named Valentine. I'm not sure what happened to her littermates, I think they were given to friends. I know we kept them til they were weened because we have old photos of them all. Valentine was the only cat that my family ever had that wasn't a stray or a rescue. After that was Patches, she was a stray that my dad brought in. The first cat I actually remember getting was Toonsit. She was a runt of a cat that gave birth to kittens one night in a basement window that was protected by a storm cover. Her mother moved the other kittens but left Toonsit behind. It was very cold and we couldn't bare to leave the tiny kitten more than a day alone in there so we brought her inside. So at this point we had 3 cats at once. We brought all of them with us when we moved from Iowa to Kansas. A year after living in Kansas, Tasja came to our door. My parents didn't want another cat so they let her stay in the camper that my dad was working on in our driveway. Then she got moved into the garage to take care of the mice in there...then a part time resident of my bedroom and then finally to a totally indoor cat LOL. They couldn't say no to her being in the house forever. Up to 4 cats at once. After 22-23 years of life, Valentine passed away then no more than a week later, my parents heard a kitten crying when that went out to get the morning paper. They traced the source of the crying to clear in the far end of our backyard behind our little shed and there was a little black kitten with a mouth as loud as a bullhorn. A couple years later Patches had to be put down after a long fight with cancer. Then a couple years after that Toonsit died due to a blood clot. Then Ghibli came along, he was found at my dad's work under a wooden palette. It was 50 degrees out and raining. Ghibli was so stiff my dad couldn't help but let my sister take him home. So right now they have Tajha for is around 15 years old, Yoda who is around 9, and Ghibli who is 5 or 6, so they have three cats right now.
That's the history of the cats of my lifetime while I lived with my parents. Now that I'm living in a place of my own, I have Chacho, a kitten I adopted from the local Humane Society.
