Where did your love for cats come from?

I grew up around cats too. We had King when I was a baby through 5th grade. We had Lucky and Pepper through my teen years. When I lived with my sister Kathleen she had Alexander. Maximillian (Max) is the only cat that I ever had by myself, as I have rented where pets were not allowed. I bought my house and my sister and friend talked me into adopting Max from the Humane Society. Adopting Max is one of the best things that I have ever done.

for me, maybe it was my living environment rather than my parents that influenced me to love cats more than dogs... my place has got a lot of strays and since young, i've been surrounded by many cats. I've grown to stroke them whenever i see them downstairs and eventually i found meow meow and boy boy which deepened my love for cats... something really wonderful was that my family also started to love cats and would stroke the strays downstairs the way i would when i was young...

Patches (Black & White) was the first kitty to enter my life. I was all of 4 or 5. She had a litter of 3 kittens. . . . Tommy, Bobby, & Binki Poo Poo.

I had hours of fun with them. . . . I still remember vividly.

All the kittens were placed into homes.

My mom (who worships cats now). . . grew up on a farm. . . where her parents purposely drowned kittens to control the population (going back to the 1920's & 30's here). . .

After the kittens were placed, Patches mysteriously disappeared one day. My mom told us that she went to live on the farm with our grandfather. One of my older sisters (who was in bed) later overheard my parent's conversation from the next room mentioning that Patches was put to sleep

Later. . . Binki. . . who went to live with a relative. . . was returned to us (I'm surprised my mom let us keep her!). She touched our lives for about 5 years until she was bitten in the back by an animal (left paralyzed) and had to be put to sleep

A few years later. . . my dad who was a car salesman brought home a pair of cats (sister & brother) that he "took in trade". They were a mix of Siamese & Lynx. Butch & Little One. Butch was such a character. . . very vocal and lovable. His sister, was very wild. She always hid and never let us near her. She would pee if we tried to take her picture! It was a fiasco to bring her to the vets. I will always remember the time my mom slammed the car trunk on my dad's head trying to capture the cat!

When I married I did not have any animals (just my husband ). During the year of my divorce (after 12.5 years), my children & I celebrated our liberation by getting a sweet orange kitten (Molly).

Molly was an only kitty for 10 years. . . . then George came into our lives. I saw his picture posted on a bulletin board at work and fell in love.

After George took ill and had to be put away. . . I needed to fill the void in my heart. . . and along came Morrell (from a local Humane Society).

I'm hopelessly hooked!!!


(Max has really come a long way! You're doing a wonderful job caring for him. Kudos to you!!!)

When I was 4, my parents got my brother a dog. We named him brandon and he was a really great dog, but because they got him a dog they wanted to get me something but my parents didn't want to deal with two dogs, so they decided to get me a cat. I remember when they brought them home, the had been given away from a farmer, a farm cat had a litter of 4.. We got two of them. My parents are allergic to cats but since they were already outdoor cats we decided to just keep them outside. Boy is it hard to keep kittens in your yard when they don't know the land! For the first day we kept them in a HUGE cardboard box with a couple grill racks over the top. I couldn't stand them being in there so I kept carrying them around even though they were terrified and couldn't stop scratching me. I named mine Cuddles and Joe named his Theresa. I used to carry them around and teach them to look both ways before crossing the road and how to eat with their paws--they were my best friends.. I lived on a farm and knew no kids until school and even then they were too faw away to play with, so I would play with the cats all the time.

Ever notice how one cat draws others? Well in no time our backyard was THE place for cats to hang out. I think there were around 30 cats at one time grazing at our bowls, but they stayed far away.. My parents knew nothing about cats and didn't get our cats fixed at first because they didn't realize they had to. Well after 8 kittens being born to 2 different mommies we (thank god) placed all the kittens but one, and de sexed all the cats we could.

Over the years our cat numbers died off, to 5, to 3, to 1, and then my last original cat died in february. I was a wreck because I hadn't been spending any time with her.. But then a week or two later Roxy showed up all cold and hungry and I always thought he was sent by my other cats to watch over me because they could see how sad I was about my cat that had just passed on..

So I guess I always loved cats. Dogs I can't relate to, but they are starting to grow on me bit by bit. The other day a golden retriever was chasing roxy around and he was soooo sweet, I was almost sad when his owner came to pick him up..

I grew up with dogs (German Sheppards) but when I was a little girl I figured out early that I just wasn't a dog-person. The smelly fur, big sloppy toungue and dopey attitude just irked me, even as a kid. Then, when I was about 11 or 12, much to our horror, we found a small mouse in the house! Well, after much drama catching this thing, my mother suggested that we get a kitten in case it happened again. We promptly walked a few blocks to a house that was giving away kittens! I fell in love with Cosmo at first sight and I've been a crazy cat lady ever since!

He's been gone now for about 12 years and I've had three new fur-babies since, who I love to pieces, but Cosmo will always be my favorite. I guess you never forget your first!

Well, my mother is the one for me. My first cat was Chaser, and I had her when I was 4. I had her for 3 years and she was hit by a car About a month later, I got Oreo! He looked a lot like her...my mother still has him until this day. He is 14 years old! She is the one that has taught me to love them unconditionally like I would love any other animal or person. Now, that I have my own "child", Mittens, I love him just as much as Oreo. And, I go to see Oreo all the time since they live on the next street!

I think I was mostly a dog lover growing up, but I adore all animals. Im a huge animal fan. We had 2 kittens when I was little but it didnt go well. The rest of my family is very allergic to cats and most anything that moves, so we didnt get to keep the kittens very long

Living at home we only had dogs at my moms house and nothing at my dads. My cat love started with my neighbors cat Jake. Hes the sweetest thing and yowls like you wouldnt believe. Hes mostly an outside cat and would always come to see me when I was outside. Call his name and meow a few times and there he was I just loved him. I dont see him much anymore, partly because Im hardly ever at my dads anymore and also I heard Jake terrorized a neighborhood dog and is now staying inside most of the time. Poor Jake

I had to wait until I had my own home before I could get any pets. First I lived with my ex who had dogs, then I was living in a pet-free apartment for a while. Now that I have my own house I can get any pet I want!!

Originally posted by superkitty

The little guy that started it all:

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OMG SK! He's gorgeous!

My Nana had been breeding Cats for 40 years before I was born and I their has never been one minute in my life when I haven't owned a cat- I hope it stays that way!

I don't know, I hated cats when I was little, mainly because I got bitten by one, which I deserved because I squished it or pulled it's tail, don't remember which. I hated them as a teenager, well at least some of them. But in my senior of highschool, a stray came along that I named Shadow because she was really dirty and looked grey and was skinny. When we started feeding her and giving her medicine and cleaning her ears out that were full of mites, her color changed. Her coat became black and glossy and she put on weight. Then she left us. Never saw her again. So I didn't care too much for them. I guess after marrying my hubby and living mainly in apartments, I realized that I couldn't have the dogs I wanted, and then again I didn't since I had a german sheperd when I was little that passed away. A co-worker of mine, luckily, got me interested in cats because she had about five of them I think, memory is kinda lost. She would talk about them so much so that they seemed like her babies! LOL!!!! That's what triggered it for me, and then of course I saw my JB when he was five weeks old, with that full belly dragging on the floor when he would run, made me fall immediately in love with him.

My childhood is full of dogs, none of them actually mine, but close enough to be my pals. In amongst the dogs are a few cats, kind of on the periphery of my experience. And along with these critters, are a zillion others, and a complete fascination with fur people. BUT, the fur people I developed relationships with were the dogs.

When I moved away from home, and lived on my own, I decided it was time for a pet of my own. I would have got a puppy, except for two things: How do you deal with all the training that's necessary, and still keep your employer happy 9-5? And then, of course, it's about that employer, who expects you to be at your job, and not to have a dog in tow -- to my mind, you simply don't subject a dog to a lifestyle that does not allow his human to be with him all day, most days. Answer: you don't do it. You rethink what it is you want from this relationship. What I wanted was someone with whom I could have a relationship, who would care whether I was around or not, who would give me h*** if I was late getting home, but who would not under normal circumstances have difficulty dealing with my absence all day. Cat.

Chinook came into my life and left it all too quickly. Some day I may write that story, but despite the fact that it is 25 years ago, it's still pretty raw, so the time is not right for it. Percy meandered in and meandered out.

Then Shasta came along, and spent 21 years teaching me how to be a cat Mum. I think she was a pretty good teacher. She was a real spunky critter, and we had some wonderful battles of wills. But, when she wanted to be, she was mushy as all get out.

She could have put her paw down when we asked her (at the age of 14) to share her house and humans with a couple of guys who needed new digs. She gave me a hard time for a while, but that was a matter of form, because she did basically accept Nibs and Gryphon fairly quickly. And once she figured I had done appropriate penance, we were back to normal.

All three of them are RB kitties now, and the feline population moves from one regime to the next, but it was Shasta who really started it, and I can't now imagine my life without at least one cat, preferably more.

I have always loved cats...I am to this day, a little nervous around dogs...mostly around dogs that I do not know...I have no clue on if they would bite or attack, or anything, and I know they can sense it from me....I just prefer to stick with cats..

cat? And you said 15 was final!! Must be nice to have such an accomodating hubby. I am SO jealous!! I can't even get TWO to get along without major problems and you have sixteen!! The new one is very cute by the way.

Our first cat Josephine came into my life when I was 5. She had a litter of 2 kittens (Blackie and Little Joe) before she disappeared one day (this was the dark-age days before neutering when you let you cats wander the neighborhoods). After Little Joe choked to death on a chicken bone (I was about 7 when I found his body), my dad (the cat hater) got fed up with cats and took Blackie to the pound. As we drove there, I cried the whole way, and vowed that I would never, ever let that happen to another animal as long as I lived. These 2 incidents gave me my lifelong vow to love and protect any pet until their natural death.

I'm also just a sucker for a furry face.

I remember Bartles and Buffy - we had Buffy since I was about 3 until I was about 18, she was a ornery one, but I loved her nevertheless...we had to put her to sleep when she had kidney disease and nose cancer.

Bartles was a sweet grey tabby who slept on my bed and I loved him for that. I don't know what happened to him, he disappeared one day

We never had cats or other pets when we were kids until around the time I left home and my youngest sister, (of three) got one after years of asking. I never hated cats. In fact, I've always been fascinated by them, but I could never let myself love them. I think deep down it had something to do with not thinking I was loveable and the way that you look so vulnerable when paying attention to them. I thought it was kind of wimpy.

That began to change a few years ago about the time I met the love of my life. She was the most beautiful and graceful woman I had ever seen. I met her taking dance lessons. The idea came into my head that I should learn to do something that women like in case I ever had a girlfriend or wife who wanted to. When I was younger I was one of the jerks who would never dance. I just didn't want to be like that forever. THAT... is wimpy.

Anyway, the more I fell in love with this princess, the more I was willing to let myself love cats. She didn't have one anymore because her cat passed away, but when I visited my parents, (my sister still lived there at the time) I payed more attention to her cat and she grew to be my favourite part of the visit.

What really put me over though was a phone call between my girlfriend and me about two years ago. I had just put some crushed rock down under the back porch stairs and the side of my house. It was to prevent weeds and make it look a bit nicer. It wasn't the coarse aggregate that I ordered, but I couldn't take it back. It had the same consistency as cat litter and the very next day I found out that some damn cat had cat used the crushed rock as a pooping ground. I was so mad! I didn't like cleaning cat poop in my yard! Then, as sweet as she always was, my girlfriend explained why the cat did it saying things like, "Oh she thought it was for her... mmmmm it's so nice and soft... and it's in my favourite spot too..." etc.

After that I could never feel mad at another living cat again and it made me fall for her even more. She was like a cat in many ways. She was gentle and graceful with a rythym like no other woman I had met before. I was head over heels. She was classy, sophisticated and the only thing softer than her voice was the touch of her skin. Unfortunately, she's not in my life anymore. She went back to an abusive relationship, but my love for cats can never be taken away from me.