How did you get your first cat?

How did you get your first cat?

  • I grew up with cats. My family always had them

    Votes: 14 32.6%
  • One showed up on the doorstep and adopted me

    Votes: 7 16.3%
  • A shelter or rescue

    Votes: 11 25.6%
  • A breeder

    Votes: 1 2.3%
  • Family, friends, neighbors

    Votes: 6 14.0%
  • Other

    Votes: 4 9.3%

  • Total voters
    43

kookycats

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We had just bought our first house.  A friend of ours brought Boots over the day before we physically moved into the house.  So he was a house gift.     He was a little orange kitty that our friend had gotten from someone who had a litter of kittens.    So Boots actually lived in the house before we did!    I told his story recently -- he lived for 17 years and we eventually lost him to kidney disease.     He was a wonderful kitty and paved the way for the rest of our cat family -- BJ (Boots Jr.), Ali,  and now Tony, Angel and Tippytoes.  
 

catkiki

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Somewhere in the US
Our family always had cats. I remember at one point, we had over 15 cats/kittens! We lived on a half acre and they roamed free. My first cat was a polydactile named Paws. I don't really remember her except that she was black. The first kitten that was all mine was a little tiger boy I got in second grade. We named him Tarzan because he would run across the floor and take a flying leap at the curtains and swing, swing, swing!!! We lost him at age 15 or so due to a big dog that attacked him in our yard. He was too fat to run away. We had 2 mama cats that were mother/daughter. They both had kittens on the same day. Bones, a  long haired pure black cat except for a small white spot had 5 kittens on my oldest brother's bed. Cotton, long haired white pointed cat who was Bones's daughter had 6 kittens that same night on my other brother's bed!  (Hmmm an almost pure black cat with green eyes having an almost pure white kitten with blue eyes) They pooled the kittens together and nursed each other kittens. We didn't know which kitten belonged to which mama. But pity the poor dog that ventured into our yard when the mamas where there. We actually saw one dog that came onto our yard who tried to climb a tree to get away from those angry mama cats.

It is a good thing that DH has always loved cats too. The longest we went without a cat was 3 months, I think.
 
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-_aj_-

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North East England
I bought both of mine! both when they were 6 weeks old.....before tcs i knew nothing real;ly of shelters/rescues/fostering i bought them through a friend
 

gemlady

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Dec 5, 2004
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SW Indiana
The cat was here before me and he and the dog were my personal guardians. The first cat I have clear memories of is Tom TInker. My paternal grandmother found him in her alley and brought him to me. He was a mouser extraordinaire and saved the family one night when the coal furnace malfunctioned and smoke started filling the house. He kept tapping Mom's arm until she woke and saw the layer of smoke just above her face. :rbheart::rbheart:
 

Ms. Freya

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My very first cat, Buddy, joined the family from the Humane society when I was 4...unfortunately I was diagnosed with severe allergies to cats and borderline asthma by the time I was 5 and my parents had to re-home Buddy with some family friends (he lived with them until he passed away at 16).

Secretly I always blamed myself for him having to leave, though, and avoided cats for most of my life. Even Alex and Tiffany, my parents cats were considered barn cats (who spent an awful lot of time in the house
) and I tried my best to avoid attachment. Of course it all broke down when Mike and I bought our first house. Freya, (skinny, maybe 6 months old and having recently lost one heck of a fight) had been living under the back porch and decided to move inside and declare it our job to care for her. The rest is history.
 
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3catsn1dog

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Trapped in the catroom! ;o)
When I was in first or second grade, my parents gave us two kittens, Fluff and Puff. They were strictly to be outside cats; Mom didn't want them in the house and, of course, one died from wounds from a cat fight and the other was hit by a car. We had cats on and off while we were growing up (indoor-outdoor cats) and they never lived very long; they would die or disappear.

It wasn't until I got married that we had cats in the house that remained indoor cats. Peanut Butter, an orange and white tiger, was our first kitty who lived with us. After he passed away, it was several years til Hydrox came to live with us as a little six-week old kitten. And from then on, there have always been cats in the house.

But if somebody would have told us 20 years ago, that there would someday be seven cats living with us in the house, I would have said, flat-out, that they were crazy.

Ironically, both my brother and sister have had multi-cat households, too. At one time, my brother and SIL shared their home with five cats, all strictly indoor. Sadly, they lost their last kitty to old age several months ago; they had been going to PetSmart to look at kitties, but have now decided to wait and see if another kitten decides to find its way to us again (that's how we got Tabby and then little Lily found her way to us a couple months ago). If another kitten comes here, they will take it....we are at our limit. And my sister and BIL have four cats, including little Liam, who is now a cherished member of their family. So even though, we had strictly outdoor cats when we were living at home, once we all got married, cats became an important part of our families.
They can come over to my farm and pick a kitty...:)

We always had cats growing up. My mom grew up with a zoo and it has just kinda been passed down to all of us but me, my brother and sister kinda picked and chose if we were cat or dog people. Im the only die hard cat person. I had one cat that was mine all mine growing up that I got from a friends house and hid from my mom for almost a month till she figured out why I wouldnt let her in my room lol. Hercules was mine and Dfs first cat together that we got off my moms farm and brought inside and since him...its become a zoo. 5 cats and a dog.
 

speakhandsforme

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Sep 11, 2011
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Chattanooga, TN
When I was 5 or so, my parents woke me up and brought me out into the backyard one cold winter morning to see something. Turns out a feral/stray mama cat had had her kittens in the battery compartment of our boat, where it was warm from the electricity.

We put the kittens in a box with a towel right next to the boat, and the mama cat came back and got all but one of them, a little black girl. After a day by herself in the box (the cold snap had passed IIRC) we decided mama cat wasn't coming back for her, and we took her in.

My mom bottle-fed her dried reconstituted milk until she got old enough to eat kitten food, and my sister (3 at the time) named her Princess, while I named her Lizard because she looked like she had a lizard tongue when she was drinking her water. :lol3:

We loved that kitten for a few months. we even drug her into the bathtub with us so she could "swim"... we probably scarred her for life, but I was just a little kid and I didn't know any better.

Then, one day, my mom had to take my sister to a doctor's appointment. Princess/Lizard was an indoor/outdoor cat, and she liked to sit in the tire wells of my mom's car. My mom was running late and didn't check the tires for Princess/Lizard before she pulled out... and poor little kitty got run over in our own driveway. :(

My neighbor drove by and saw the mess in the driveway, scraped it up into a paper bag, and brought it to my grandmother and me at her house (2 houses down from my parents') where she babysat me every day. We buried her in the backyard, and she's still there today. :heart3:

Lizard instilled in me a great love of cats, and even though I wanted one very badly, I couldn't have one for many years. But I finally got Bootsy and Kramer in August when I first moved into my very own apartment, and I am now a happy girl. :)
 

feralvr

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Dec 30, 2010
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I remember this very well. And surprisingly so, because I don't remember much from my childhood :lol2:. I was four years old and there was a golf course across the street from our house. My younger brother and I were playing at the end of the driveway and a kitty scurried from under the fence to the golf course and ran across the street to us. I scooped up the kitty and brought him inside. Mom let us keep the kitty. We named him Puff. He actually looked a lot like my Wendall - :heart3: :love:
 
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blueorchid

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Oct 13, 2011
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Georgia, USA
I rescued my very first kitten from the shelter in August 11, 2011. She was a birthday present from my husband. We named her Emma and she lived 3 weeks before passing away of FIP. On September 10, 2011 we adopted Gracie from the same shelter and she is the best kitten ever :D

 

lokilove

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Oct 13, 2011
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Southern Alberta
I got my first kitten when I was 7. I begged and begged for a puppy but had to settle for a cat. I named her Whiskers (cause it's original =P) but that was too hard to say over and over so she became Whiskey. She was a great cat. Tolerant of children. She loved her buddy the bunny named Joe. She was afraid of the quail in the back yard. She was smart as heck and always greeted me when I came home from school. She knew a few commands like home (back door), chair (she would sit on a little cat sized chair) and various other silly tricks. She played like a kitten all her life. When my sister finally left home she would have been 13 years old. Not long after that due to divorce etc. my mother gave away my beautiful girl without telling me. I found out about 3 months after the fact. I cried so hard and still do when I think about her. I miss her so much and don't even know if she's alive and well. My mom feels guilty and said she gave her away because she threw up too much. TCS has taught me so much and it was probably due to the fact that she was fed waaaaaaaay too much grain all her life. I wish I could go back and change things. I wish she had lived out her days with the only family she knew.

Whiskey, I'll never forget you
 
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thembcat

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Sep 8, 2011
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Kansas
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.
 

northernglow

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Finland
Mom never let me have any pets when I was a kid. However my step dad of the time had a purebred blue Persian called Herakles which I of course treated like he was mine. The kitty had to live in my step dad's house because mom wouldn't let the cat in our house, so I spent a lot time in my step dad's house. Herakles was 5 years older than me, so yes, he's long gone.. He did live to be 19.

After that I had to wait until I got my own place so I was able to get my first own cat. At least I had years to 'study' my animal and breed choice before I officially became a cat owner. I have only had pedigreed cats. Many of my friends and relatives had moggies (I'm originally from a small town and there were some farms which usually means there are cats too), but they seemed to have all kinds of problems (which I now know why: high inbreeding, too early weaning, crappy food). I wanted to avoid that and wanted to know 'what I'm getting' so I ended up getting a cat from a breeder who I found from the breed club's website.
 
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