Hello All!
I've been using this site as a free source of advice for a while and thought I'd better stop lurking and introduce myself and my family.
I have 5 kitties that allow me to live with them. Jasper seems to have taken on the role of chief tomcat and my little familiar; he follows me around and waits outside to greet me when I get home on an evening. He is nearly 18 and we've been together since he was 2. He is still very healthy and can climb the trees in our garden but these days he makes sure he has an audience before he demonstrates this...
Sophie at 15 is my resident grimalkin. When she was a kitten she and her brother (who is sadly no longer with us) used to play at making our older female cat worried by spending long minutes sat looking at her on her lofty perch on the boiler where she lived. Sophie now spends most of her days living on top of the fridge (so she doesn't miss out on any treats) and being looked at by our three younger cats. We seem to have a niche in our family for the resident old mad lady and Sophie has taken on this role. She is very affectionate and loves to be petted once she has washed your hand thoroughly to her satisfaction. Sophie and Jasper formed an alliance against the latest horde of marauding kittens and still like to curl up and snooze together...
The household revolves around Jack and he is very aware of this fact. He arrived as a 7 week kitten having been rescued by an animal shelter after a dog walker handed him in when his dog found him in the undergrowth. Knowing Jack he probably managed to lose the rest of his family whilst exploring. He is very vocal and you tend to know where he is because he's the clumsiest cat I've ever known and tends to leave a trail of devestation in his wake. This is a rare picture of Jack asleep with his toy mouse that appears mysteriously in strange places throughout the house.
Jack arrived from the shelter with a big "sister" just a few weeks older than him who we called Nutmeg. She had the most enchanting personality and I was devastated when we lost her after 18 months. Nutmeg was Jack's constant companion and her loss hit him really hard; he spent the next few weeks wondering around the house making plaintive crying noises when he wasn't making the older cats' lives a misery by trying to get them to play chase with him. Since he showed no signs of getting over his loss any time soon I went to a shelter to find him a new little friend called Ezra. They took to each other right away and Ezra was part of the family within the week. He is big boy with a very laid back attitude to life and the loudest rumble purr I've heard from any cat. He often sleeps under my bed and occasionally snores. For some reason all my pictures of him feature him in one of his various beds. In this one he seems to have been landed on by Grendel...
When I went to the shelter to find Jack a new little friend I came away with Ezra, but while I was there I met a little female tabby who was very frightened and lashed out and hissed at anyone who came near her. She had been rescued from a house with far too many cats and had never been socialised. In effect she was semi-feral and the shelter was having big problems finding her a home. Over the next month the thought of this little cat kept haunting me and eventually I rang up to check if she was still there. Of course she was and since I had one spare place I went and brought her home. (I've found that 5 cats is as many I feel I can give the amount of individual attention to each that they deserve). Little Grendel, aka Little Miss Hissy, is still very wary of me but she has fitted in well with the rest of the family and is slowly making progress. I think anyway that she has a better quality of life with us then if she had been left at the shelter and I love her to bits. She gets on well with all the cats but idolizes Jack who she follow everywhere and they often sleep curled up with their paws wrapped around each other...
I hope I havn't bored you all to tears.
I've been using this site as a free source of advice for a while and thought I'd better stop lurking and introduce myself and my family.
I have 5 kitties that allow me to live with them. Jasper seems to have taken on the role of chief tomcat and my little familiar; he follows me around and waits outside to greet me when I get home on an evening. He is nearly 18 and we've been together since he was 2. He is still very healthy and can climb the trees in our garden but these days he makes sure he has an audience before he demonstrates this...
Sophie at 15 is my resident grimalkin. When she was a kitten she and her brother (who is sadly no longer with us) used to play at making our older female cat worried by spending long minutes sat looking at her on her lofty perch on the boiler where she lived. Sophie now spends most of her days living on top of the fridge (so she doesn't miss out on any treats) and being looked at by our three younger cats. We seem to have a niche in our family for the resident old mad lady and Sophie has taken on this role. She is very affectionate and loves to be petted once she has washed your hand thoroughly to her satisfaction. Sophie and Jasper formed an alliance against the latest horde of marauding kittens and still like to curl up and snooze together...
The household revolves around Jack and he is very aware of this fact. He arrived as a 7 week kitten having been rescued by an animal shelter after a dog walker handed him in when his dog found him in the undergrowth. Knowing Jack he probably managed to lose the rest of his family whilst exploring. He is very vocal and you tend to know where he is because he's the clumsiest cat I've ever known and tends to leave a trail of devestation in his wake. This is a rare picture of Jack asleep with his toy mouse that appears mysteriously in strange places throughout the house.
Jack arrived from the shelter with a big "sister" just a few weeks older than him who we called Nutmeg. She had the most enchanting personality and I was devastated when we lost her after 18 months. Nutmeg was Jack's constant companion and her loss hit him really hard; he spent the next few weeks wondering around the house making plaintive crying noises when he wasn't making the older cats' lives a misery by trying to get them to play chase with him. Since he showed no signs of getting over his loss any time soon I went to a shelter to find him a new little friend called Ezra. They took to each other right away and Ezra was part of the family within the week. He is big boy with a very laid back attitude to life and the loudest rumble purr I've heard from any cat. He often sleeps under my bed and occasionally snores. For some reason all my pictures of him feature him in one of his various beds. In this one he seems to have been landed on by Grendel...
When I went to the shelter to find Jack a new little friend I came away with Ezra, but while I was there I met a little female tabby who was very frightened and lashed out and hissed at anyone who came near her. She had been rescued from a house with far too many cats and had never been socialised. In effect she was semi-feral and the shelter was having big problems finding her a home. Over the next month the thought of this little cat kept haunting me and eventually I rang up to check if she was still there. Of course she was and since I had one spare place I went and brought her home. (I've found that 5 cats is as many I feel I can give the amount of individual attention to each that they deserve). Little Grendel, aka Little Miss Hissy, is still very wary of me but she has fitted in well with the rest of the family and is slowly making progress. I think anyway that she has a better quality of life with us then if she had been left at the shelter and I love her to bits. She gets on well with all the cats but idolizes Jack who she follow everywhere and they often sleep curled up with their paws wrapped around each other...
I hope I havn't bored you all to tears.
